ABSTRACT

The way health care is structured and managed has been significantly altered in the last 30 years. These changes, especially the medicalization of psychological suffering and the industrialization of health care and graduate school education, are examined in light of the social context of the time and their possible political consequences. Psychology’s growing reliance on behavioral theory and practice, manualized treatments, and academic competencies are interpreted as reflections of recent and radical changes in electronic technology, celebrity culture, and neoliberal influences in economic structure and the content of individual subjectivity. It is suggested that the predominant way of being in early 21st century America has shifted from the empty self to a multiple, flattened self, and that the new arrangements of health care fit hand-in-glove with the new multiple self. Jewish biblical commentary called midrash and a medieval Jewish legend (i.e., the Golem) are drawn on to explore the dangers that flow from an increase in a nation’s or a group’s power and influence. Hermeneutic cultural critique, which is necessarily framed by explicit moral understandings, is suggested as a means of identifying and combatting abuses of power such as the APA’s complicity in the Department of Defense’s use of torture in the years after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York.