Psychotherapy in Aotearoa New Zealand: The Violence of Kindness. A Foucauldian Geneological History of the Present.

Abstract

This research is a Foucauldian genealogical ‘history of the present’ in which the author analyses the discourses which make possible the practice of psychotherapy, initially informed by European clinical theory and philosophical principles, in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the effects of this practice. By contrast with a traditional narrative history, this history of the present focuses upon how a nexus of power and knowledge enables the eventual manifestation of psychotherapy in this country and gives rise to consequent Indigenous Māori challenges to the dominance of Eurocentric fabrications of psychotherapy practice and theory in Aotearoa New Zealand. Utilising the Foucauldian concept of ‘ruptures’ the research analyses texts fabricated during different times in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history, when the nature and constitution of what is constructed as the ‘self’ is challenged, disturbed, thrown into doubt, and how these discontinuous disturbances give rise to the eventual manifestation of psychotherapy. The research includes analysis of discourses which made possible the initial colonial project in Aotearoa New Zealand, particularly missionary discourse and its construction of a binary pair, the European missionary ‘saviour’ and the Indigenous other in need of being ‘saved’, the subsequent emergence of medical discourse, and the construction of insanity as a ‘sick soma’, leading to the manifestation of asylum treatment, the challenge to the hegemony of medical discourse by psychoanalytic discourse in relation to madness, leading to the emergence of psychotherapeutic practice in this country, and lastly the increasingly visible Indigenous Māori challenge to Eurocentric constructions of psychotherapy. Utilising Foucauldian principles, the research also analyses the effects of psychotherapeutic practice in this country, particularly its collaboration with neoliberal economic capitalism in the fabrication of human subjectivities, and the implications of this for the author, for psychotherapy practitioners, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and for all people living in Aotearoa New Zealand.