After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia witnessed a dramatic increase in psychotherapeutic options, which promoted social connection while advancing new forms of capitalist subjectivity amid often-wrenching social and economic transformations. In Shock Therapy Tomas Matza provides an ethnography of post-Soviet Saint Petersburg, following psychotherapists, psychologists, and their clients as they navigate the challenges of post-Soviet life. Juxtaposing personal growth and success seminars for elites with crisis counseling and remedial interventions for those on public assistance, Matza shows how profound inequalities are emerging in contemporary Russia in increasingly intimate ways as matters of selfhood. Extending anthropologies of neoliberalism and care in new directions, Matza offers a profound meditation on the interplay between ethics, therapy, and biopolitics, as well as a sensitive portrait of everyday caring practices in the face of the confounding promise of postsocialist democracy.
Industry Reviews
"Shock Therapy dissembles the many layers of psychotherapists' personalities and practice with rigour, making poignant and nuanced observations about the state of contemporary Russia. . . . The role reversal of putting psychotherapists on the couch means that Matza is not only able to probe deep into the phenomena of psychotherapy, but also give a human face to the flux of post-socialist Russia." -- Michael Warren * LSE Review of Books *
"Tomas Antero Matza's focus on 'the incommensurability of care and biopolitics' reveals much about Russia in the 21st century. . . . Shock Therapy contains much information about an aspect of post-communist Russia that is seldom seriously examined or analyzed. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals." -- T. R. Weeks * Choice *
"Shock Therapy provides a beautifully written, rich, and nuanced ethnographic account of psychotherapeutic care in Putin's Russia. . . . Matza's contributions make the book well worth reading not only for area specialists, but for anyone interested in analyzing expertise in a world in flux." -- Anna Geltzer * Russian Review *
"Tomas Matza's Shock Therapy is an insightful, careful, and methodologically pristine engagement with mental health services in a rapidly changing society. It is essential reading for scholars working in clinical spaces where practitioners intervene on human behavior, desire, agency and will, interpretation of experience, or any other aspect of the individual's inscrutable mental interior." -- Jennifer J. Carroll * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *
"Shock Therapy is a remarkable ethnography that effectively weaves together new psychological practices, concerns about well-being, shifting modes of power, and the remaking of the self and sociality in postsocialist Russia at a time marked by profound changes, precarity, and social anxiety. Beautifully crafted and written, it brings the readers into vivid and intimate ethnographic settings while offering numerous careful yet provocative insights into the therapeutic turn and its broader sociopolitical ramifications within a transforming society."
-- Li Zhang * Somatosphere *
"Beyond readers interested in psy-ences in the post-Socialist world for whom Shock Therapy should become a central reference, this book's theoretical insights and ethnographic attention will be highly informative to all those interested in the practice of psychotherapy as well as to all interested in neoliberalism and governmentality. Thanks to the clarity of its style and its ability to be rigorous without being obscure and because, through psychotherapy, the book gives an account of how people have been ethically and politically engaged in the post-Soviet world, I would also recommend this book to all who are interested in post-Soviet Russia." -- Gregoire Hervouet-Zeiber * Anthropology of East Europe Review *
"A masterful ethnography of the psychotherapeutic turn in post-Soviet Russia. . . . Shock Therapy makes a major contribution to the anthropology of care, the anthropology of the psy-ences, and the literature on the Post-Soviet transition." -- Doerte Bemme * Anthropological Forum *
"Matza's contribution to the analysis of post-Soviet studies, neoliberalism, biopolitics, ethics, care work, mental health, and more is simply immense. Rest assured that his goal that this book not be 'another story of capitalist individualism spread through a psychotherapeutic medium' has been realized." -- Shelley Yankovskyy * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
