Personal Responsibility, Inc.: How Psychotherapy Turns Society's Problems Into Yours

By Julie Tilsen

A powerful critique of how therapy reinforces neoliberal values, and a visionary call to reclaim collective responsibility in the face of systemic distress.

Personal Responsibility, Inc. offers a one-of-a-kind investigation into psychotherapy's complicity with the insidious and harmful effects of neoliberalism on individuals, relationships, and society.

Increasingly, therapy functions as an arm of neoliberal ideology--reinforcing its imperatives of personal responsibility, individualism, and relentless self-improvement. These values compel people to search inward for solutions to problems created and sustained by the system itself.

But this book goes beyond critique. It presents a vision--and concrete practices--for resisting neoliberalism's pressure to seek individual fixes for structural problems.

It's time for therapists and therapy-users alike to stop blaming non-normative brains, negative thinking, or poor coping skills for the widespread suffering we experience in a world on the brink. Instead, we must name neoliberalism for what it is, reclaim our shared humanity, and begin transforming distress into collective awareness and action.

Written by a practicing psychotherapist for an engaged, non-specialist audience, Personal Responsibility, Inc. is not a pitch for another therapeutic method. It's an uncompromising call for a cultural course correction--and a starting point for real change.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1682194418
• ISBN13: 9781682194416
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: OR Books
• Length: 170 Pages