Healing the everyday

Intensive and unremitting care, unequalled in human history, is thus taken of our everyday lives; no longer fields of experience and of relations, our lives have turned into spaces for attention and manipulation by teams of specialists circumscribing problems and manufacturing solutions.

It is chiefly the policies pursued by the social and health services that are responsible for bringing this tendency to its current head. Preventive measures now operate according to a logic whereby a preliminary classification is drawn up of groups within the population, based on social, geographical, and epidemiological indicators decided in advance. Belonging to one of these groups and, hence, being directed through one of the preestablished channels for treatment of a problem (defined as either a pathology or the risk thereof) becomes the characteristic attached to every one of us, marking our individual life-histories thereafter.

Social relations are recategorized as ‘problems’ or ‘pathologies’, and the therapeutic measures taken to deal with them have extended their scope of application to cover most diverse fields. Sexual relations, the family, child-rearing, the school – in all these sectors messages of alarm are detected and measures taken in response abound.

The realm of sexual and interpersonal relationships is emblematic of this process.