Received: 2 October 2023 | Revised: 21 August 2024 | Accepted: 28 August 2024

DOI: 10.1111/famp.13064

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Emotion regulation as affective neoliberal

governmentality

Olga Smoliak1 | Carla Rice1 | Deanna Rudder1 |

Eleftheria Tseliou2 | Andrea LaMarre3 | Amanda LeCouteur4 |
Joaquin Gaete5 | Adam Davies1 | Sarah Henshaw1

1
Department of Family Relations and Abstract
Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph,
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Emotion regulation is central in many therapy models,
2
Department of Early Childhood Education,
including couple and family therapy models. This arti-
University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece cle draws on poststructuralist governmentality studies
3
Independent Researcher, Halifax, Nova and processual affect theory to offer insight into how the
Scotia, Canada therapeutic concept of emotion regulation may reflect
4
School of Psychology, University of and support neoliberal affective forms of self-­governance.
Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia,
Australia
We suggest that couple and family therapy—through
5
Calgary Family Therapy Centre, Calgary,
using professional discourses and affect-­ oriented tech-
Alberta, Canada niques or interventions—may be another site wherein
neoliberal governmentality is implemented and extended
Correspondence
Olga Smoliak, University of Guelph, 50
in contemporary westernized neoliberalized societies. In
Stone Rd., Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada. facilitating emotion regulation, we argue that there is a
Email: [email protected] risk that therapists may implicitly promote a neoliberal
Funding information
worldview that encourages clients to mobilize neoliberal
Social Sciences and Humanities Research techniques to become self-­ i mproving, entrepreneurial
Council of Canada subjects, responsible for their happiness and well-­being.
Conditions of precarity associated with individualist,
neoliberal capitalist ideologies and policies (e.g., unem-
ployment, job insecurity, forced migration, wealth in-
equalities, mass incarceration, social isolation) generate
emotional burdens for people to manage that professional
techniques or interventions may normalize as clients' self-­
management tasks. We theorize emotion regulation as an
affective governmentality tactic of power and suggest that
couple and family therapy can offer points of resistance to
individualization and responsibilization and opportuni-
ties for creating or affirming alternative subjectivities and
affectivities.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits
use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial
purposes.
© 2024 The Author(s). Family Process published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Family Process Institute.

Family Process. 2024;00:1–18.  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp | 1

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2 |    FAMILY PROCESS

K EY WOR DS
affect, affect theory, emotion, emotion regulation, family therapy,
governmentality, neoliberalism, new materialism, poststructuralism

Historically, a privileging of rationality and relative neglect of emotion have character-

ized couple and family therapy. Prevailing conceptions of emotions as intrapsychic mat-
ters delayed emotion's integration into relational therapies (Bertrando & Arcelloni, 2014;
Madden-­Derdich, 2002). Recently, the field has taken an “affective turn” evident in the
growth of scholarship and therapy models focused on emotion (e.g., Duriez, 2021; Goldman
& Greenberg, 2010; Jenks et al., 2024; Knudson-­Martin, 2023). Of particular interest is the
concept of emotion regulation (ER), concerned with efforts to influence the experience and
expression of emotions in oneself or others (Gross, 2015). Family therapy researchers and prac-
titioners increasingly see ER as central in family relationships and as an important focus in
many approaches (e.g., Dattilio, 2019; Fishbane, 2023; Goldman & Greenberg, 2010; Gottman
& Gottman, 2015). In family therapy, and counseling more broadly, ER is now generally seen
as good and worthy of cultivating. In addressing ER, family therapists mostly draw on psycho-
logical perspectives that overlook structural forces and questions such as: How does the polit-
ical economy along with culture and history shape emotions? Why and how do people manage
emotions (beyond merely to feel better)? Who manages whose emotions? And, who benefits
and who is disadvantaged in the affective-­discursive regimes governing emotions?
In this paper, we explore the underbelly of ER to unsettle its presumed benevolence.
Drawing on processual affect theory and poststructuralist governmentality studies, we seek
to attenuate the field's enthusiasm for ER by exploring its possible links with neoliberal ratio-
nality—pressures placed on people to manage their emotions in ways that secure their cur-
rency in capitalist labor markets or cause them to suffer adverse consequences for failing to
do so. Although many disciplines and professions (e.g., social work, counseling psychology,
family studies) increasingly attend to neoliberalism (e.g., Brecher, 2012; LaMarre et al., 2019;
Olivier, 2020; Zilberstein, 2021), family therapy lags in analyzing neoliberal power—how a
neoliberalized political economy that devalues care and affective labor structures family rela-
tions and distributes and downloads emotional care work, and how therapists might support
families in navigating the current neoliberal order to more equitable ends. We located only
one chapter exploring neoliberal influences on families and narrative practices that can be
used to address neoliberal power (Freedman & Combs, 2020), evidencing the need for more
scholarship to understand the e/affects of neoliberal ideology on couples and families. We
were curious about whether critiques from individual therapy extend to family therapy which
locates individuals and families in contexts. The lack of attention to neoliberalism in the liter-
ature may not necessarily mean that in practice family therapists disregard economic power.
Even if therapists address neoliberalism and its influences on families, arguably they are more
equipped to notice and address the workings of the systems of oppression, such as patriarchy or
heteronormativity, more extensively examined in the field. It can be argued that the absence of
discussions about neoliberal influences on families and family therapy (including whether and
how specific models align with and challenge neoliberal ideals) suggests a collective complicity
with neoliberalism within the field. This oversight might result in therapists unintentionally
endorsing neoliberal ideas, either by not recognizing and challenging their influence within
families or by grounding their professional knowledge and practices in neoliberal rationality.
To address this gap, we trace how ER may reflect and contribute to individual and familial
uptake of neoliberal capitalist values. We use a three-­pronged approach: (a) reviewing various
conceptions of emotion and ER in family therapy, (b) theorizing ER through an affect theory
lens, and (c) clarifying the link between economic power and ER—how ER may operate as
an affective technique of governance under neoliberalism. We do not offer our perspective
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 3

as a corrective of but rather as an additional consideration to established scholarship on ER.

