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Can Therapy Be Cool? An Investigation in the Mediatization of Neuro-Technology

Sat, September 2, 4:00 to 5:30pm, Sheraton Boston, Floor: 3, Kent

Abstract

In November 2015, Dr. Tom Insel left his position as director of the NIMH in order to join Google, and justified the move based on his belief that neuroscience-driven digital media are the future of mental health care. This paper interrogates the politics of these mediated and mediatized therapies. By examining promotional materials and popular media coverage of brain games, neurofeedback, and virtual reality therapy, I show that digital interventions do more than expand horizons for the neurosciences—they are also being mobilized to evoke new imaginaries of medical progress in the often-beleaguered field of mental health care, ones that evoke the coolness of Silicon Valley. They promise to destigmatize therapy by modernizing it, while promising a viable alternative to psychopharmaceuticals. Moving beyond critiques that dismiss them as hopelessly technotopian and neuro-reductionist, I draw on fieldwork and interviews to highlight developers’ struggles to be seen by the public and mental health community as providing meaningful care while also feeling pressure from funders, the media, and the broader tech community to produce “cool” technology. I examine their boundary-work in making cool technology that is also serious therapy. Drawing on feminist STS, I argue that their interventions need to be evaluated not only on the basis of their goals, but on the intersectional visions of health and healing through which they configure patient populations and their mental function. To what extent can these new configurations of therapy be “cool” and still count as care?

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