Dr. Sorin Gog will present his research under the topic:

Psychotherapy, Spirituality and the Inner Self: Post-Secular Subjectivities Among the Romanian Middle Class

on 1 April, 2021 (Thursday) at 16:30 h.

Moderated by Dr. Vladimir Nakov

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Abstract

The research project focuses on the emergence of spiritualized forms of psychotherapy and self-help psychologies that have become an important component of the booming industry of personal and spiritual growth in Romania and throughout Western and Eastern Europe and aims at analyzing the paradigmatic shift taking place in psychology and in psychotherapeutic practices that are employed in modeling a new form of subjectivity. By drawing on Michel Foucault’s, Nikolas Rose’s and Charles Taylor’s work I am looking at how these emergent psychotherapies are producing bio-political technologies that attempt to governmentalize both old and new capitalist societies. I am interested in analyzing the way these new spiritual psychotherapies operate and how they generate a new subjective interiority based on self-development and self-realization and on a new understanding of personal authenticity that is becoming increasingly popular in Romania, through academic and professional networks, books, digital media and public lectures and the establishment of new psychological associations. The embedding of spiritual practices in the psychotherapeutic counseling, such as familial constellations, Bowen therapy, holotropic breathing, various forms of meditation, etc. signals an important shift in the way psychological healing of anxieties, depressions or dysfunctionalities are conceptualized, and the type of inner self that professionals cultivate. It is this spiritual-scientific mediation of subjectivity that becomes an important tool which is used by a growing segment of the Romanian middle class to transform itself and deal with the new challenges of contemporary society. Traditional religions are considered in this milieu a thing of the past – spiritualized psychotherapy opens the space for a new cosmopolite and scientific understanding of who we are as human beings and how can we live a successful, prosperous and meaningful life.

Sorin Gog is a sociologist and anthropologist working at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca where he teaches courses on social theories, methodology of sociological research and sociology of religion. He has been a research fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Finland), CEU-IAS (Hungary), New Europe College (Romania), Institut für Wissenschaft der Menschen (Austria), Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany) and University of Fribourg (Switzerland). His recent publication includes a co-edited volume on spirituality, work and neo-liberalism, titled ‘Spirituality, Organization and Neoliberalism, Understanding Lived Experiences’, Edward Elgar, published in 2020.