Although our discussion is focused on family therapy, some arguments apply to counseling
and therapy more broadly. Our goal is to critically examine a prevalent discourse in family
therapy literature that frames emotions as individual experiences requiring self-­management.
We argue that if this perspective is adopted uncritically in therapy, it could potentially be
detrimental by reinforcing neoliberal ideology that may be oppressive to clients. We advocate
for a cautious approach in family therapy, urging therapists to be mindful of how neoliberal
influences may shape emotional experiences and communication within families and how
family therapy (premises and practices) might inadvertently support neoliberal or economic
views of life, subjectivity, and relationships. We also invite family therapists to reflect on their
conceptions of emotions and how they work with emotions in therapy, as well as potential
political implications of responding to emotion in specific ways (e.g., facilitating ER). The
paper is about how family therapy might advance neoliberal rationality, not about what family
therapists actually do or whether specific models promote social injustices or encourage ther-
apists to negate systems of oppression through their tenets or practice recommendations. We
refelect on the prevalent conception of ER in the field and highlight the potential risk of using
ER in ways that hinder rather than promote social justice. While performing a discourse or
document analysis of family therapy models promoting ER might supplement our insights, it
is beyond the scope of this paper.

PE R SPE C T I V E S ON E MOT ION A N D E MOT ION

R E GU L AT ION

As compared to individual psychotherapy, family therapy has been slow in attending to emo-
tion (Bertrando & Arcelloni, 2014; Madden-­Derdich, 2002). Notwithstanding early calls to
attend to the emotive aspects of relationships (e.g., Coyne, 1986; Greenberg & Johnson, 1986),
family therapists have often treated emotion as irrelevant to systemic practice (e.g., Haley, 1976;
Minuchin, 1974; Watzlawick et al., 1974). More recently, the field has witnessed increased ef-
forts to integrate emotion into family therapy (Bertrando & Arcelloni, 2014). Most of these
new perspectives attend to ER in couples and families, with some scholars exploring ER of
therapists (e.g., Rober, 2023). In the review that follows, we classify various conceptions of
ER into four categories: individualist, systemic, socio-­cultural, and affective-­processual. We
acknowledge that the boundaries between these views are not clear-­cut, and we note overlap
and integration in some works (e.g., Jenks et al., 2024). Whereas we understand the first three
perspectives as intrinsic to family therapy, we borrow the last perspective from affect theory
developed mostly in cultural studies (Ahmed, 2004; Gregg & Seigworth, 2010; Massumi, 2002).

Individualist view

It is not uncommon for systemic therapists to import individual, psychological conceptions

of emotion into systemic work. From a bio-­psychological perspective, emotion comprises an
inner experience of the autonomous self, outwardly expressed and transmitted within and
between individuals in families. ER researchers have explored several family system issues
in individualist terms, including emotion (dys)regulation in self/others, managing emotions
before/after emotional arousal, considering motivations/reasons for regulating emotions,
and exploring conscious/automatic ER strategies (Gross, 2015; Tamir et al., 2020). Gratz and
Roemer (2004) proposed a multidimensional ER approach comprised of becoming aware of
one's negative emotions, accepting emotions, and acting in desired ways despite intense emo-
tions. This approach reflects orientations to emotion in the field, wherein therapists focus on
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4 |    FAMILY PROCESS

relational dynamics while the models in play tend to conceptualize emotions as inner, private
experiences (e.g., Croyle & Waltz, 2002; Xu et al., 2023).

Systemic view

Some family therapists have reformulated emotion in relational terms (e.g., Bertrando &
Arcelloni, 2014; Fredman, 2004; Miller & de Shazer, 2000). Drawing on Bowen's (1978) con-
ceptualization of emotions as crucial in familial relational patterns, Bowenian therapists
track emotional processes between family members, including emotional pulls to relate to
each other in certain ways. This comprises one example of relational, systemic perspectives
that presume that family systems are emotional systems (Bertrando & Arcelloni, 2014) and
emotions as “messages exchanged within a human system, rather than inner properties of in-
dividuals” (Lini & Bertrando, 2020, p. 210). Along the same lines, Tomm (2019) has theorized
“emotioning” as a relational process of the evolving, mutually shaping coupling of emotional
responses in an interaction rather than an individual property or display.
In theorizing ER in family systems, scholars have begun attending to ER's interpersonal
processes, including its joint, dynamic, and incremental nature (Levenson et al., 2014; Stephens
et al., 2022). Some have attended to emotion co-­regulation or the synchrony of emotional/phys-
iological states between family members (Butler & Randall, 2013). Fosco and Grych (2013)
studied family emotional climate, stressing its role in children's capacity to regulate their emo-
tions. Scholars also examined the consequences of ER and dysregulation for couple and par-
ent–child relationships (see Duca et al., 2023; Stephens et al., 2022).
Although arguably all therapists work with families struggling to modulate intense emo-
tions, systemic family therapy models vary in the degree to which they attend to ER (Snyder
et al., 2006). Models that extensively consider ER include Gottman couples' therapy (Gottman
& Gottman, 2015), cognitive-­behavioral therapy (Dattilio, 2019), emotion(ally) focused couple
therapy (Goldman & Greenberg, 2010; Johnson, 2019), and emotion regulation focused fam-
ily therapy models (Duriez, 2021). For example, emotion(ally)-­focused therapists seek to (e.g.,
Goldman & Greenberg, 2010; Johnson, 2019), restructure emotional bonds between partners
by helping partners access, tolerate, and disclose emotional vulnerabilities and respond with
comforting and empathy (Goldman & Greenberg, 2010). Therapists facilitate two forms of ER,
self-­and other-­soothing, using various interventions (e.g., Goldman & Greenberg, 2010).

