The Consumer Culture, the Client, and the Clinician

Abstract

The purpose of this keynote presentation is to explore how consumer culture shapes our clients’ sense of self and their relationships with others, and how integrative psychotherapists can respond. I begin by explaining how humans evolved in villages that wired our minds for connection, and how, over the past 20,000 years, these villages have all but disappeared, leaving us to navigate life in a monolithic consumer culture. In this culture, we are set up to have our relational needs go unmet—as two parents alone can’t do what an entire village once did—leading to a fragmentation within ourselves. I then describe how the culture exploits our unmet relational needs, hooking us into cycles of purchasing and achieving, and turning us into its consumers and producers. I explore the healing that psychotherapists can facilitate in their clinical work today, drawing parallels to the kind of healing that once took place within our ancestral villages. Finally, I offer a vision for how therapists can support clients, not only in coming home to themselves and building more meaningful connections with others, but also in creating communities (villages) of care. I challenge the isolating patterns of consumer culture and deliver an important take-home message: therapists can, and must, play a vital role in helping clients build nourishing communities that support and sustain the growth cultivated in therapy.