Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Technologies of the self in culture: critical reflections on the self-managed subject

Subjectivity volume 30, pages 152–166 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

The basis for this article is several sociological studies that have demonstrated contemporary socio-political transformations, such as the fragmentation of social ties or traditional communities, the breakdown of work or relationship spaces that used to provide safe havens for shaping identity, and analyses of neoliberal individuality, especially studies based on French philosopher Foucault’s research on ‘technologies of the self’ and his ‘entrepreneur of himself’ idea. To that end, we will study specific mechanisms for self-constructing subjectivities in a cultural space prone to these technologies: self-help literature. We identify three main mechanisms: reflexivity mediated by psychological categories, self-administered tests and management of emotions. These are all mechanisms developed to be confluent with the cultural needs of neoliberalism, in other words, depoliticising the understanding of conflicts and constructing subjects that can self-manage social risks.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Data availability

Data availability been discussed in the analysis section, where the references and appropriate data are given.

References

  • Adams, G., S. Estrada-Villalta, D. Sullivan, and H.R. Markus. 2019. The psychology of neoliberalism and the neoliberalism of psychology. Journal of Social Issues 75 (1): 1–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amigot, P., and L. Martínez. 2022. Procesos de (auto)subjetivación en la trama neoliberal. Una aproximación a las técnicas de sí y sus condiciones de posibilidad. Encrucijadas 22 (2): a2210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ampudia, F. 2006. Administrar el yo: Literatura de autoayuda y gestión del comportamiento y los afectos. REIS 113: 49–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Álvarez-Uría, F. 2005. Viaje al interior del yo: La psicologización del yo en la sociedad de los individuos. Claves De Razón Práctica 153: 61–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ariely, D. 2008. Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. New York: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barry, A., T. Osborne, and N. Rose, eds. 1996. Foucault and political reason. Liberalism, neoliberalism and rationalities of power. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. 2003. Modernidad líquida. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, U. 1998. La sociedad del riesgo. Barcelona: Paidós.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, U., and E. Beck-Gernsheim. 2003. La individualización. El individualismo institucionalizado y sus consecuencias sociales y políticas. Barcelona: Paidós.

    Google Scholar 

  • Binkley, S. 2011. Happiness, positive psychology and the program of neoliberal governmentality. Subjectivity 4 (4): 371–394.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. 2008. El sentido práctico. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brady, M. 2014. Ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities: From the neoliberal apparatus to neoliberalism and governmental assemblages. Foucault Studies 18: 11–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bröckling, U. 2015. The entrepreneurial self: Fabricating a new type of subject. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burchell, G., C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds.). 1991. The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

  • Cabanas, E. 2018. Positive psychology and the legitimation of individualism. Theory and Psychology 28: 3–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castel, R. 1997. Las metamorfosis de la cuestión social: una crónica del salariado. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crespo, E., and A. Serrano. 2011. The psychologisation of work: The deregulation of work and the government of will. Annual Review of Critical Psychology 8: 43–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davies, J. 2022. Sedados: Cómo el capitalismo moderno creó la crisis de salud mental. Madrid: Capitán Swing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. 1999. Governmentality. Power and rule in modern societies. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Vos, J. 2010. Psychologisation in times of globalisation. Psychological subjectivity in Late-Modernity. Gent: Universiteit Gent.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Vos, J. 2015. Self-help and pop psychology. In Handbook of critical psychology, ed. I. Parker, 250–258. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donzelot, J., et al. 2007. La fragilización de las relaciones sociales. Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenberg, A. 2009. The weariness of the self: Diagnosing the history of depression in the contemporary age. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fairclough, N. 2000. Language and neo-liberalism. Discourse and Society 11 (2): 147–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1988. Technologies of the self. In Technologies of the self, ed. L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P.H. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, 87–104. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 2008. The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Furedi, F. 2004. Therapy culture: Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. 1994. Modernidad e identidad del yo: el yo y la sociedad en la época contemporánea. Barcelona: Península.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goleman, D. 2020. Inteligencia emocional. Barcelona: Kairós.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordo, A., and J. De Vos. 2011. Psychologism, psychologising and de-psychologisation. Annual Review of Critical Psychology 8: 3–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, C. 1991. Governmental rationality: an introduction. In The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, 1–52. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Han, B.-Ch. 2014. Psicopolítica. Neoliberalismo y nuevas técnicas de poder. Barcelona: Herder.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hazleden, R. 2003. Love yourself: The relationship of the self with itself in popular self-help texts. Journal of Sociology 39 (4): 413–428.

