Technologies of the Soul: Cultural artifacts of knowledge and power

Abstract

Psychotherapy, defined from its etymology as “treatment of the soul”, is presented as a technological artifact –“technology of the soul”–, a product of knowledge about the internal experience of individuals, who emerge and take as a conceptual framework the dominant understanding of the cosmos, and the ideals and values of the socio-cultural context in which such experience develops itself. This article focuses on the elaboration of a brief review on the way knowledge, processes and devices, that have accompanied man in his becoming, have been configuring themselves, trying to explain, control and grasp his inner world, the “invisible” experience of his passions and emotions, which become visible through his behaviors and attitudes. Departing from this, there is an initial description about the way these technologies become power structures, a power based on the knowledge that finds its substance in the understanding of the particular cosmos, and that, from use or abuse, establish a dominion over human life and freedom.

Keywords

• Psychotherapy
• technologies of the self
• governability
• biopower
• somatocracy.
• somatocracy