Description: This book builds a fresh perspective on therapeutic narratives of intimate life. Focusing on the question of how popular psychology organises everyday experiences of intimacy, its argument is grounded in qualitative research in Trinidad in the Anglophone Caribbean.
Review Quotes:
'This impressive work offers fresh insights into the global reach of popular psychology and the ways in which it shapes intimate life. The book provides a valuable and much-needed contribution to studies of self-help and therapeutic cultures beyond the Global North. Drawing on an empirical study conducted in Trinidad and Tobago, Nehring and Kerrigan deftly blend historical analysis of local cultures and practices of love and intimacy and the ongoing effects of colonisation with personal accounts of the ways in which people draw on popular psychology in their own lives. This compelling book demonstrates the transnational movement of 'psy' discourse - how it travels and becomes embedded in local cultures and practices, and in turn how this shapes self-identity and social relationships. A must read for anyone interested in debates about therapeutic culture and sociological accounts of intimacy, individualisation and the global circulation of popular psychology.' - Katie Wright, La Trobe University; author of The Rise of the Therapeutic Society: Psychological Knowledge & the Contradictions of Cultural Change