Engineering the Human Soul: Analyzing Psychological Expertise

In the liberal democratic capitalist societies of the West, psychological know-how has made itself indispensable, not only in the regulation of domains from the factory to the family but also in the ethical systems according to which citizens live their lives. We cannot fully understand the role that psychology has come to play in terms of the application of science, the diffusion of ideas, or the entrepreneurial activities of a profession. Rather, we need to see psychology as making possible forms of expertise that have a particular capacity to graft themselves onto the practices of all those concerned with the conduct of conduct. Psychology operates within these practices to make individuals who are calculable, to make intersubjective spaces that are manageable, to simplify the heterogeneous tasks of authorities and to underpin them with an ethico-therapeutic rationale. Psychology has also come to infuse contemporary technologies of the self, with its promises to restore persons to freedom and autonomy. These features of the techne of psychology are intrinsically linked to the problematics of liberal democracies, which seek to govern through privacy, rationality, and autonomy. And if the expert technologies of psychology have come to play such a significant role in the regulation of conduct in the West, we should not be surprised if psychological expertise is a beneficiary of current transformations of the societies of Eastern Europe.