ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book examines the politics of individual self-care and resistance, others question whether therapeutic practices generate social change. It argues that the coaching enacted by middle-class Ashkenazim Jews does not always lead to a lack of political disengagement. The book shows that the feminised fragile vulnerable self, promulgated in neoliberal therapeutic practices and much critiqued in the canonical critique, challenges the go-getting, productive masculinised ideal worker in affirming ways. It also argues that popular psychology creates symbolic hierarchies by attaching value to middle-class women who are able to reproduce self-help tropes and narratives and thus construct Others as lacking value. The book explores the racialisation of therapeutic practices, especially the whiteness of psychological and emotional capital promoted by coaching in a British context.