Socio-­cultural perspectives

Expanding analyses of emotion beyond the family, Fredman (2004) argued that not only do
people relationally enact and coordinate their emotional expression but that cultural contexts
also carry, activate, and transmit emotions. Miller and de Shazer (2000) similarly proposed
emotions that cannot be experienced or expressed without language/discourse (e.g., emotion
rules or norms). They noted that “different therapy language games provide therapists and
clients with distinctive opportunities for constructing and experiencing emotions” (p. 9). From
this perspective, emotions are not private and pre-­g iven but co-­constructed and shaped by
cultural meanings and discourses.
Some writers have analyzed how socio-­historical relations of power implicate emotion in
upholding or disrupting the social order. For example, socio-­emotional relationship therapy
(Knudson-­Martin, 2023) attends to clients' felt social identities (e.g., gendered experiences of
oppression) and societal messages about gender and intimacy, examining how gendered power
works through emotion and manifests as a lack of mutuality in vulnerability, attunement, influ-
ence, and relational responsibility in couple relationships. Scholarship on socio-­cultural patterns
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 5

of interaction indirectly addresses emotion, for example, how masculinity discourses (e.g., men
do not cry) structure family relations (e.g., St. George & Wulff, 2014). This literature also explores
how ER may reflect emotion work in heteronormative couple relationships that remains unbal-
anced and structured by gender (Smoliak et al., 2023). There is also emergent work on ER as a
means of socio-­political change. Fishbane (2023) explored ER as an aspect of relational ethics in
couple relationships, wherein partners learn strategies for treating each other in ways that align
with their conceptions of fairness and responsibility. Finally, Garcia et al. (2015) explored ER as a
technique to foster social justice and resist complicity with oppression.
Family therapists are not alone in theorizing emotion in structural and discursive terms.
Feminists and sociologists, among others, have long queried how the social world regulates emo-
tions (e.g., Fineman, 2008; Hochschild, 1983; Neckel, 2009). Since the 1980s, feminists have un-
covered how dominant western religious and scientific narratives about women's embodiments,
and emotional lives have imposed and naturalized gender differences that continue to subordi-
nate women (Weeks, 2007). Cultural associations of emotions with femininity and of reason with
masculinity have helped produce two separate spheres of social life: the realm of production that
remains coded as “work” and valued as hard-­edged skill or capacity, and the realm of repro-
duction, coded as “love” and devalued as soft-­edged or femininity's natural inclination (Penz &
Sauer, 2019). Care work's femininization reflects and reproduces interrelated social (gender, class,
racial, etc.) inequalities and hierarchies. Patriarchy operates in tandem with gendered and racial
capitalism to invisibilize the value of women's unpaid (emotional) care work within households
and paid work, which continues to be unevenly distributed along race and class lines (Folbre, 2013).
Sociologists have also explored socio-­cultural dimensions of emotions and ER. Studying or-
ganizational uptake of ER (workers offering service with a smile), Hochschild (1983) uncovered
the hidden costs of people treating their feelings as commodities or merchandise. Fineman (2008)
similarly theorized emotions as socially or institutionally manageable, proposing the concept of
“emotionologies” (also see “feeling rules,” Hochschild, 1983) to capture historically contingent
cultural norms regarding how to feel/express feelings in specific contexts. Likewise, Reddy (2001)
proposed emotional regimes, highlighting socio-­historical contingencies of emotions or how emo-
tional experience and expression change over time and across contexts. Illouz (2007) explored
emotional capitalism, stressing the intertwining of politics and emotions. Finally, tracing histor-
ical shifts in emotion's social regulation, Neckel (2009) observed that although western societies
have moved from rationalization and repression of emotion to emotionalization under neolib-
eralism, societal regulation of emotions persists in more agentic and less obligatory ways. “As a
result of modern capitalism,” he argued, “forms of handling one's own emotions in a rationalized
and ‘calculating’ way developed that were unknown to other societies” (p. 181). Despite efforts to
foster emotionality, he concluded that the embrace of emotion has paradoxically contributed to
emotional impoverishment as people experience exhaustion from striving but consistently failing
to achieve “ideal” or optimized emotionality.
Cumulatively, these insights offer a departure from conventional psychological and (suppos-
edly) systemic conceptions of emotions and ER as residing “within” individuals by challenging
the naturalness, political neutrality, and universality of emotions (Fineman, 2008; Miller & de
Shazer, 2000; von Scheve, 2012). They raise questions about ER as a self-­determined activity
of an autonomous self or as a dynamic relational activity occurring within a closed system.
Individualizing and closed systematizing perspectives developed within psychology have con-
tributed to contemporary neoliberal cultural understandings of emotions.

Affective-­processual view

The growing interest in emotion and affect in social sciences and humanities marks the af-
fective turn and with it a return to the embodied and embedded—or phenomenological and
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6 |    FAMILY PROCESS

material—world (Bennett et al., 2010; Clough, 2008). Affect theory (e.g., Ahmed, 2004; Gregg
& Seigworth, 2010; Massumi, 2002) has been at the forefront of these materialist develop-
ments. Affect theory itself is not singular; some theorists orient to affect as the “bodily inten-
sities of relation” and emotions as “narrativized accounts” of those intensities (Bialostok &
Aronson, 2016, p. 98; Massumi, 2002). Other theorists such as Ahmed reject this tidy separa-
tion, arguing that it does not capture the messiness of entanglements between affect/sensation
and emotion. Affect theory advances a relational–processual ontology that views affect or emo-
tion as emerging in the relational spaces where bodies meet (Massumi, 2002; Mühlhoff, 2015;
Seyfert, 2012). Mühlhoff (2015) developed the concept of affective resonance. Challenging the
conventional view of emotions as emanating from one body and felt by another, he argued that
“the interactional dynamic itself creates and constitutes an affective quality” which does not
pre-­exist the encounter (p. 1002, italics in original). A relational–processual dynamic is seen
as ontologically primary to emotional-­affective states that arise through it. From this perspec-
tive, emotions do not arise from the subject or family but rather the other way around: cir-
culating emotions/affects constitute particular subjectivities and forms of kinship (Lehmann
et al., 2019).
As a social justice-­oriented perspective, affect theory focuses on relations of power or
dominance and social transformation. Specifically, it examines the “embodiment of social
structures” or how affect and emotion are structured by and, in turn, structure social forces
and relations (Penz & Sauer, 2019, p. 8); it also extends to the more-­than-­human realm by
considering how encounters with the material world (technology, nature, the economy) also
activate affect. Emotions and affects may be a mode of (patriarchal, colonial, etc.) power,
positioning some people in specifically affective-­discursive ways and producing hierarchies
and relations of inclusion and exclusion as a result. Ahmed (2004) examined affective econo-
mies as socio-­material relations that produce, circulate, and absorb affect, arguing that emo-
tions produce or surface certain subjectivities and differentiations in a hierarchical society
as a way of buttressing stratification (e.g., hate or fear as drawing a boundary between us
and them). In considering affective economy, Lehmann et al. (2019) observed, “whereas the
term ‘economy’ refers to the totality of production, distribution, and consumption in a soci-
ety, the concept of affective economy focuses more narrowly on the exchange and circulation
of affects” (p. 140). If emotions are culturally produced—if they circulate, move, and “stick”
to bodies and objects (Ahmed, 2004)—then it follows that some people (e.g., Black and/or
feminine bodies) and things associated with those people may become “over-­associated with
affect” (Hemmings, 2005, p. 561). Affect theory also attends to resistance to power or affective
dynamics and the produced and circulated affects that transcend or disrupt regulatory ideals
(Bargetz, 2015; Pedwell, 2012).
As a phenomenological and material perspective, affect theory attends to materiality and
more-­than-­humans (animals, places, objects, etc.) in theorizing emotion and ER. Colombetti
and Krueger (2015) highlighted that rather than passively experiencing feelings, people ac-
tively manipulate and modify their environments to regulate or change affective states. They
argued that people “engineer their affective environments—create affective niches—and in so
doing let these environments influence their affective states in an ongoing way” (p. 1106). Any
material item or setting (e.g., nature, music, food, rearranging furniture, shopping, cell phones,
tissues) can be mobilized as an affective niche to alter affective states. People may create inter-
personal affective niches, such as spending time with partners, families, friends, or the land to
experience specific emotions. Notably, affective states are not individual matters but arise and
become this or that affective intensity or quality through the relational–processual dynamic.
Concepts of affective capacity and capital further clarify how power works through affect
and materiality. People bring differential affective capacities or dispositions to affectively res-
onate, be affected, and affect others, including more-­than-­humans (Mühlhoff, 2015). Penz
and Sauer (2019) introduced the concept of affective capital, which they defined as “a bodily
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 7

