Demands

This is poorly thought through, but I just wanted to make some comment on the rise of the therapeutic narrative as a social movement, and its inevitable decline. We’re all of course now extremely well versed in the idea that one’s shortcomings should be pathologised and then adopted into one’s identity. Everyone has ADHD, or is neuro-divergent, or has ‘anxiety’ etc., etc., At least two generations of Australians have compartmentalised their personal banalities into regimes of ‘illness’ all of which intersect with very real social illnesses, like racism or sexism in particular ways, usually as a means by which they can inoculate themselves against criticism that they’re not dismantling them fast enough.

It’s easy to view the pathologisation of personality as a type of neoliberal strategy. It is victim-blaming people for dealing poorly with the exigencies of just-in-time capitalism. I saw this most clearly following our bushfires, where the Federal government sent psychologists instead of builders. Feeling depressed about losing your home? You have a mental illness. We will send psychologists to fix you, because you are the problem, not climate change or the lack of a house.

The pathologisation of personality also represents neoliberalism because it operationalises the idea of the body as a site of consumption. It is another medium through which you might explore and present new and fashionable versions of yourself, an act of branding that follows the herd while importantly, also makes some small contribution towards delineating the herd’s boundaries.

I think the cartography of this stuff is interesting though. Because on the one hand, self-diagnosing oneself with what young people refer to as, ‘mental health’ is one of the most distilled forms of privilege imaginable. Demanding that others make special space for you in the world is a form of power. Hospital cleaners at Westmead have limited ability to make demands based on their own quiver of mental foibles carefully fashioned through hours of sparkly TikTok videos.

As a representation of power that requires nothing more an a smartphone, is unsurprising that pathologised personality has become a game-ified form of social capital for younger people, typically those from wealthy backgrounds but without immediate access to capital themselves. This is no different to the ‘starving artists’ of years gone by, conspicuously celebrating their cultural capital in direct opposition to their economic capital. Bourdieu would be proud. I occasionally read the Artist Profile magazine – a beautiful experience in itself, profiling a selection of predominantly Anglo-Australian artists. It’s gradually becoming a little more diverse, of course, but to make it as a successful artist in this country requires patronage, and usually, this comes in the form of Mummy and Daddy.

This isn’t to say that the artists aren’t talented, or aren’t supporting themselves now, just that it took a lot of years of unpaid practice to ‘get good’, something generally unthinkable to those without a back-up plan of ‘the wee studio apartment at Mum and Dad’s in the Highlands’.

I think what’s interesting now is that people are cracking the shits with this exhausting regime of privilege. It’s clear that making endless, shifting demands to validated at all times and across all contexts is nothing more than land-banking privilege. This is fine when everyone has the surplus time, energy and wealth to indulge this kind of thing, but ultimately, the real victims of privilege, those who experience racism, sexism, classism – they still exist. And the recognition of what all this pathogisation of the self really is – power – is growing rapidly.