Therapeutics of the Self

Abstract

The article uses the reality-based television shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette as a lens through which to examine the representation of therapeutic behavior, arguing that a re-articulation of the therapeutic is necessary to understand the coupling of surveillance and the therapeutic on television. The work examines how participants on reality shows, to legitimate themselves under surveillance, must assert what the author terms the “therapeutics of the self,” a pride in displaying a consistent self verified by surveillance. The “therapeutics of the self” builds on the trend observed by scholars studying therapeutic culture in which people are incited to constantly work on, hence change, the self. The author argues that the “therapeutics of the self” promotes as therapeutic the assertion of self-sameness across disparate social spaces (on the shows and in “real” life): stasis. Hence, paradoxically, the unchanged self works to improve—change—the self.