"Therapy speak" has become a kind of shared shorthand to talk about the questions we all face as humans.
We have become more and more used to thinking of ourselves as the main characters in our own lives and other people as the obstacles in our way. |
 | | Brian Scagnelli |
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As a cultural critic who has written extensively on the rise of the "spiritual, but not religious" in America, I'm particularly interested in the ways our cultural discourse — and our shared vocabulary regarding questions of the self, of meaning and of our relationship with one another — reflect wider and often unspoken assumptions about the way we think about the world. What does it mean to discuss, for example, the "energy" in the universe, to describe a difficult person as "toxic" or to speak about "spiritual wellness"? And what do we mean when we talk about finding, honoring or expressing our "authentic" selves? As more and more of us move away not simply from the institutions but from the metaphysical framework of organized religion, these questions have become even more pertinent. The language of therapy could help fill the gap the lack of religion has left for some. |
I'm fascinated by the proliferation of what we might term "therapy culture" or "therapy-speak," which I write about in my Times Opinion guest essay today. The vocabulary of therapy — particularly as it's been transformed by social media and disseminated throughout our wider cultural discourse — has become a kind of shared shorthand to talk about the questions we all face as human beings: Who am I, what am I doing on this earth, why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over? |
I see the proliferation of therapy-speak as a result of a holistic worldview more and more of us are coming to share, one in which our "authentic" selves are linked to our innermost feelings and desires. This shift isn't new — my next book, "Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians," traces its intellectual genealogy from the Renaissance to the present day. But the internet and social media have made therapy-speak more prevalent than ever. My essay explores the promise — and the potential drawbacks — of this new shared discourse. |
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