Psychotherapy under Capitalism: The Production, Circulation and Management of Value and Subjectivity

Abstract

This article is concerned with the place of psychotherapy under capitalism. This is addressed using elements of the critique of political economy undertaken by Marx. I also argue that a Marxist critique of capitalist political economy is also necessarily feminist. I include analyses of the “feminisation” of work in order to grasp how value is produced, circulated and managed by psychotherapy, how subjectivity is targeted. Three aspects of psychotherapy are discussed to illustrate the value of a Marxist feminist approach to this particular practice of the self: the question of payment for the labour of a psychotherapist (and the labour of the client); the question of public health provision, focusing here on the UK's National Health Service; and the continuing debates about the role of the State and the regulation of public and private provision of psychotherapy.