- May 2024
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templeu.instructure.com templeu.instructure.com
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In this context, the promise that self-help, preeminently of all versions of therapy, makes to empower the individual to change her/his circumstances is one that might make it particularly attractive in a situation of manifold social inequality, injustice, and dispossession.
Rather than looking at the root of issues relating to social and systemic issues such as inequality, injustice, and dispossession, self-help guides people to reflect on issues from a individualistic perspective.
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There is no one American Dream.
I feel like the American Dream can be summarized to the idea that working hard in America will make you rich, or at least more than enough money to survive.
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Compulsory heterosexuality as an organising dynamic of the conventional American Dream family also pervades the many programmes devoted to the remaking of broken or difficult relationships. Various forms of estrangement—divorce, breakdown of communications, misunderstandings, violence, long-lost relatives—all form the dirty clothes in this particular and very public laundry. In these programmes, the audience often participates in a kind of group or family therapy in which the objective is reconciliation and the method is the quasi-Christian formula of confession, penitence, and forgiveness.
Traditional and heterosexual norms set the foundational understanding for many relationship-focused programmes. I think it's interesting to point out how these programs follow a Christian formula of forgiveness and confession. This is important to note so you can better understand how these shows frame the situation within each program and put certain expectations on how things should play out.
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as the dominant aspirational metaphor for “imagined community,”3 is reproduced.
Very intriguing perspective of the show and on persona based talk shows such as the Oprah Winfrey Show, the idea of a reality tv program being a "imagined community" is profound and speaks to a parasocial relationship between viewers and programming.
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