The Injured Self

Abstract

The void in subjectivity and self, and the widening gap between ever-more demanding standards of achievement and improving but increasingly inadequate accomplishments, between 'achievers' and others, is teeming with illness and unhappiness. Stress is undoubtedly more pervasive and acute for today's Market Beings than it was for people in precapitalist times. The kinds of stress that we share with them--due to natural disasters, poverty, bereavement--are much less easily dissipated through ritual, religious or other forms of public expression, and the individual is also less protected by community, family, kinship or neighbourhood group. In other words, the stressful life-events might be similar--and even attenuated--but the individual is more exposed to them.