Religion and psychology in the age of emotional capitalism: The case of the Master Academy of Love.

The author presents the Master Academy of Love (MAL), a project conducted by Catholics in Warsaw, Poland. The initiative is shown as typical of emotional capitalism: it resonates with the therapeutic emotional style, bolsters the social impact of psychology by combining the psychological discourse with the language of belief, employs the narrative of self-help and the narrative of suffering, and focuses on increasing the emotional competence of its audience. At the same time, the paper demonstrates MAL’s dualistic nature, that is, its innovative and conservative components. MAL is thus a project that uses the power of the therapeutic discourse to reinforce traditionalist tendencies in the Church. Eva Illouz’s (2007) considerations on the role of psychology in contemporary Western culture underpin the paper’s theoretical framework, while its empirical component is based on participant observations conducted at MAL meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]