The Designed Self: Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Identities

by Carlo Strenger

What can contemporary psychoanalysis bring to the understanding of Generation X, a cohort for whom the trivialization of a dizzying array of possible experiences teamed with the pressure to lead spectacular lives often leads to diffuse feelings of confusion, depression, and disorientation.  The Designed Self chronicles Strenger's therapeutic encounters with five extraordinarily gifted young adults for whom the ideal of authenticity long associated with the Baby-Boom generation was supplanted by the need to experiment endlessly with the self.  Perpetual self-experimentation, constantly reinforced by the media, came to encompass everything from career choice, to hair color, to body shape, to gender identity.  In compelling clinical stories, Strenger introduces us to patients for whom the project of shaping the self had become a cultural imperative no less than an expression of individuality.  At once insightful and cautionary, The Designed Self investigates how psychoanalysis must change if it is to claim cultural relevance and therapeutic effectiveness in The Age of the Designed Self.

Genres: Psychology

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2004

About the author

Carlo Strenger was a Swiss and Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst and public intellectual who served as professor of psychology and philosophy at Tel Aviv University.

Reviews

[Jonathan Karmel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author or this book tries to make generalizations about "GenXers" based on a few, highly unrepresentative Israeli patients he has provided therapy to. It's as if you thought you could understand Generation X by understanding Mark Zuckerberg.

This book builds upon a 2000 book by David Brooks called Bourgeois Bohemians (which I have not read). I think the idea here is that the Greatest Generation aspired to a bourgeois lifestyle. In the 1960s the Hippies rebelled by promoting a Bohemian lifestyle.

Then in the 1990s, we saw the rise of Brook's "Bobos," who wanted to get rich and have all the material comforts while at the same time affect some kind of personal aesthetic of Bohemianism.

Now, the GenXers don't even have anything to rebel against. Their struggle is how to create an identity without any established conventions to use as a starting point. Interesting theory, but a handful of successful/beautiful/highly educated/high IQ Israelis do not represent an entire generation.