Emotion regulation as affective neoliberal governmentality

Abstract

Emotion regulation is central in many therapy models, including couple and family therapy models. This article draws on poststructuralist governmentality studies and processual affect theory to offer insight into how the therapeutic concept of emotion regulation may reflect and support neoliberal affective forms of self‐governance. We suggest that couple and family therapy—through using professional discourses and affect‐oriented techniques or interventions—may be another site wherein neoliberal governmentality is implemented and extended in contemporary westernized neoliberalized societies. In facilitating emotion regulation, we argue that there is a risk that therapists may implicitly promote a neoliberal worldview that encourages clients to mobilize neoliberal techniques to become self‐improving, entrepreneurial subjects, responsible for their happiness and well‐being. Conditions of precarity associated with individualist, neoliberal capitalist ideologies and policies (e.g., unemployment, job insecurity, forced migration, wealth inequalities, mass incarceration, social isolation) generate emotional burdens for people to manage that professional techniques or interventions may normalize as clients' self‐management tasks. We theorize emotion regulation as an affective governmentality tactic of power and suggest that couple and family therapy can offer points of resistance to individualization and responsibilization and opportunities for creating or affirming alternative subjectivities and affectivities.