History of Working the Self

The introductory chapter laid out the aims for the book. I identified that a key project for the book is exploring the heterogeneity of therapeutic cultures and in particular, personal development approaches as understood by a cultural intermediary occupation, personal development workers. In Chapter 1, I discussed that one of the problems with the current critiques of therapeutic cultures is that the origins and influences on personal development are often overlooked. Personal development has a specific history that informs the kinds of ideas and practices that are mobilised by practitioners and clients. This history also inter-relates with the history of the workplace, its main site of encounter. In this chapter I provide an historical account of personal development and other therapeutic practices in the workplace, drawing on other writers’ historical work to contextualise the data chapters in the book. This will help to demonstrate the multiple strands and varied ideas that interweave in personal development practices today. This account is necessarily brief, schematic and selective. It focuses on the waxing and waning of different therapeutic ideas in recent history in Britain and North America, and in particular on the intersections of therapeutic practices with the workplace. It will not be a history of the concept of the self, but will allude to the implications of changing practices of therapy for the self.