100 Years of Identity Crisis

Chapter 9: Cultural Turn to Identity

Psychology’s capacity to generate a cultural script projecting a series of values and a distinct sensibility indicates that it worked not merely as a science but also as an ethos. By the 1960s it was evident that this ethos guided sections of society to develop a distinctive understanding of their selves. It also instructed people how to feel, respond to problems, conduct relationships and present oneself in public. Therapy culture did not encompass the totality of western culture and the public was confronted with a variety of competing cultural claims. But by the 1960s a psychologically informed version of personhood was in the ascendancy and all but enjoyed a hegemonic status over young people – soon ...