resource and capacity for action” (p. 58) and a person's potential “to affect other people, to
address them, to touch them both metaphorically and physically, to attract their attention, and
to be affected by them” (p. 55). Neither an individual property nor a performance, affective
capital comprises “an interplay of structures of affect, flows of affective capital…and individ-
ual appropriation—into an affective habitus, a mode of habitual action” (p. 54). Both struc-
tured by and structuring of power relations, affective capital works outside people's conscious
awareness, helping to form solidarity, belonging, attraction, intelligibility, and legitimacy.
People also convert affective capital into other material and symbolic resources (e.g., employ-
ment, promotion, friendships) and their degree of affective capital can elicit particular embod-
ied responses in others (e.g., changed affective states; Penz & Sauer, 2019). Affective encounters
not only involve affective capital but also affective roles (e.g., one partner assumes a leadership
role in managing emotions). Differentiated affective roles may reflect and reproduce gendered
(classed, racial, etc.) power relations (Mühlhoff, 2015). Insights from affect theory unveil an
additional layer of emotional influence and charge in families, which extends affects beyond
deliberate, conscious efforts to express or regulate emotions in the self and others. These the-
ories also highlight that emotion and affect are not apolitical but work in discursive-­material
ways to produce and maintain (and unsettle) power dynamics in society. We now turn to neo-
liberalism and unpack its affective workings.

N E OL I BE R A L I SM A S P OL I T ICA L R AT IONA L I T Y

The term “neoliberalism,” in its multiple and contradictory meanings, has been widely de-
bated (Dean, 2014; Venugopal, 2015). It generally refers to “new forms of political-­economic
governance premised on the extension of market relationships” (Larner, 2000, p. 5). Neoliberal
ideology privileges competition as an unquestioned social good and seeks to reduce govern-
mental control/regulation of all industries and sectors, including by advocating for the spread
of free market logics to more realms of social life and encouraging greater competition among
market participants (Dean, 2014). Scholars increasingly attend to the “deep materialism” un-
derpinning neoliberalism (Venugopal, 2015) most evident in the Foucauldian governmentality
approach (Burchell, 1993; Foucault, 1991; Rau, 2013; Rose et al., 2006).

Governmentality

French philosopher Foucault (2008) conceptualized neoliberalism as both a set of socioeco-

nomic policies and a form of governmentality that produced a particular (market-­responsive
and self-­optimizing) type of personhood or subjectivity. Drawing on Foucault, Kiersey (2014)
observed that since the 1970s in the west and beyond there has been a shift from government
(the state being responsible for governing) to governmentality (governmental responsibilities
being allocated to individuals). Neoliberal governmentality is “a form of power that enables the
production of free, enterprising subjects, a technology and a rationality that sets individuals
free, but also teaches them to govern themselves as enterprising actors” (Binkley, 2014, p. 4;
Foucault, 1991, 2008). As governments retreat from prior commitments, such as creating a
robust social welfare system, the focus turns to people's engagement in self-­monitoring and
self-­i mprovement (Kiersey, 2014).
Under neoliberalism, people are governed less through external force/coercion and
more through aligning their subjectivities and conduct with market needs and ideals
(Brinkmann, 2005; Foucault, 2008). Contemporary forms of power connect what markets
value to processes of subjectification, which involves encouraging the production of subjects
and kin relations suitable to neoliberal political order (Hook, 2003; Rose, 1998). Neoliberalism
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8 |    FAMILY PROCESS

works as a form of governmentality when all segments of society get framed in economic terms
as enterprising units (individuals, families, organizations, etc.) (Bori, 2020), a process that
Kiersey (2014) described as “the subsumption of a wide swathe of social life into the domain
of neoliberal governmentality” (p. 356). Likewise, governed by neoliberal values, a person's
life becomes imbricated with market logics across all domains of existence, turning a person
into an economic subject whose value may be determined by their employability and produc-
tivity (Brinkmann, 2005). Even positive emotions like happiness become enterprises one must
strive to achieve for one's own success, whether competing in the job or relationship market
(Binkley, 2014).
Neoliberal ideology constitutes subjects who are governed but who, at the same time, de-
fine themselves as free (Bori, 2020). The technology of governmentality is to focus on peo-
ple's agency, freedom, and autonomy and obscure processes of governance (Binkley, 2014).
As governments retreat from social welfare, they increasingly focus on citizens assuming re-
sponsibility for their own self-­management and financial and relational wellness (Cook, 2016).
Neoliberal ideology frames people's struggles related to growing economic precarity, reduced
social supports, and unequal distribution of resources as rooted in their entrepreneurial fail-
ures and bad choices (Binkley, 2014). As Bori (2020) remarked, “if some people are left behind,
there are not structural injustices to explain their failure. It is only their own fault, because they
have chosen passivity and inflexibility over the effort to work to improve themselves in order
to provide for their own necessities” (p. 152).

