The South African Civil Society Information Service

The Wellness Syndrome: The Tragic Shift from Social Change to Individual Transformation

24 Mar 2015

Feeling ashamed for not being happier? On an endless quest to transform yourself?

Does our collective fixation with psychological and physical health actually verge on the pathological?

Leading academics Carl Cederström, André Spicer and Renata Salecl gather to explore how wellness has become an unhealthy obsession in western societies, and how living ‘well’ has become synonymous with being morally good.

They argue that visions of social change have been reduced to dreams of individual transformation, and political debate has been replaced by insipid moralising. By moving from the welfare state to the ‘wellness state’, we undergo a shift in wellbeing as a collective responsibility toward it being an individual choice spearheaded by corporations. And paradoxically, we end up more anxious and unwell as a result.

Speakers: Carl Cederström, Associate Professor at Stockholm University; André Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University; and Renata Salecl, Professor of Psychology/Psychoanalyis and Law, School of Law.

© RSA

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You can find this page online at http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/2323.