Citation

Purser RE. Self Soc. 2015; 43(1): 6-14.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, ©2018 - The Author/AHP, Publisher Association for Humanistic Psychology)

DOI

10.1080/03060497.2015.1018668

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Based upon a first-person experience of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, this article provides a critical reflection on this clinical intervention within the context of late capitalist society. It draws inspiration from Russell Jacoby's critique of contemporary psychology, what he referred to as 'social amnesia', a form of collective forgetting, manifesting as a tendency to repress, forget, and exclude the larger social, historical, and political context of therapeutic interventions. With its fetishization of the present moment, MBSR is predicated on a politics of subjectivity that assumes stress is localized to the failure of the individual to regulate their emotions.

Language: en