Enacting (post)psychological standards in social work: From regimes of visibility to user-driven standards and affective subjectification

Abstract

This article contributes to the general theme of standards and subjectivity by developing a governmental strategy for analyzing how different traditions in psychology are used to produce different standards for subjectification and different ontologies in social work practices. The empirical material is taken from a drug treatment center for young people, where professionals have a critical, reflexive awareness about how standards derived from 20th-century psychology subjectify and organize practices. The article analyzes how professionals in these practices draw on postmodern and critical traditions in psychology-in particular narrative, systemic, and solution-focused therapy-in order to develop alternative "post-psychological," "user-driven," and "affective" standards. These standards expand the field of intervention by modulating on users', relatives,' and professionals' gazes and affective ways of relating. The article articulates an affirmative critique of how post-psy standards can be used reflexively by professionals in social work practices to empower users and enact a "post-psychological" ontology of becoming.This article contributes to the general theme on standards and subjectivity by analyzing how different traditions in psychology are used to produce different standards for subjectification and enact different ontologies in social work and drug treatment practices (Mol, 2002). Drug treatment, deviance, and social work are classical areas for studying a culturally mediated production of subjectivity (Donzelot, 1979;Foucault, 1977;

Shame and passion: The affective governing of young unemployed people

“…This study contributes to the emerging theoretical and methodological literature on how psychology, in new and unforeseen ways, has been called to the fore in the affective governing of unemployed people and thus it contributes to understanding the relationship between politics and psychology. In accordance, new governmental technologies with so-called performative effects have been identified in a wide range of domains in the welfare state, encompassing the educational system (Brøgger, 2014), management (Bjerg & Staunaes, 2011), and social work on drug treatment (Bank, 2016).…”

Brugerinddragelse og stemning i arbejdet med unge og rusmidler

“…Derudover er der også individuelle samtaler. Jeg vil nu praesentere et empirisk eksempel på, hvordan man i daggruppen arbejder med brugerinddragelse (publiceret i Bank, 2016).…”

The Twin Dangers of Order and Disorder: Rethinking the Relationship Between Movement and Change in Drug Treatment

“…Similarly, Fay Dennis’ (2020) work draws on a “more-than-human” framework to explore how “drugged bodies” connect to a diverse range of forces within “injecting events.” Gomart (2004) argues that the “subject” of addiction is achieved through habits and techniques as they come to intersect with treatment practices, rather than having the status of a self-contained entity, which may be said to change over time. What is common to these broadly poststructuralist approaches is their aim to destabilize the prevailing individualizing and psychologizing logic through which drug addiction and treatment are understood in place of an account of drug use, drug treatment, and recovery as produced by intraacting discursive, social, affective, and material processes (Bank, 2016, 2021; Bank & Nissen, 2018; Duff, 2016).…”