Smoliak Olga, Rice Carla, Rudder Deanna, Tseliou Eleftheria, LaMarre Andrea, LeCouteur Amanda, Gaete Joaquin, Davies Adam, Henshaw Sarah
Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece.
Fam Process. 2025 Mar;64(1):e13064. doi: 10.1111/famp.13064. Epub 2024 Oct 9.
Emotion regulation is central in many therapy models, including couple and family therapy models. This article draws on poststructuralist governmentality studies and processual affect theory to offer insight into how the therapeutic concept of emotion regulation may reflect and support neoliberal affective forms of self-governance. We suggest that couple and family therapy-through using professional discourses and affect-oriented techniques or interventions-may be another site wherein neoliberal governmentality is implemented and extended in contemporary westernized neoliberalized societies. In facilitating emotion regulation, we argue that there is a risk that therapists may implicitly promote a neoliberal worldview that encourages clients to mobilize neoliberal techniques to become self-improving, entrepreneurial subjects, responsible for their happiness and well-being. Conditions of precarity associated with individualist, neoliberal capitalist ideologies and policies (e.g., unemployment, job insecurity, forced migration, wealth inequalities, mass incarceration, social isolation) generate emotional burdens for people to manage that professional techniques or interventions may normalize as clients' self-management tasks. We theorize emotion regulation as an affective governmentality tactic of power and suggest that couple and family therapy can offer points of resistance to individualization and responsibilization and opportunities for creating or affirming alternative subjectivities and affectivities.
情绪调节在许多治疗模式中都处于核心地位，包括夫妻和家庭治疗模式。本文借鉴后结构主义治理研究和过程性情感理论，以深入探讨情绪调节的治疗概念如何反映并支持新自由主义的自我治理情感形式。我们认为，夫妻和家庭治疗——通过运用专业话语以及以情感为导向的技术或干预措施——可能是新自由主义治理在当代西方化的新自由主义社会中得以实施和扩展的另一个场所。在促进情绪调节的过程中，我们认为治疗师可能存在一种风险，即会含蓄地宣扬一种新自由主义世界观，鼓励来访者运用新自由主义技术成为自我提升、具有创业精神的主体，为自己的幸福和安康负责。与个人主义、新自由主义资本主义意识形态和政策相关的不稳定状况（例如失业、工作不安全、被迫迁移、财富不平等、大规模监禁、社会孤立）给人们带来了需要应对的情感负担，而专业技术或干预措施可能会将这些负担正常化为来访者的自我管理任务。我们将情绪调节理论化为一种权力的情感治理策略，并认为夫妻和家庭治疗可以为个体化和责任化提供抵抗点，以及创造或肯定替代主体性和情感性的机会。
