Therapeutic Cultures and Self-Help Books: Constructing Different Models of Social Bonds based on Healing Body and Spirit

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive concept of Therapeutic Cultures, focusing the role of self-help books. Social turn in favor of holistic paradigms of health care provides a fertile ground for the practice of varied therapies. In order to understand its basis, I explain some key aspects that underpin the convergence between social acceptance and the proliferation and diversification of forms of healing: new perspectives of body and subjectivity, spiritual beliefs that support therapies and a psy conception of the self. Even if a new consensus on body and subjectivity is setting up, it remains a great diversity in beliefs, therapies and relationship models.In spite of their popularity, these practices are far to be uniform. Complementary and alternative therapies are often practiced by specialists with specific training and even university formation, tending to their integration to public health systems. Several therapies addressed to wellness or healing are mostly shared in groups and communities, in a self-managed organization. Differently, self-help books emphasize personal appropriations and individual salvation. Many functions of bibliotherapies are referred to the different milieu where books are used. I specify the difference between unlike ways of use and interpretation of self-help books: shared reading in a therapeutic group and social gathering in a spiritual circle, contrasting with individual reading. By this point of view, I consider not only health care but also social hierarchic models promoted. From a number of empirical cases, I analyze the importance of an interpersonal context as a proper sphere of healing subjectivity suffering. This research allows matching different models of therapeutic relationship with different styles of authority exercise, which contribute not only to conceive both health and disease in different ways, but also to understand new frames of social relations.