Deconstructing Scandinavia's Achievement Generation: A Youth Mental Health Crisis?

ISBN-13: 9783030725570 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 310 str.

Ole Jacob Madsen; Diane Oatley

Spis treści

Chapter 1 - Introduction

What’s new?. 8

How are we, really?. 9

The circle and the line. 11

Left and right 12

A diagnosis for us – a diagnosis for you. 13

The organization of this book. 14

Chapter 2 - The Pathologies of Modernity. 16

Nietzsche’s last human. 17

Marx’s alienation. 18

Durkheim’s anomie. 18

Weber’s iron cage. 19

Freud’s discontentment within culture. 20

Adorno and Horkheimer’s Enlightenment 22

Fromm’s contentment in culture. 22

Rieff’s therapeutic turn. 24

Erikson’s identity crisis. 25

Mitscherlich’s fatherlessness. 25..........................................

Conclusion: the tragic view of life. 26

Chapter 3 - The Pathologies of Late Modernity. 28

Ziehe’s society of choices. 29

Beck’s individualization. 29

Bauman’s liquid modernity. 30

Rosa’s social acceleration. 30

We are not thriving in late capitalism.. 32

Dufour’s anthropological mutation. 33

The market as a new “God”. 34

Between the guilt and the shame. 36

Failure to thrive in the new millennium.. 37

Conclusion. 41

Chapter 4 - Young, Privileged and Sick. 43

Illness experiences from life in late modernity. 45

Norway: “I get so afraid of missing out on myself.”. 45

The road to depression. 46

Self-realization’s exhausting downside. 49

Optimization of the self. 51

Sweden: “You should really make the most of what you’ve received.”. 53

Denmark: “You bloody well better perform well in this society, right?”. 54

Where are we now?. 55

Somewhere over the rainbow.. 57

Conclusion. 58

Chapter 5 - Youth Under Pressure. 60

Suicide in Norway. 61

Suicide among young people. 61

Suicide internationally. 62

Suicide and psychological disorders. 63

Psychological disorders and complaints. 63

Psychological complaints in young people. 65

Why the increase in the reporting of psychological complaints?. 67

Which group of young people is hardest hit?. 68

Use of medication. 69

Self-harm.. 70

Externalising behaviours. 71

The new digital existence. 73

Generational differences. 75

Conclusion. 78

Chapter 6 - Social Representations. 79

The achievement society. 79

The achievement generation. 85

Good girl 90

The good girl – a media history. 91

The good girl syndrome. 93

Conclusion. 101

Chapter 7 - Self-fulfilling Prophecies. 103

The problem without a name. 105

When the meritocracy came to Norway. 108

Finally somebody who understands us. 110

Proceed with caution. 113

Students provide a causal explanation. 113

Identifying with the research. 114

Talking about it 115

Conclusion. 116

Chapter 8 - The Paradox of Health. 117

Cultural Oblivion. 118

Scientific myths. 119

British resistance. 120

How does infection occur?. 122

The illness epidemic in Sweden. 125

Reaping as we sow.. 126

Professional whistleblowing systems. 129

Double reflexivity. 131

Conclusion. 134

Chapter 9 - Conclusion. 136

Summing up the book. 137

The answer is served. 138

The unbearable distortion of the media society. 139

Media templates. 139

Media favouritism.. 141

Skewed reporting. 141

The Reality 2.0. 143

The generation label 143

Wanted: “The stagnation generation”. 144

Left-wing media?. 145

What must be done?. 146

A good enough society. 146

Different medicine. 147

The disadvantaged among us. 147

We need to talk about it 148

Life sucks. 149

Existentialism, where did you go in the midst of all the chaos?. 150

To the root of the problem.. 151

Silence is golden. 152

Nothing new under the sun – the youth of the past 153

Don’t speak – the young people of today. 154

Generation Screwed – the young people of the future. 156

Conclusion: overloading “young people”. 158

References. 161

O autorze

Ole Jacob Madsen is Professor of Cultural and Community Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway. His previous works include: The Therapeutic Turn: How Psychology Altered Western Culture (2014), Optimizing the Self: Social Representations of Self-Help (2015) and The Psychologization of Society: On the Unfolding of the Therapeutic in Norway (2018) and The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures (2020).

Blurb

‘This is an eye-opening analysis that investigates alarmism on the one hand, and a neglect of young people’s problems on the other. There is much to learn from here for all of us who are interested in the complex relationships between society, culture and mental life.’

—Svend Brinkmann, Aalborg University, Denmark

‘This book is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary social science and a must read for everybody who wants to understand the social and psychological processes that are involved in the Scandinavian efforts to reach the goal of an “optimized” society.’

—Jaan Valsiner, Aalborg University, Denmark, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences

In this book, Professor Ole Jacob Madsen analyses the implications of Scandinavia's current concern for the mental health problems of adolescents, said to be struggling in the face of increasing demands for achievement and success.  It critically examines our understanding of this so-called “achievement generation”, questioning whether today’s youth are really worse off than previous generations and how we have come to believe that this is so.The author’s wide-ranging investigation draws on a large body of research, as well as considering socio-political, historical and regional factors that might be affecting the resilience and mental health among young people. It also provides original psycholinguistic studies of popular media concepts associated with these issues including: “the achievement generation”, “pathological perfection” and “the good girl syndrome”.

Deconstructing Scandinavia’s “Achievement Generation” presents an engaging contribution to key debates around therapeutic culture and society in the 21st century. It will appeal to students and scholars of critical and social psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy; as well as to those working in education, social work and mental health.

Ole Jacob Madsen is Professor of Cultural and Community Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway. His previous works include: The Therapeutic Turn: How Psychology Altered Western Culture (2014), Optimizing the Self: Social Representations of Self-Help (2015) and The Psychologization of Society: On the Unfolding of the Therapeutic in Norway (2018) and The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures (2020).