Governmentality and Psy disciplines

Rose (1998) theorized how psy disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, etc.) have
played an important role in neoliberal governmentality by psychologizing various domains
of life. These domains “‘become psychological’ in that they are problematized—that is to say,
rendered simultaneously troubling and intelligible—in terms that are infused by psychol-
ogy” (1998, p. 61, italics in original). Similarly, Rau (2013) discussed the psychopolitics that
emerged in the late 20th century as a new form of government focused on the psyche. Therapy
(i.e., individually focused psychotherapy) not only reflects and reinforces a neoliberal ration-
ality but also encourages clients to mobilize neoliberal techniques of self-­government to be-
come self-­improving, entrepreneurial subjects responsible for their happiness and well-­being.
Psychotherapy may implement forms of neoliberal governance and also elaborate and nuance
them. As Hook observed, therapy “provides more specialised and idiosyncratic interventions
that will more effectively map, probe, and treat the psyche of the increasingly individualized
patient” (p. 613). Clients may internalize neoliberal rationality and techniques, applying them
to themselves and others in their lives (Bori, 2020). As Cohen (2017) noted: “the expansion of
mental health expertise and discourse beyond the institution can be understood as the prolif-
eration of (ruling-­class) neoliberal ideology in which the socio-­political realities of capitalism
are increasingly individualised and medicalized by the psy-­professions” (p. 5).
We argue that family therapy may be added to the list of psy disciplines and may not be
immune from neoliberal rationality. In families, we may observe techniques of optimization
targeting not only subjects but also relations and subjects-­in-­relations, and the production of
families as market-­responsive entities (e.g., families enacting neoliberal values, producing
workers and consumers for the economy). Neoliberal governmentality manifests in family ther-
apy in different ways. First, families may present with struggles to embody neoliberal norms
for personhood or relationships. Self-­reliance and self-­management in families as a whole and
specific family members may signal the uptake of neoliberal rationality (Brinkmann, 2005;
Cook, 2016). People may seek to optimize themselves and their relationships by coming to
family therapy, adopting expert advice on family relations and proper ways of being (e.g., a
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 9

partner, parent), engaging in self-­reflection and self-­monitoring, relying on self-­help and other
informational resources, and engaging in planning and calculated allocation of resources,
among other initiatives (Sugarman, 2015). Family members may present in therapy with “fail-
ures” of self-­management (e.g., of initiative, motivation, effectiveness, productivity, goals, risk,
satisfaction, worth, etc.) or distress related to them feeling like they lack important skills (e.g.,
confidence, leadership, exuberance, social prowess). Here, subjectivity gets reduced to eco-
nomic terms; clients treat themselves as assets or skills to be developed, managed, and opti-
mized (Freedman & Combs, 2020; Sugarman, 2015).
Furthermore, families may be deemed as struggling or failing to meet neoliberal ideals
(e.g., being sufficiently happy, self-­optimizing, or connected). The ethos of competition and
the performance concerns it fuels are not limited to work but extend to all areas of life,
such as parenting, appearance, sexuality, eating, shopping, investing, financial manage-
ment, and hobbies. For example, parenting under neoliberalism is turned into “parenting
economy,” the idea that raising children comprises a private investment made by parents (to
obscure the lack of family-­friendly policy for without the work of reproduction human life
itself ends, Bandelj, 2023). Moreover, specific parenting strategies, such as “incentives,” can
implement neoliberal governmentality (wherein parents learn to construe their children's
conduct in economic terms that they can control through incentives). Another example is
“intensive mothering”—a gendered neoliberal rationality that prescribes mothers to invest
considerable resources and time into parenting in competition to become good mothers
(Leigh et al., 2012).
Families may also seek therapy to address conflict and tension related to family mem-
bers' differential uptake of neoliberal ideals and values (e.g., self-­g rowth, economic success,
material accumulation). The body can be subjected to neoliberal rationality. For example,
dieting discourse has been linked to neoliberal (and hetero-­gender) norms. As Cairns and
Johnston (2015) observed, “the model female consumer is well versed on the latest research
regarding health-­promoting foods, and she has the skills to make nutritious food taste de-
licious. Perhaps most importantly, she understands how to control her body but she also
knows when to indulge” (p. 154). They argued that “the tension between embodying disci-
pline through dietary control and expressing freedom through consumer choice” lies at the
heart of neoliberal consumer culture (p. 155). Some family members may endorse dieting
discourse and present with distress related to eating and appearance; others in the family
may support or object to these bodily practices. Conflict may also relate to some family
members feeling pressure to (over)work and others feeling abandoned and unsupported. It
may also relate to some family members doing the bulk of relational work (e.g., investing
time and money in strengthening the relationship) and resenting others for not sharing the
load. An example is one partner buying, renovating, and re-­s elling properties (in response
to neoliberal and hetero-­gendered pressures to succeed and provide for the family) and
their partner feeling overburdened by the domestic and childcare work and excluded from
decision-­m aking. Finally, families may present in therapy with struggles (e.g., worries, con-
flict, lack of connection or trust) over the effects of neoliberal individualist and capital-
ist systems differentially rewarding and penalizing, socially and economically, people and
communities.
These and other manifestations of neoliberal/economic power may not always be immedi-
ately apparent to family therapists. Families may come to therapy framing their issues as fail-
ures to meet neoliberal standards and pressures. Therapists might inadvertently rely on ER as
a way to align clients' subjectivities and relationships with these ideals, which could perpetuate
oppression, instead of validating clients' struggles as legitimate given their circumstances or
challenging the dominance of neoliberal rationality in families to open space for alternative
understandings and ways of being and relating.
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10 |    FAMILY PROCESS

