No, it’s as anti-neoliberal as it gets. Psychoanalysis was invented in the solid stage of modernity. Meaning, it’s very modern but not postmodern. It is based on the idea of a person’s rootedness in their specific history and culture. It sees the self as a continuum. It believes that healing doesn’t come from a magic pill but from a slow building of a relationship.
Psychoanalysis is unpopular today because neoliberalized people want instantaneous results, fast pivots, magic incantations, and rapid makeovers. It reminds us that you can’t ditch everything and take up in flight. You are always and forever part of your bloodline. You can’t change everything by exercising willpower. You can’t choose your way out of who you are. All of this is intolerable to a neoliberal self.
Great, great question. Thank you, you rock.
It’s incredible how much I perk up when people ask me about neoliberalism. Maybe I should stand by the side of the road with one of those sandwich boards, saying “ASK ME ABOUT NEOLIBERALISM.”
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe I should stand by the side of the road with one of those sandwich boards, saying “ASK ME ABOUT NEOLIBERALISM.”
You definitely should. And charge for the service. You know, like at a curbside lemonade stand.
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Would you consider psychoanalysis an inherently western phenomenon? Also, I would not be surprised if psycho-pop is recuperating, in a typical neoliberal fashion, some psychoanalytical terminology, with tons of shortcuts.
Ol.
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Absolutely, this is a completely Western subjectivity. It’s utterly incomprehensible to people with other subjectivities. Just like it would be incomprehensible to pre-modern Europeans.
And yes, absolutely, the pop-psych and especially the currently fashionable AI therapy are completely neoliberal. They promote the fixation on the self, the overcharged, overinflated investment into the self that is the hallmark of the neoliberal selfhood. Sitting in front of a machine, and imagining you are receiving help, either from AI or from Instagram is as neoliberal as it gets.
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I completely agree with you. Also, AI therapy is yet another nightmare we definitively did not need. I would not be surprised if AI becomes institutionalized as some sort of pre-screening filter before seeing a therapist.
Ol.
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