INTRODUCTION

In this chapter we draw the reader's attention to a public style of speaking about one's private life that is new for Russian culture and is being formed in the sphere of the post-Soviet media, namely the therapeutic language based on popularised postulates of psychology and a psychologised interpretation of interpersonal relationships and the emotional life of the personality (Matza 2009; Salemenniemi 2010; Lerner 2011; Salemenniemi and Vorona 2013). This language is emerging in the post-Soviet period together with the assimilation of a global therapeutic culture (Rieff 1987; Furedi 2004; Illouz 2007) with its patterns of life and technology of social intercourse, which are being imported into Russia or re-invented here.

The foundations of therapeutic culture itself are rooted in the deep interpenetration of the american version of post-freudian psychology and capitalist culture as a way of life and organisation of economic activity (lasch 1979; 1984; hochschild 1983; cushman 1990; 1995; rose 1990; furedi 2004). with the americanisation of psychology, the post-freudian economic discourse has been gradually penetrating the economic institutions of the usa and is finally beginning to dominate them. in parallel with this, the intimate, private and ordinary spheres are undergoing rationalisation and objectivisation. that is, not only are the emotions being recruited to the service of economic production, not only do they serve in the organisation of industrial relations, but the emotions themselves, the feelings and the private sphere are subjected to rational management and translated into the language of the market economy. the result is the development of a single language which is used to describe all spheres of life: the rational language of the emotions, the language of therapeutic culture (illouz 2008). the technologies of mass culture (electronic media, self-help literature) translate the psychological therapeutic narrative into comprehensible simplified discursive forms of talking about oneself and one's personal relationships and private, emotional and intimate life and career (illouz 2003; 2008). the reality genre in western pop culture, and makeover projects in particular, are regarded by intellectual criticism as genres producing and maintaining popular therapeutic culture, since they blur the distinctions between the documentary genre and fantasy, between the private and public spheres, and between the personal and collective narratives.