Therapeutic Nations

Self-determination is on the agenda of Indigenous peoples all over the world. This analysis by an Indigenous feminist scholar challenges the United Nations–based human rights agendas and colonial theory that until now have shaped Indigenous models of self-determination. Gender inequality and gender violence, Dian Million argues, are critically important elements in the process of self-determination. Million contends that nation-state relations are influenced by a theory of trauma ascendant with the rise of neoliberalism. Such use of trauma theory regarding human rights corresponds to a therapeutic narrative by Western governments negotiating with Indigenous nations as they seek self-determination. Focusing on Canada and drawing comparisons with the United States and Australia, Million brings a genealogical understanding of trauma against a historical filter. Illustrating how Indigenous people are positioned differently in Canada, Australia, and the United States in their articulation of trauma, the author particularly addresses the violence against women as a language within a greater politic. The book introduces an Indigenous feminist critique of this violence against the medicalized framework of addressing trauma and looks to the larger goals of decolonization. Noting the influence of humanitarian psychiatry, Million goes on to confront the implications of simply dismissing Indigenous healing and storytelling traditions. Therapeutic Nations is the first book to demonstrate affect and trauma’s wide-ranging historical origins in an Indigenous setting, offering insights into community healing programs. The author’s theoretical sophistication and original research make the book relevant across a range of disciplines as it challenges key concepts of American Indian and Indigenous studies.

Self-determination is on the agenda of Indigenous peoples all over the world. This analysis by an Indigenous feminist scholar challenges the United Nations–based human rights agendas and colonial theory that until now have shaped Indigenous models of self-determination. Gender inequality and gender violence, Dian Million argues, are critically important elements in the process of self-determination. Million contends that nation-state relations are influenced by a theory of trauma ascendant with the rise of neoliberalism. Such use of trauma theory regarding human rights corresponds to a therapeutic narrative by Western governments negotiating with Indigenous nations as they seek self-determination. Focusing on Canada and drawing comparisons with the United States and Australia, Million brings a genealogical understanding of trauma against a historical filter. Illustrating how Indigenous people are positioned differently in Canada, Australia, and the United States in their articulation of trauma, the author particularly addresses the violence against women as a language within a greater politic. The book introduces an Indigenous feminist critique of this violence against the medicalized framework of addressing trauma and looks to the larger goals of decolonization. Noting the influence of humanitarian psychiatry, Million goes on to confront the implications of simply dismissing Indigenous healing and storytelling traditions. Therapeutic Nations is the first book to demonstrate affect and trauma’s wide-ranging historical origins in an Indigenous setting, offering insights into community healing programs. The author’s theoretical sophistication and original research make the book relevant across a range of disciplines as it challenges key concepts of American Indian and Indigenous studies.

The extraordinary humanitarian Samantha Nutt gives a bracing and uncompromising account of her work in some of the most devastated corners of the world - and a new, provocative vision for changing course on growing militarisation. It is a brilliant distillation of Dr Nutt's observations over the course of 15 years providing hands-on care in some of the world's most violent flashpoints. Combining original research with her personal story, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on war as it is being waged around the world against millions of civilians.

The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures explores central lines of enquiry and seminal scholarship on therapeutic cultures, popular psychology, and the happiness industry. Bringing together studies of therapeutic cultures from sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, politics, law, history, social work, cultural studies, development studies, and American Indian studies, it adopts a consciously global focus, combining studies of the psychologisation of social life from across the world. Thematically organised, it offers historical accounts of the growing prominence of therapeutic discourses and practices in everyday life, before moving to consider the construction of self-identity in the context of the diffusion of therapeutic discourses in connection with the global spread of capitalism. With attention to the ways in which emotional language has brought new problematisations of the dichotomy between the normal and the pathological, as well as significant transformations of key institutions, such as work, family, education, and religion, it examines emergent trends in therapeutic culture and explores the manner in which the advent of new therapeutic technologies, the political interest in happiness, and the radical privatisation and financialisation of social life converge to remake self-identities and modes of everyday experience. Finally, the volume features the work of scholars who have foregrounded the historical and contemporary implication of psychotherapeutic practices in processes of globalisation and colonial and postcolonial modes of social organisation. Presenting agenda-setting research to encourage interdisciplinary and international dialogue and foster the development of a distinctive new field of social research, The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in the advance of therapeutic discourses and practices in an increasingly psychologised society.

Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. In recent decades, however, we have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, psychically frail, and requiring the ministrations of mental health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Being "in touch with one's feelings" and freely expressing them have become paramount personal virtues. Today-with a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every conceivable problem-we are at risk of degrading our native ability to cope with life's challenges. Drawing on established science and common sense, Christina Hoff Sommers and Dr. Sally Satel reveal how "therapism" and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives. Help is offered everywhere under the presumption that we need it: in children's classrooms, the workplace, churches, courtrooms, the media, the military. But with all the "help" comes a host of troubling consequences, including: * The myth of stressed-out, homework-burdened, hypercompetitive, and depressed or suicidal schoolchildren in need of therapy and medication * The loss of moral bearings in our approach to lying, crime, addiction, and other foibles and vices * The unasked-for "grief counselors" who descend on bereaved families, schools, and communities following a tragedy, offering dubious advice while billing plenty of money * The expansion of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from an affliction of war veterans to nearly everyone who has experienced a setback Intelligent, provocative, and wryly amusing, One Nation Under Therapy demonstrates that "talking about" problems is no substitute for confronting them.

Examining the expansive nature of Indigenous gender representations in history, literature, and film Within Native American and Indigenous studies, the rise of Indigenous masculinities has engendered both productive conversations and critiques. Lisa Tatonetti intervenes in this conversation with Written by the Body by centering how female, queer, and/or Two-Spirit Indigenous people take up or refute masculinity, and, in the process, offer more expansive understandings of gender. Written by the Body moves from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archive to turn-of-the-century and late-twentieth-century fiction to documentaries, HIV/AIDS activism, and, finally, recent experimental film and literature. Across it all, Tatonetti shows how Indigenous gender expansiveness, and particularly queer and non-cis gender articulations, moves between and among Native peoples to forge kinship, offer protection, and make change. She charts how the body functions as a somatic archive of Indigenous knowledge in Native histories, literatures, and activisms—exploring representations of Idle No More in the documentary Trick or Treaty, the all-female wildland firefighting crew depicted in Apache 8, Chief Theresa Spence, activist Carole laFavor, S. Alice Callahan, Thirza Cuthand, Joshua Whitehead, Carrie House, and more. In response to criticisms of Indigenous masculinity studies, Written by the Body de-sutures masculinity from the cis-gendered body and investigates the ways in which female, trans, and otherwise nonconforming masculinities carry the traces of Two-Spirit histories and exceed the limitations of settler colonial imaginings of gender.

A sensitive policy analysis of law should seek to measure and weigh all of the costs and benefits of legal rules. This book suggests ways in which mental health law can be reshaped -- not only to protect the legal rights of patients, but also to improve their mental health. "[A] lesson on where and how to focus the therapeutic jurisprudence lens so that the concept generates original and fruitful ideas." -- Thomas Grisso, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Department of Psychiatry "[The chapters] demonstrate that therapeutic jurisprudence provides a remarkable number of new insights into mental disability law... Litigators, scholars, policy makers, and mental disability professionals all owe Professor Winick a tremendous debt for the thoughtful, original, and provocative work that he has done." -- Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School "For novices in the field, it is an exciting view of a difficult corner of the law. For those who have spent their careers in the area, this work is both eye-opening and rejuvenating." -- Christopher Slobogin, University of Florida College of Law