ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the psychological effects of a twenty-first-century culture are already moving into an advanced stage of development. It identifies this stage as postmodern or supermodern which is both alienating and disaffecting, and for which the genre of reality TV plays a key role in both reproducing and deflecting. In supermodern societies, the hyper-consumerist urge to follow an individual path, to 'find' oneself, or to reveal one's 'true', authentic self through making 'tough' choices, people find myths of self-actualisation and transformation. The chapter extends the observations to reality TV programming featuring the trope of transformation, and the achievement of authentic self-actualisation. The more archetypical individualisation process, which takes its cues from a mythical narrative of progression towards an authentic self-actualisation in the trajectory of reality TV participants, ought to be accommodated as a discursive value within the altogether more depth-inflected process of individuation.
