Freely Compelled, Compulsively Free: a Critical Pastoral Approach to Addiction
Critical pastoral theology has no doubt come to recognize the significance of social formations in the crisis of addiction as a symptom of suffering. This article suggests that how we understand and describe these social formations matters. It argues that our most common approaches to addiction risk...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science Business Media B. V.
2022
|
| In: |
Pastoral psychology
Year: 2022, Volume: 71, Issue: 1, Pages: 61-78 |
| Further subjects: | B
Critical Theory
B Addiction B Neoliberalism B Recovery B Marx B Capitalism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Critical pastoral theology has no doubt come to recognize the significance of social formations in the crisis of addiction as a symptom of suffering. This article suggests that how we understand and describe these social formations matters. It argues that our most common approaches to addiction risk reproducing forms of domination via an incomplete notion of freedom in their attempt to clarify the exceptional status of addiction. This can function to obscure the capitalist nature of addiction and the addictive nature of capitalism undergirding our everyday lives. The author argues that addiction is itself a symptomatic expression of capitalist social formations; not merely an individual pathology, addiction names the way our social attachments to objects and to one another become compulsive despite their negative consequences. This critical concept of addiction allows us to see, name, and negate the false promises on which the endurance of capitalism depends. The ultimate aim of this critical approach is to consider how we as caregivers might reflect on and transform these dominating social divisions. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1573-6679 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Pastoral psychology
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11089-021-00965-2 |