From the Feminist Critique of Psychology to Feminist Therapy: Democratising Therapeutic Practices

Historicizing “therapeutic culture”—Towards a material and polycentric history of psychologization

“…Exceptions include the works of Tändler (2016) and Maasen et al (2011), and Malich and Balz (2020), which propose a first historical synthesis of the psychologization process and its critics. Pache (2022) and Ruck et al (2022) have focused more specifically on its historical ties to the women's movement and feminism, Gerber (2023) to continuing professional training, while media scholar Stark (2017) has addressed the question of how psychotherapy has been disseminated to the public through the historical case of Albert Ellis' "mediated" Rational Therapy. In line with recent work on therapeutic culture, this special issue takes a historical perspective on the processes of psychologization and psychotherapization through a series of empirical case studies.…”