    Google Scholar 

  • Illouz, E. 2007. Intimidades congeladas. Las emociones en el capitalismo. Madrid: Katz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Illouz, Eva. 2010. La salvación del alma moderna. Terapia, emociones y la cultura de la autoayuda. Madrid: Katz.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W. 1994. Principios de psicología. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, U., and J.W. Berry. 1993. Indigenous psychologies: Research and experience in cultural context. Newbury Park: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maasen, S., B. Sutter, and S. Duttweiler. 2007. Self-help: the making of neosocial selves in neoliberal society. In On willing selves. Neoliberal politics and the challenge of neuroscience, ed. S. Maasen and B. Sutter, 25–52. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madsen, O.J. 2014. The therapeutic turn. How psychology altered western culture. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madsen, O.J. 2015. Optimizing the self: Social representations of self-help. Hove: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martín-Baró, I. 1994. Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGee, M. 2005. Self-help Inc: Makeover culture in american life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGee, M. 2012. From makeover media to remaking culture: Four directions for the critical study of self-help culture. Sociology Compass 6 (9): 685–693.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nehring, D., and D. Kerrigan. 2019. Therapeutic worlds. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nehring, D., and D. Kerrigan. 2020. Thin selves: Popular psychology and the transnational moral grammar of self­identity. Consumption Markets and Culture 23 (4): 319–341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laval, Ch., and P. Dardot. 2013. La nueva razón del mundo. Ensayo sobre la sociedad neoliberal. Barcelona: Gedisa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laval, Ch., P. Dardot, and E. Berenguer. 2018. El ser neoliberal. Barcelona: Gedisa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ledoux, J. 1999. El cerebro emocional. Barcelona: Planeta.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leitch, S., and I. Palmer. 2009. Analysing texts in context: Current practices and new protocols for critical discourse analysis in organization studies. Journal of Management Studies 47 (6): 1194–1212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papalini, V.A. 2006. La subjetividad de la contracultura a la autoayuda. In La comunicación como riesgo: cuerpo y subjetividad, ed. V.A. Papalini, 21–44. La Plata: Al margen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papalini, V.A. 2007. La literatura de autoayuda, una subjetividad del sí-mismo enajenado. La Trama De La Comunicación 11: 331–342.

    Google Scholar 

  • Papalini, V.A. 2010. Libros de autoayuda. Biblioterapia Para La Felicidad. Athenea Digital 19: 147–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, I. 2008. Revolution in psychology: Alienation to emancipation. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, I., ed. 2015. Handbook of critical psychology. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pavón-Cuéllar, D. 2017. Subjetividad y psicología en el capitalismo neoliberal. Psicología Política 17 (40): 589–607.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pickren, W.E. 2018. Psychology in the social imaginary of neoliberalism: Critique and beyond. Theory and Psychology 28 (5): 575–580.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapping, E. 1996. The culture of recovery. Making sense of the self-help movement in women’s lives. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimke, H. 2000. Governing citizens through self-help literature. Cultural Studies 14 (1): 61–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimke, H. 2017. Self-help ideology. In The SAGE encyclopedia of political behavior, ed. F.M. Moghaddan, 734–737. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimke, H. 2020. Self-help, therapeutic industries and neoliberalism. In The Routledge international handbook of global therapeutic cultures, ed. D. Nehring, O.J. Madsen, E. Cabanas, C. Mills, and D. Kerrigan, 37–50. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodríguez, R. 2015. ¿Profesionalización psicosanitaria o psicologización de la cultura?: un análisis socio-histórico de las reformas psicológicas españolas contemporáneas. PhD dissertation, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

  • Rodríguez, R. 2016. La psicología en el proyecto cultural neoliberal: literatura de autoayuda y gestión de subjetividades. In Contrapsicología: De las luchas antipsiquiátricas a la psicologización de la cultura, ed. R. Rodríguez, 351-380. Madrid: Dado Ediciones.

  • Rodríguez, R. and E. Borges. 2018. El perfil del emprendedor. Construcción cultural de la subjetividad laboral postfordista. Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales 36 (2): 265-284.

  • Rose, N. 1996. Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 1999. Powers of freedom. Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 2008. Psychology as a Social Science. Subjectivity 25: 446–462.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sennett, R. 2000. La corrosión del carácter: las consecuencias personales del trabajo en el nuevo capitalismo. Barcelona: Anagrama.

    Google Scholar 

  • Teo, T. 2018. Homo neoliberalus: From personality to forms of subjectivity. Theory and Psychology 28: 581–599.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Dijk, T.A. 1993. Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society 49: 249–283.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Dijk, T.A. (comp.). 2000. El discurso como interacción social. Estudios del discurso: introducción multidisciplinaria. Vol. 2. Barcelona: Gedisa.

  • Vázquez, F. 2005. Empresarios de nosotros mismos. Biopolítica, mercado y soberanía en la gubernamentalidad neoliberal. In La administración de la vida. Estudios biopolíticos, comp. J. Ugarte, 73–103. Barcelona: Anthropos.

  • Ward, L. 2015. Caring for ourselves? Self-care and neoliberalism. In Ethics of care: Critical advances in international perspective, ed. M. Barnes, T. Brannelly, L. Ward, and N. Ward, 45–56. Bristol: Bristol University Press and Policy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wodak, R., and M. Meyer. 2003. Métodos de análisis crítico del discurso. Barcelona: Gedisa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, K. 2010. The rise of the therapeutic society: Psychological knowledge and the contradictions of cultural change. Washington: New Academia Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud (URJC), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Avenida de Atenas s/n, 28922, Alcorcón, Madrid, Spain

    Roberto Rodríguez-López

Authors
  1. Roberto Rodríguez-López
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roberto Rodríguez-López.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rodríguez-López, R. Technologies of the self in culture: critical reflections on the self-managed subject. Subjectivity 30, 152–166 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-023-00162-x

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-023-00162-x

Keywords

search

Navigation