Drawing on experiences from the classroom, Gil Hizi examines the themes that emerge when psychology itself becomes an object of critical inquiry, reflecting on the challenges and complexities of undertaking such a critique today.
Preface: Psychology as an object of critical study
How do we treat a field of research as a topic of social analysis? More specifically, how can we capture “psychology” as a coherent field to be studied in social life, when we often use this term to describe our behaviours and feelings generally? When does psychology begin and when does it end as an influence on how we think and act? These are some of the challenges in studying psychology critically, which are made particularly evident in a classroom setting. In the last five years, I have been teaching a master’s course for anthropology students on critical approaches to modern psychology. We explore psychology’s globalizing influence and its social and political effects in different contexts.
Of course, the sociological and anthropological literature does not lack critical texts on psychological expertise, focusing on self-help culture, the role of psychologists in corporate organizations, and the broader connection between psychology and neoliberal forms of individualization. These texts, often framed as critique of “therapeutic cultures,” are important inspiration in the classes I teach. But most of them do not account for the ambiguity that characterizes how people actually engage with psychology. As students think through the texts and reflect on their social worlds, they recognize, the multiple registers that characterize their everyday, such as the coexistence of moments of pragmatic productivity along with more idealistic thinking, or moments of necessary self-care that suspend collective action.
The course that I teach uses “therapeutic cultures” and “modern psychology” interchangeably as the overarching topic (I use the first to connect with the critical literature, while I find the latter more accurate), beginning with key concepts defined by psychoanalysis—the unconscious, repression, and trauma—and the subsequent development of psychological interventions in clinics, organizations, and more popular expertise. We read ethnographies that address the influence, translation, and modification of psychological techniques in various social contexts, as well as set principles for identifying “psychology” outside the clinic through certain vocabularies, emotional expressions, and prescription for self-transformation. The course also attends to the role of this expertise in politics today (see below), something that strongly resonates with most students today.
For a topic that is not commonly taught in universities, I am surprised by the level of student engagement and curiosity. Naturally, certain issues that I communicate are puzzling, and students often shift their critical eye from the effects of modern psychology to more “usual suspects”, be them notorious influencers, politicians, or corporations, that supposedly “manipulate” psychological idioms to realize their desired ends.
In the following text, I elaborate on themes that prompt students’ critical engagement with this topic, along with the ways they configure phenomena based on their pressing present concerns. I also introduce a few of the dilemmas that students raise in classes, which address the value and application of critical thinking.
United against “toxic positivity”
As more young people are becoming disillusioned about trajectories of social mobility and “dreams” of success, students in the social sciences quite easily adopt critical perspectives on neoliberalism. In the seminar I teach, they value texts by authors such as Nikolas Rose or Eva Illouz, and ethnographies that build on their approach, on how self-help makes people more responsible for their fates, suppressing our attention to structural problems. Many students associate this problem with their negative image of a smiley, successful, and entrepreneurial creature who pretends the sun shines on a stormy day. They frequently identify this critique with online discourses on “toxic positivity,” namely when a dire situation is falsely represented by people who suffer, or their interlocutors, as something that could and should be converted into positive thinking.
“Toxic positivity” exemplifies how a popular discourse aids critical studies but could also limit it. Students mention this term as an “inauthentic” expression, thus maintaining an ideal of a “true” and “inner” self—itself a modern psychological idea. Their search for the “correct” exposure and loyalty to a genuine will is itself a demanding and tiring process that often produces a sense of failure (see Illouz 2008). At the same time, I cannot disavow students’ urge to emphasize the harm of certain images and texts, such as influencers who pretend that their glamorous homes or apparel represents “ordinary” life or self-help gurus that promote recipes for instant self-transformation. Negativity indeed requires more tolerance and respect. Ultimately, I challenge the class to look beyond “toxic positivity” to inputs that cut across various types of therapeutic interventions, while I am persuaded by them not to deny the particular problematics of “toxic positivists.”
Lack of better alternatives?
The neoliberal critique mentioned above also identifies how psychological expertise enters the workplace, where it motivates employers to be more aware of employees’ feelings, while allowing to pacify interpersonal problems and increase productivity. This critique resonates with most students, particularly those with work experience. Interestingly, several students in this seminar pondered whether there is a better alternative. Even if the neoliberal critique is valid, one student recently asked, what would be a better approach an employer could take? Would we prefer a workplace with more hierarchical rituals and no attention to feelings whatsoever? This is one of many instances where students sought to ground critique in the stakes of actual social settings and alternatives, an exercise that critical texts often avoid. In response, some students point out that the critique is not directed at the choices of specific employers or organizations, but more on widespread tendencies shaped by macro processes. Furthermore, there could be other possibilities other than the choosing between formalist hierarchical or the emotionally calculative leaders (see Graeber 2014). Both stances in this discussion are obviously valid, reflecting to us the different scopes and temporalities of critique, as well as the forces that push us to reproduce practices that we may not idealize.
