Wellbeing constitutes a key idiom through which therapeutic culture is dispersed in popular and policy discourse.
Wellbeing is, however, a notoriously broad and ill-defined concept, which is put to use in many different ways. We begin this chapter, therefore, by distinguishing between three dominant constructs of wellbeing, and identifying ‘personal wellbeing’ as the one most clearly aligned with therapeutic culture.
We draw an analogy with Marx’s discussion of religion as both ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’ and obscuring the real source of the oppression. This suggests that personal wellbeing discourses speak to real needs that late modern society creates, and yet can simultaneously reproduce the same conditions that generate those needs.
We go on to show how the construct of personal wellbeing is bi-furcated, promoting a more individualised bio-psychological ‘high road’ to aspire to and a more socialised and relational ‘low road’ for those finding life a struggle. Interestingly, both contain some recognition of the toxicity of the current system, and so an embryonic critique.
The second part of the chapter presents an alternative approach, relational wellbeing, which is based on research undertaken in the global South.
This conceives wellbeing as comprised of material, relational and subjective dimensions, and understands it as emerging through the inter-relations of personal, societal, and environmental structures and processes (White, 2017).
The conclusion considers how relational wellbeing connects with or challenges therapeutic culture.