Affective neoliberal governmentality

Foucault (1972) used the term “surfaces of emergence” to refer to domains of life, activities,
sites, and practices that pose problems or trouble political regimes, which come to be grouped
and classified as social problems requiring management. Emotions can be seen as a new sur-
face of emergence to be governed and managed with psy knowledge (Binkley, 2014; Cook, 2016;
Illouz, 2007; Nehring et al., 2020; Penz & Sauer, 2019; Rau, 2013). Emotional dimensions of fam-
ily relationships may be targeted for optimization and management (Illouz, 2007). Clients may
internalize emotional psy discourses, fragment their affectivities into detectable and manage-
able matters, and instrumentally subject themselves to emotional psy techniques (Bori, 2020).
As Pedwell (2012) noted, “critical scholars have emphasised the fluidity and unpredictability
of emotion and affect, [but] the assumption here is that emotion and affective relations can be
regulated, packaged, and even measured” (pp. 173–174; Boler, 1999).
Drawing on Foucault and affect theory, Penz and Sauer (2019) developed the idea of “affec-
tive governmentality,” which relates to ER under neoliberalism for its concern with how affects
function “as a technology of government and as a mode of the formation of subjects” (p. 51).
Richard and Rudnyckyj (2009) explored how cultural and political actors mobilize affect to
create subjects whose conduct is aligned with neoliberal norms. For example, affect consti-
tuted as desire (happiness, excitement, surprise) can reconfigure people into eager consum-
ers and relationally skilled suppliers of goods and services. Neoliberalism may intersect with
other systems of oppression based on race, sexuality, or gender, and affective governmentality
may work in, for example, gendered ways or be informed by gender categories (Ouellette &
Wilson, 2011; Penz & Sauer, 2019). The neoliberal capitalist system predicated on personal re-
sponsibility, privatization, and reduced social supports depends on the women's reproductive
and care work for its survival. To illustrate, Ouellette and Wilson (2011) explored the techno-
logical (Dr. Phil's books, shows, and website) facilitation of gendered neoliberal subjectivity.
Women, who are often the target audience of these media outlets, view, manipulate, and pro-
duce texts concerned with optimal human functioning and apply neoliberal self-­i mprovement
techniques to themselves and others (e.g., partners, children, and friends).
Neoliberal rationality also organizes and constitutes emotions in intimate relationships.
Informed by liberal values (e.g., freedom, fairness, equality, choice, autonomy, rights), families
increasingly adopt economic models of bargaining and exchange (Illouz, 2007). As intimacy,
including emotional intimacy, becomes a norm and a relational equivalent of psychologi-
cal health, couples must strive toward its modern incarnation, characterized by emotional
communication, equality, expression of hidden emotions, and containment of negative emo-
tionality (Illouz, 2007). Informed by therapy and a liberal version of feminism, intimate rela-
tionships have moved toward rationalization (using reason to optimize efficiency) on the one
hand, and equality and emancipation, on the other (Illouz, 2007). This brand of (neo)liberal
feminism encourages women to be self-­reliant and conscious of their rights, to “control their
emotions, assess choices, and choose their preferred actions” (Illouz, p. 32). Rationalization of
intimacy may be evident in the calculated use of means to achieve some end, such as choosing
rationality or using knowledge to buttress one's standing and status at home and work. Affects
can be used to reinforce neoliberal power but they can be mobilized to re-­imagine subjectivi-
ties, relationships, and democracy itself (Sauer, 2023) beyond neoliberalism (Boler, 1999). For
example, Veldstra (2020) proposed reformulating bad feelings as the internalized effects of
economic power on people, noting: “perhaps we can respond differently to the disaffected, the
unsmiling, in such positions, seeing their bad feeling as expressive of a difficult and depleting
impasse often inhabited by the precarious in the affective economy” (p. 21).
Based on these insights, therapy can be regarded as a site where affective politics play out
and neoliberal governmentality is affectively implemented, promoted, and unsettled. Family
therapy is one of the key social contexts wherein families come to reflect on and transform
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 11

their emotions and relationships. Economic conceptions of subjectivity and relationships fo-
cused on privatization, calculation, rationalization, and financialization may be re-­established
as dominant in therapy (e.g., the narrative of the self-­actualizing couple that seeks to invest
resources to attain wellness). We now turn to ER, theorizing it through an affective govern-
mentality lens.

E MOT ION R E GU L AT ION A N D ECONOM IC POW E R

Examining ER's relation to neoliberalism in educational contexts, Vassallo (2020) argued that
ER represents a critical skill of an ideal person and worker in the 21st century. The prevalent
cultural discourse about ER suggests that emotions impact people's lives in adaptive and mala-
daptive ways and to succeed, people must strategically change their emotions. Under neoliber-
alism, ER emerges as a commodifiable skill or resource “that can be developed for the purpose
of being successful” (Vassallo, 2020, p. 62) through cultivation and exchange (e.g., for a job and
income); as such, it has now become a part of human capital.
Building on these insights, we propose ER functions as an affective technique of neoliberal
governmentality in the following ways. First, following Vassallo (2020), ER itself comprises a
valued affective resource or commodity. Displaying and modeling to others emotional self-­
control can be a marker of affective capital. The neoliberal imperative to self-­manage may
deem emotion dysregulation in a given situation to be acceptable/desirable but the person's
reluctance to emotionally self-­optimize problematic. Family members may be invested in fos-
tering ER in themselves and each other as a way to constitute themselves as ideal neoliberal
subjects and families. Expectations in relationships (what it means to be a “good” partner,
child, parent, etc.) may be informed by these ideals. Other values and meanings for being and
relating may become overshadowed by economic logics.
Second, ER can be a technique of individualization—responsibilizing people/families to deal
with the effects of individualist neoliberalism (e.g., unemployment, job insecurity, forced mi-
gration, wealth inequalities, mass incarceration, social death; e.g., Zeira, 2022). Emotional dis-
tress may also relate to “the hidden injuries” of neoliberal culture (Rya-­Flood & Gill, 2010) or
constant pressure to embody and perform calculating, planning, self-­monitoring, productive,
competitive, and successful subjects. Under neoliberalism, people are increasingly required
to “make everything ‘auditable’, rendered knowable and calculable in terms of quantifiable
‘outputs’” and “tell the story of their lives as if they were the outcome of deliberative planning
and choice” (Ryan-­Flood & Gill, 2010, p. 42). The embodied effects of these pressures are often
invisible and framed as a person's or family's self-­management task. Therapy can be sought to
help people strengthen their capacity to manage distress (Zeira, 2022).
Third, ER can be a means to develop and acquire affective capital, as a technique of sub-
jectification. That is, it can be used as a “technology of self” (Foucault, 1988), constituting
individuals as particular kinds of persons or subjects. Using ER can be understood as sup-
porting individuals in subjecting themselves to neoliberal rationality to emerge as economic
(productive, competitive, entrepreneurial, etc.) subjects. Boosting affective capital in this way
can occur at the level of the individual (i.e., applied to oneself), but also interpersonally. It can
also be used in the context of workers in the paid economy. We argue that ER affectively im-
plements neoliberal ideology focused on individualism, privatization, competition, and finan-
cialization by cultivating economically desirable affects and traits, and discouraging excess
or economically useless affects, subjectivities, and relationalities. An ideal emotionally regu-
lated person is someone who can cultivate emotions to sustain goal attainment and efficiency,
and mitigate emotions (anxiety, stress, frustration) that could interfere with paid engagement
in the economy (Vassallo, 2020). As a technique of economic power, ER provides specific
means for people to self-­govern through both reinforcing the neoliberal political rationality
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12 |    FAMILY PROCESS

