Main description:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia witnessed a dramatic increase in psychotherapeutic options, which promoted social connection while advancing new forms of capitalist subjectivity amid often-wrenching social and economic transformations. In Shock Therapy Tomas Matza provides an ethnography of post-Soviet Saint Petersburg, following psychotherapists, psychologists, and their clients as they navigate the challenges of post-Soviet life. Juxtaposing personal growth and success seminars for elites with crisis counseling and remedial interventions for those on public assistance, Matza shows how profound inequalities are emerging in contemporary Russia in increasingly intimate ways as matters of selfhood. Extending anthropologies of neoliberalism and care in new directions, Matza offers a profound meditation on the interplay between ethics, therapy, and biopolitics, as well as a sensitive portrait of everyday caring practices in the face of the confounding promise of postsocialist democracy.

Contents:

Acknowledgments ix
Prelude: Bury That Part of Oneself xvii
Introduction: An Yet . . . 1
Part I. Biopoliticus Interruptus 31
Interlude: Russian Shoes 33
1. "Tears of Bitterness and Joy": The Haunting Subject in Soviet Biopolitics 37
Part II. (In)Commensurability 67
Interlude: Family Problems 69
2. "Wait, and the Train Will Have Left": The Success Complex and Psychological Difference 71
3. "Now, Finally, We are Starting to Relax": On Civilizing Missions and Democratic Desire 104
4. "What Do We Have the Right to Do?": Tactical Guidance at a Social Margin 133
Part III. In Search of a Politics 165
Interlude: Public Spaces 167
5. "I Can Feel His Tears": Psychosociality under Putin 171
6. "Hello, Lena, You Are on the Air": Talk-Show Selves and the Dream of Public Intimacy 197
Postlude: Subjects of Freedom 225
Conclusion: And Yet . . . So What? 227
Notes 243
References 275
Index 295