Self-Help’s Transnationalisation

The preceding chapter situated the sociological analysis of self-help books in broader academic debates about therapeutic culture. In turn, this chapter argues for approaching these debates from a transnational perspective. Research about the role which psychotherapeutic narratives about self and social relationships play in contemporary popular cultures has tended to focus on specific societies. The titles of key studies in this field alone already suggest this. Take Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Ehrenreich, 2009), Micki McGee’s Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life (McGee, 2005), or Eva Moskowitz’s In Therapy We Trust: America’s Obsession with Self-Fulfilment (Moskowitz, 2001). These all trace how cultural and socio-economic shifts in the contemporary United States promoted the growing prominence of psychotherapeutic narratives in public and private life. These books have little or nothing to say about the roles of American therapeutic narratives and products in therapeutic cultures in other parts of the world, or about the ways American therapeutic culture was itself shaped by influences from elsewhere.