Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia.

• Author: McCartney, J.S.

Matza, Thomas, Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia. Duke University Press, 2018, 328 pages, $27.95

In Shock Therapy, Thomas Matza details an ethnographic perspective on the dynamic role of psychotherapy in modern Russia focusing on the post-Soviet period up through Putin's administration. Matza conducted extensive fieldwork from 2005-2006 and several follow-up visits between 2007-2013. He spent much of his time in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city. Matza selected the provocative title of his book in order to signify the startling and disrupting political and societal challenges in Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, citizens were dealing with the elimination of government subsidies and reductions in state provided services, and a subsequent increase in unemployment and poverty rates. Shock Therapy's three primary themes are commensurability, precarious care, and neoliberal capitalism.

Matza's central argument is that psychotherapy served as both a tool and symptom of the fledgling democracy or neoliberal government in modern Russia. Matza's historical review includes details on eminent Russian scientists (Luria, Pavlov, Vygotsky) and he connects their work to the educational and political climate of their times. He also highlights contributions of prominent western psychotherapists, including Freud's psychoanalytic perspective and Roger's more optimistic humanistic perspective. In the 1990s, when the government faded into the background, life for most people became unpredictable and unfamiliar. Psychotherapy provided guidance, inspiration, and encouragement. This version of psychology included a focus on self-esteem, intrinsic motivation, and personal fulfilment. Psychology helped provide order in the chaos. Intriguingly, Matza notes how psychotherapy also served a more nefarious role for citizens falling through the cracks or experiencing personal or familial challenges (e.g., poverty, alcoholism, etc.). For those encountering obstacles or complications, psychotherapists were in control over the subject's success or failure. Matza documents psychology's contradictory functions in this post-Soviet Russia for two distinct populations, those who accumulated wealth and power and those that did not.

Matza accounts for this duality involving psychology (self-actualization or dysfunction) with the first of three recurring themes, commensurability or incommensurability. This concept...