ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces a key distinction between two kinds of psychological difficulties, identified as vertical and horizontal problems. Vertical problems, the customary focus of psychological therapy, are said to rise out of an ongoing, individual psychological disposition to think, feel and act in a certain way. Horizontal problems by contrast are caused when the person’s context deliberately withholds or fails to provide something necessary for them to achieve autonomy. Suggesting that horizontal problems cannot be fully understood as difficulties of an individuated, separate self, the chapter goes on to introduce the alternative concept of self-and-world which takes us to be always-situated beings lacking clear boundaries between ourselves and the world around us. The chapter concludes by introducing three particular contextual configurations which are thought to make horizontal problems more likely. Oppression occurs when a person has no choice but to live under someone else’s description of the world. Overlap describes occasions where a person’s worldview is caught between two distinct and incompatible senses of how things are. Finally, the term chaos outlines the social conditions of late modernity where problems flourish in an atmosphere of uncertainty and abundant opportunity.
