Capitalism couples harsh self-blame with a therapeutic myth that individuals can fix everything

Evidence

Neurotic-Oedipalising capitalism responsibilises, harshly blaming us, while — in its therapeutic mode — telling us that we have the power as individuals to change anything and everything: if we’re unhappy, it’s up to us to fix it. Consciousness-raising, meanwhile, is about positive depersonalisation: it’s not your fault, it’s capitalism. No individuals can change anything, not even themselves; but collective activation is already, immanently, overcoming individualised immiseration. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1887

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses/converges with the reader’s ‘responsibilisation’ themes in grievance/republican readings and her interest in how deprivation is moralized onto the poor. — connects to: Self-help ideology makes individuals feel responsible for misery that corporations create — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 533; Capitalism shifts blame between individuals and structure to deflect accountability — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 145; Therapy’s real flaw is privatizing systemic problems as individual self-work — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1923 (+8 more)
• SEED: Angle: the therapeutic mode of capitalism as a distinctive contemporary mechanism of moralized blame — pairing Silva’s ‘hardening of the self’ research with the always-on loneliness of gig/cyberspatial work.
• DEEPTHINKING: The diagnosis of a capitalism that simultaneously harshly blames and therapeutically empowers the individual is a dense, genuinely paradigmatic observation available for years of reuse.

Broader Connections

• Self-help ideology makes individuals feel responsible for misery that corporations create #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 533
• Neoliberal crisis narratives redirect blame from structures onto individual psychology #corroborates (0.93) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 433
• Depression mirrors capitalist realism, rendering collective problems as personal failures #exemplifies (0.92) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2217
• Therapy’s real flaw is privatizing systemic problems as individual self-work #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1923
• Self-blame converts revolutionary anger into individualized depression #expands (0.90) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 27
• Capitalism shifts blame between individuals and structure to deflect accountability #expands (0.88) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 145
• Neoliberalism transforms the self so that crises stop being read as system failures #corroborates (0.88) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 302
• Therapy’s supposed interior self is an ideological fiction masking social origins #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1945
• Blame on individual bankers and government deflects from capitalism’s systemic causes #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 130
• Financial capitalism extracts value by exhausting the psyche itself #expands (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 72
• Blaming the system rather than oneself can protect self-esteem #qualifies (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1097