Psychology as political, politics as psychologized
Emotions play an increasing role in politics today. Some of this process is shaped by the dominance and influence of modern psychology on how we define our behavior and relationships. While numerous ethnographies following Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose since the early 2000s have emphasized that psychology promotes subjects who are self-governing and a-political, there is evidence that many groups practice psychology to advance social and political visions (see Häberlen and Maik Tändler 2017; Hizi 2025; Salmenniemi 2019), with various degrees of success. More broadly in political discourse, psychological concepts such as “trauma” are becoming more central in claims for recognition and support. This emotionalization of politics is somewhat more evident in right-wing populism, with its emphasis on ethnonational pride, humiliation, and charismatic leadership. However, today this tendency is no longer exclusive to specific movements and rather appears as a logic connected to the forms of media, branding, and influence that cuts across audiences, even if difference in style may prevail.
This topic resonates with students’ experience of the political worlds. We read texts on humanitarian work in its profiling of “correct” properties of victimhood, humanistic psychology in left-wing workshops and parades, and provocative politicians-influencers today. As most students share left-wing perspectives, the examples they bring up gravitate toward dangerous employments of emotional idioms by right-wing figures, including the notorious “manosphere.” When discussing these phenomena, we frequently slip from evidence involving the principles of modern psychology to a more general trend for provocation and hate. Our biases often bring us to speak of how psychological principles are “weaponized” by pre-existing ideologies as we find it more difficult, empirically and ethically, to identify the mutual influence of politics and therapeutics.
This topic always invites the question whether the psychologization of politics is a hindrance for advancing justice or whether this depends on who uses emotions and for which ends. For students who commit to an activist lens and more immediate effects, emotional provocations may be justified when they are a means for promoting progressive agendas. Other students raise concerns that any ideology becomes hollow once emotionality is the main currency, drawing on perspectives by Hannah Arendt (1973) on the politics of “compassion” and more recently, media scholar Lili Chouliaraki’s warning that the platformization of emotions (2021), which destabilizes the link between “claim” and “condition.” Even if emotional provocation can be used with good intentions, it reproduces a field of affective competitions, and ultimately, powerful and violent actor tend to have the upper hand in this dynamic.
It is always a nice surprise for me that many students treat the seminar as an opportunity to dive into significant, yet often elusive, features on our sociopolitical reality (forgive my bias). The seminar is also a fertile ground for conversations in the intersection of social science, ethics, and politics (exercises that student write in topics from current affairs and their social worlds push these discussions further). Classroom conversations have value in revealing that social analysis has varying relevance and significance across different temporalities and registers in social life. As such, they illuminate an anthropology grounded perspective on how we engage with academic critique.
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1973. On Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2021. “Victimhood: The Affective Politics of Vulnerability.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24 (1): 10–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549420979316.
Graeber, David. 2014. “Anthropology and the Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (3): 73–88. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau4.3.007.
Häberlen, Joachim C., and Maik Tändler. 2017. “Spaces for Feeling Differently: Emotional Experiments in the Alternative Left in West Germany during the 1970s.” Emotion, Space and Society 25: 103–10.
Hizi, Gil. 2025. “The Psychological Imagination of the Social in Contemporary China.” Emotions and Society 7 (1): 98–115. https://doi.org/10.1332/26316897Y2024D000000026.
Illouz, Eva. 2008. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. University of California Press.
Rose, Nikolas. 1998. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge University Press.
Salmenniemi, Suvi. 2019. “Therapeutic Politics: Critique and Contestation in the Post-Political Conjuncture.” Social Movement Studies 18 (4): 408–24.
Bio
Gil Hizi is a Research Associate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, the University of Cologne. Gil’s research addresses moral change under globalization and market expansion, focusing mostly on contemporary China. He has extensively analyzed discursive practices of psychology and personal development, describing how they narrate and shape social values, socioeconomic transformations, and collective identities. His publications include “Transient Becoming: Self-improvement and capitalist virtuousness in contemporary China” (National University of Singapore Press, 2026) and the edited volume “Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A keyword approach” (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
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