Beyond Therapeutic Culture in Latin America

Hybrid Networks in Argentina and Brazil

Piroska Csúri, Mariano Ben Plotkin, Nicolás Viotti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367187026
• eBook ISBN: 9780429588648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

By focusing on quantitative and qualitative research in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, this book expands on the notion of "therapeutic culture."

Usually considered a global phenomenon disseminated from North to South, and associated to "modern" forms of "psychologized" subjectivity, "therapeutic culture" has become a key notion to understanding contemporary culture. However, this path-breaking research, grounded in a bottom-up perspective that follows specific therapeutic narratives, shows that the concept of the "therapeutic" should be extended to encompass a diversity of practices, both "secular" and "religious, " "modern" and "traditional, " that are deemed as therapeutic by the actors involved, although they are overlooked as such by most of the current literature. Pentecostal and Afro-Brazilian religions as well as New Age practices coexist and interact with "conventional" therapeutic techniques such as Psychoanalysis, conforming complex and hybrid therapeutic networks associated to different (also hybrid) forms of subjectivity. Although the book draws upon two cases from the "Global South, " its theoretical conclusions are applicable to the analysis of the realm of the therapeutic at large.

The book is aimed at university students (both graduate and undergraduate) and at the general public interested in the notion of the therapeutic and, specifically, in Latin American culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: From therapeutic culture to therapeutic networks
• 1 The theoretical framework: Therapeutic networks as assemblages
• 2 The supply side of therapeutic networks: Mobilizing thick and thin actants for wellbeing
• 3 On the demand side: Searching wellbeing through interaction with thin actants
• 4 Actants and their complexity: Between thinning thick actants and thickening thin actants
• 5 Parallel paths toward the autonomization of the self: Between religion and self-help
• 6 Complex forms of mediation: Ontological brokers, translators, and bridges
• Conclusions: Toward a new theorization of the therapeutic
• Index