ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the relationship between television and the shaping of subjectivity is complex, ongoing, and mutually constituted within the viewing habits of everyday life. There is much written within the field of media and cultural studies about the pleasure and influence of television in everyday life, including its role as a purveyor of ideology and cultural struggle. When discussing the relationships between television and psychoanalysis, it is useful to take account of psychosocial and cultural developments in the study of what is referred to as “therapy” or “therapeutic” culture. The foregrounding of emotions in popular media is also linked to the history of psychoanalysis and popular culture, where from cinema to advertising, the language, practice, and imagery of psychoanalysis and its concerns are evoked. As a clinical and theoretical project, psychoanalysis has always had close ties with the culture and society in which it operates.
