치유문화에서 나타나는 자아 제한성의 문제: 고통수기들을 중심으로

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Accounts from therapeutic culture seem often to associate the selfish, or at least self-centered quest for self-fulfillment with individual choice or satisfaction, self-expression, expressive individualism, and emotionalism. These associations point to the downside of therapy as they present it as constituting a culture of narcissism, selfishness, or irresponsibility. While some of these characterizations contain useful insights, they overlook what are maybe some of the most important features of a therapeutic outlook. This paper aims to reveal that the therapeutic imperative is not so much geared towards the realization of self-fulfillment, as it is the promotion of self-limitation. Therapeutic culture tends to posit the self in a fragile and feeble form and insist that the management of life requires the continuous intervention of therapeutic expertise. Because of this, the elevated concern with the self is underpinned by anxiety, pain, suffering, and survival, rather than seen as a positive vision of realizing the human potential. Therapeutic culture has in this way helped to construct a diminished sense of self by which one is seen as suffering from an emotional deficit and vulnerability. This paper demonstrates this downside of therapeutic culture concerning self-limitation and the sense of a diminished self by examining popular misery memoirs. Misery memoirs are widely consumed by the general public, therefore tend to be treated by contemporary therapeutic culture as a gospel on the therapeutic ideal for self-fulfillment and self-discovery. This is, despite the existence of hidden evidence to the contrary, because of their redemptive, happy endings that show individuals overcoming difficult trials such as child abuse, incestuous rape, and domestic violence. Individual self-fulfillment and self-discovery in such stories are not achieved through the active agency of the subject but through the passive endurance of pathological symptoms and with the aid of expertise and outside support. Therefore, such stories put victims in the limited position.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 펠처, 데이브, "이름을 잃어버린 아이" 생각의 나무 2004

2 필리포빅, 즐라타, "빼앗긴 내일" 한겨레아이들 2008

3 Filipovic, Zlata, "Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo" Viking 1994

4 Tal, Kali, "World of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma" Cambridge UP 1996

5 Furedi, Frank, "Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in a Uncertain Age" Routledge 2004

6 Wisechild, Louise, "The Obsidian Mirror: An Adult Healing from Incest" Seal 1988

7 Rosenfeld, Alvin H., "The End of The Holocaust" Indiana UP 2011

8 Cole, Alyson, "The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Terror to The War on Welfare" U of California P 2007

9 Roth, Anne, "Popular Trauma Culture: Selling the Pain of Other in the Math Media" Rutgers UP 2011

10 Moskowitz, Eva S., "In Therapy We Trust: America Obsession with Self Fulfillment" The Johns Hopkins UP 2001

11 Daniel Brodsky, Louis, "Gestapo Crow: Holocaust Poems" Time Being 1992

12 Jordan, Pat, "Dysfunction for Dollars"

13 Tavris, Carol, "Beware the Incest-Survivor Syndrome Machine"

14 Sutrken, Marita, "Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present" U of New England P 1999