Cold Intimacies

This book dispels some conventionally received ideas: namely, that capitalism has created an emotional world dominated by bureaucratic rationality; that economic behavior conflicts with intimate, authentic relationships; that the public and private spheres are irremediably opposed to each other; and that true love is opposed to calculation and to self-interest. This book argues that the culture of capitalism has fostered an intensely emotional culture, in the workplace, in the family, and in our own relationship to ourselves. More: this book argues that economic relations have become deeply emotional, while close, intimate relationships have become increasingly defined by economic and political models of bargaining, exchange, and equity. This dual process by which emotional and economic relationships come to define and shape each other is called "emotional capitalism." Emotional capitalism has been carried through one major social group: clinical psychologists. Throughout the twentieth century, psychology increasingly put emotions at the centerstage of the public arena, of our relationship to our own self, and to others. Academia, movies, self-help literature, women's magazines, talk shows, support groups, for-profit workshops, and the professional practice of therapy have become mobilized to make us, men and women, primarily concerned with and defined by our emotions. How did this happen? What are the social consequences of such widespread preoccupation with emotions? How does it change the way in which we express suffering? This book addresses these questions and offers a new interpretation of the reasons why the public sphere is saturated with the spectacle of private emotions and why so many people define their identity in terms of psychic suffering.