of self-­governance (whereby constraints are self-­i mposed) and cultivating in clients the desire,
involvement, and motivation to work on themselves emotionally.
As a technique of subjectification, ER is not limited to managing specific emotions (e.g.,
fear, anger, sadness). Conventional understandings view ER as a strategic, intentional effort of
the self to overlook the processes of affecting and being affected. Families can be seen as af-
fective economies characterized by particular affective modes, intensities, divisions, and sym-
metrical distributions of emotions. Family affective economies not only may include deliberate
efforts to influence specific emotions (ER) but are also not limited to those efforts. From this
perspective, affect management becomes a constant, pervasive aspect of affective economies
and distribution of affective capital. Social units and organizations, such as families, can be
seen as affective self-­managing units, where affective processes structure and constitute fam-
ilies as particular entities. Neoliberal governing might be considered less as trying to solicit
or control specific emotions than specific affective relations (Penz & Sauer, 2019). This per-
spective on ER as embedded within affective economies highlights how systemic forces might
influence or activate affect outside intentional efforts to produce or control feelings. It stresses
how neoliberalism works both through specific emotions and through more ephemeral bodily
sensations and relations (e.g., bodily reactions, senses, perceptions, appearance, touch).
Affect theorists see emotions as structured and structuring, meaning that “emotions become
intelligible through cultural patterns of perception, norms, and social structures. There are no
pre-­discursive feelings; instead, feelings are always symbolically coded and socially formed”
(Penz & Sauer, 2019, p. 17). This view challenges the universality of emotions. Applied to ER,
therapists and clients make ongoing (embodied) judgments concerning emotions and emotion
management (e.g., which emotions should be regulated, who should be invited to regulate whose
emotions, what counts as emotions worthy of consideration, when are emotions too intense or
not intense enough). This coding of emotions and associated responses is structured and struc-
turing but can also destabilize structures. This view brings to light the potential limitation to
therapists relying on universalizing discourses of emotions and ER (e.g., vulnerability, empathy,
soothing). In couple therapy, partners in privileged positions may disclose vulnerable emotions
and, in so doing, may further center their experience and obscure inequities. If so, emotional
vulnerability might need to be given less rather than more space. Structural vulnerability (e.g.,
tied to gender-­, class-­, or race-­based hegemonies and oppressions) may underlie clients' strug-
gles to be vulnerable or may manifest as invulnerability (Gruson-­Wood et al., 2021). A cis/fe-
male identifying partner who is routinely angry and resentful may not need self-­soothing, nor
empathy or soothing from a partner, but may yearn for a more equitable distribution of house-
hold and childcare work, or to have a voice in the relationship. Universalist discourses of ER,
vulnerability, and empathy may be promoted in therapy as the frameworks for understanding
and dealing with affective processes. Culturally/structurally invisible vulnerabilities may be
overlooked, oppression-­related invulnerability (e.g., anger) may be problematized, and soft or
vulnerable emotions deployed to advance power and privilege may be amplified and celebrated.
Affect theorists disrupt uniform conceptions of affective processes and offer a more nuanced
view of emotions and ER that considers contradictions, dangers, possibilities and most of all,
power in experiencing, expressing, and responding to one's own or another's emotions.

I M PL ICAT ION S

Recognizing therapy's complicity with neoliberalism, some scholars have suggested moving be-
yond therapy in responding to human suffering (Nehring et al., 2020; Wright, 2011). Family thera-
pists are increasingly called to broaden the conception of systemic work to include policy and
advocacy work (Hodgson & Lamson, 2020). Outside of therapy, therapists could become more ac-
tively engaged in changing policies that might challenge or reverse neoliberal reforms (e.g., raising
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 13

