Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self

Abstract

We live under the beguiling illusion that our subjective lives are a personal matter. But our intimate feelings, desires, and relationships have become the object of new forms of investigation and the target of new forms of power. In the factory, the business organization, the military, environment, the school and the home, therapists and counsellors gently coax us into new ways of thinking and acting. Experts are on hand to advise us as to how we should manage our employees, suceed in our jobs and rear our children. In this book, Nikolas Rose examines the birth of this new breed of "engineers of the human soul". He explores the parts they have played in the government of individuals - at work, at war, in the family, and in the conduct of themselves. Rose argues that the recent rise of a psycho-therapeutics culture promising each of us freedom, autonomy and fulfilment is intimately linked to the emergence of a new form of political rationality grounded in the entrepreneurial self. He argues that social and political power has infiltrated our interior lives and that the same historical process through which we have become profoundly psychological beings has empowered government to take a hold upon our souls. This book should be of interest to students and lecturers of sociology, psychology, and education.