ABSTRACT
Self-reflection and critical self-examination are not qualities most people might associate with parties, but psychologists and psychotherapists who run “speed shrinking parties” apparently thrive on mixing advice and adventure in newfound proportion. Parties of the speed shrinking variety represent a new trend in psychotherapy, one geared to the denizens of a 24/7 media culture in which the desire for fast lifestyles is matched by a desire for quick assessment of any associated emotional problems. In a world of corporate networking, short-term contracts, negotiated intimacies and just-in-time deliveries, the threeminute analytical session offered by speed shrinking is one clearly geared to those seeking reinvention on the run. This is no doubt a central reason for the explosion of interest in fast therapy, which as Susan Shapiro – author of Speed Shrinking – notes has taken off “like wildfire”. The rapid-fire therapy dished out at speed shrinking parties,
writes Vincent M. Mallozzi in The New York Times, consists of “therapists, many sitting behind piles of business cards and books
they had written, hoping to achieve chemistry with their newfound clients”. Such sought after chemistry, presumably desired as much by the patient (read: client) as the therapist, needs to be mixed in three-minute bursts – for this is a form of therapy in which overshooting the allotted analytic session time equals only thirty seconds. Mallozzi reports from one such speed shrinking party the plight of a middle-aged man worried about the tenure of his job, and increasingly anxious at the prospects of finding himself unemployed. With the clock ticking on the session, the therapist queried whether her client had any fallback skills, or perhaps residual career ambitions. Nothing readily came to mind for the client, although the desire to write a work of fiction is mentioned in passing. As the three-minute deadline approaches, the therapist delivers her fast assessment: “Pursue this new venture. When you are in a situation like this, you must reinvent yourself.” Therapy and reinvention, it transpires, go together hand in hand. In this chapter, elaborating upon the theme of the reinvention
of persons, I shall critically examine the rise of therapy and uses of self-help literature. In examining the pervasiveness of therapy in contemporary societies, I shall in the first section of the chapter briefly consider the views of those writers who have suggested that therapy represents an oppressive conformity through the management of people’s emotions. Rejecting such evaluations, I want to suggest that therapy should be understood instead as primarily a mechanism of self-reinvention, one increasingly geared to speed and instant change. The second section of the chapter turns to consider the centrality of self-help literature in reconstituting the self today. In the final section I discuss the intricate connections between celebrity culture and reinvention society.
