• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.73-94
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• 2014

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.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.89
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• pp.37-67
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• 2010

The 21 Century is definded as an age of culture or image characterized by the fact, that modern society are being overwhelmed with virtual reality, that is full of visual images. The cultural concentration on the visual image and the excessive tendency to attend it become not only today but also ever as the leading style of culture. Nevertheless, it is particularly noteworthy that the visual image has become so one of the basic conditions of modern society, that one holds it as the society of the spectacle. So can the problem of seeing that resulted from the oculocentric culture, that is the problem of the fundamental relationship between the world and the eyes of human beings, be examined in the phenomenological sense. For this study, I believe that 『Phenomenologie de la Perception』 of Merleau-Ponty provides a important approach. The theme of this study is to refer, first, how man has dealt with the seeing in the history of philosophy, such as Plato, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty, who although not the anti-oculocentricism, but also makes serious reflection about an excess of visual images. Second, it is to explain what characteristics and problems are located in these considerations, and thirdly, it must be brought into the light, what is the essence of the seeing with regard to the beauty, the truth and the morality.