minimum wage, promoting state-­funded childcare) and advocate for community-­based initiatives
aimed at strengthening community capacities and networks (e.g., Barreto et al., 2020; Gerrard &
Soriano, 2018). Through community participation, individuals and families can (affectively) em-
body resistance to neoliberal ideologies of self-­reliance and self-­management. Practitioners might
also refer clients to local programs and organizations that address economic stressors.
In short, we suggest critically reflecting on how the potentially oppressive effects of family
therapy might be mitigated and how therapy's emotional dimension might be leveraged to foster
progressive social change. In making practice recommendations, we are mindful that therapists'
adoption of a political agenda without attending to their clients' agenda could become another
form of control and regulation. This critique notwithstanding, therapists may do something
counter-­intuitive: question whether therapy (affective self-­management) is needed. Here, thera-
pists could legitimize clients' distress as an appropriate, understandable—even necessary—re-
sponse to oppressive circumstances. Clients' and families' distress can be linked to neoliberal
policies productive of a range of social problems including job precarity, income inequalities, re-
duced social supports, loneliness, pressure to be productive and happy, materialism and consum-
erism, and financial stress. Therapists could, jointly with clients, reflect on the implications of the
individualizing effects of structural inequalities and neoliberal capitalist ideologies and policies,
questioning whether ER is the only solution to suffering. They might consider when using ER
may be helpful and when promoting self-­sufficiency may be problematic (e.g., blaming/holding
responsible those already disadvantaged) (Zilberstein, 2021). Practitioners could reflect on how
they may unwittingly mobilize psy discourses and techniques to shape clients' subjectivities in
meeting capitalist need to generate profit through emotionally skilled persons and workers.
To this end, family therapists might ask: Could your distress be an understandable response to
the situation where external demands exceed resources? How do you feel about high expectations
and inadequate support at work? Would it make sense to consider how your organization could
adjust their expectations and offer adequate support instead of allocating responsibility for man-
aging stress and regulating feelings to you? Who do you think needs to accommodate? What dif-
ference would it make to think of the problem as excessive societal and organizational demands
placed on people to be productive to benefit the economy rather than as people who struggle
to live up to unreasonable expectations? Could some of these struggles relate to pressures to be
productive in the economy where opportunities and resources are not equally distributed along
gender, race, class, or other lines? With respect to ER, perhaps next to asking the question of
how to help clients manage emotions, therapists may also reflect on the issue of whether certain
emotions should be managed in the first place. What are the political implications of promoting
emotionally self-­managing subjectivity in therapy? Does the manner of responding to feelings
matter (e.g., the psy propensity to fragment, universalize, and instrumentalize subjectivity)?
Second, family therapists might invite families to explore and critique internalized neo-
liberal rationality—the association between family members' identities (e.g., sense of worth)
and productivity and commodification. They might also help clients name the burden to be
a productive (and consuming) citizen and explore their experience of it. An aspect of this ef-
fort could be unsettling neoliberal values of productivity, free choice, planning, strategic use
of resources, competition, and entrepreneurship in families' lives and relationships. In trou-
bling internalized neoliberal ideology, therapists might consider posing the following ques-
tions: Where does the pressure to be productive come from? Does your worth depend on how
much profit you bring? What happens when you reduce yourself to your worker/doer identity
and assess your worth based on your productivity or possession of certain skills or qualities?
Neoliberal ideology may be internalized by whole families, and family relations may be as-
sessed with reference to financialization and privatization (e.g., parents may see themselves as
failing to properly invest time and resources into raising their children). Clients could be asked
to consider the personal and relational consequences of evaluating themselves using economic
rationality.
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14 |    FAMILY PROCESS

Third, therapists could explore (affective) resistance to neoliberalism, for example, by ex-
ploring how and when clients have transgressed neoliberal norms and where they find alter-
native spaces or moments of being and relating otherwise. Tapping into clients' reluctance to
subject themselves to neoliberal norms may be another way to challenge neoliberal govern-
mentality. Clients can be supported through bad feelings in ways other than trying to regulate
or eliminate them. They could be asked: In what ways are you valued outside of the paid and
unpaid work you do? What do you value about yourself and how you live your life outside of
being productive? Clients could be invited to reflect on how wasting time may be a way to resist
oppressive pressures to be productive (Saul & Burkholder, 2020) or to reformulate laziness as
taking a needed pause to rest and recover.
Finally, informed by affect theory, therapists might attend to the matter of how affects
circulate—in families, for example. Who is more affected by whom, and how? How do emo-
tions and affects produce borders and divisions between bodies and collectivities (e.g., through
affective interactions in families women may be constituted as naturally skilled at emotions
and responsible for managing family moods)? A broader perspective on ER as an aspect of af-
fective relations and economy can amplify subtle, embodied dynamics of power, namely, how
social forces structure and draw boundaries between bodies through affect (e.g., some family
members may be affectively centered in the family without them being discursively constituted
as dominant). This also invites consideration of how societal resources are distributed (e.g.,
how families and communities are responsibilized to self-­care instead of governments resourc-
ing families through policies and programs).
Our intent in writing this paper was to begin delineating the link between family ther-
apy and neoliberalism. We based our insights on (a) our review of the family therapy lit-
erature attesting to the field's relative inattention to neoliberalism, (b) the field's largely
apolitical conception of ER, and (c) evidence (including empirical) from individual ther-
apy that therapists promote neoliberal rationality (e.g., LaMarre et al., 2019; Olivier, 2020;
Zilberstein, 2021). Our reflections are meant to provoke thought and sensitize therapists to
neoliberal power rather than provide definitive conclusions or prescriptions for practice.
We hesitate to make sweeping statements such as ER facilitation in therapy invariably sup-
ports neoliberalism, or that all family therapists neglect neoliberal power dynamics, or that
models of family therapy that address ER are particularly prone to promoting neoliberal
ideology. Future research may afford more clarity regarding the extent to which practi-
tioners of family therapy in general or specific models address neoliberalism in their prac-
tice, as well as how neoliberal ideology may be advanced through premises and practices
other than ER. The following questions could be asked: Do family therapists notice and
address neoliberalism in their everyday practice? If yes, how? When and how does therapy
become implicated in the cultural circulation of neoliberal rationality? Which practices,
premises, or models of family therapy are more at risk of obscuring and reinforcing neolib-
eral ideology? Which are more likely to attend to and mitigate neoliberal influences? Could
practices developed to address other systems of oppression be used to address economic
power? How can therapists (and clients) determine when emotion “dysregulation” relates
to neoliberal pressure and economic inequalities? Under what conditions the facilitation
of ER becomes a politically questionable initiative? What can therapists do instead of, or
alongside, promoting ER (i.e., affective self-­m anagement)?

CONC LUSION

In this paper, we have questioned the benevolence of ER and the premise advanced in family
therapy that it is inherently and necessarily a means of attaining wellness. The paper highlights
that ER is not inherently apolitical but constituted as uncontaminated by politics and naturalized
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SMOLIAK et al.    | 15

as a normative approach to emotions that involves a beneficial practice and skill. In this sense, we
share concerns raised in individual therapy regarding therapy's unwitting advancement of the ne-
oliberal political agenda. Neoliberal governmentality highlights the historical and cultural influ-
ence carried forward in the felt, but largely unnamed and unrecognized, neoliberal preoccupation
with self-­management. It can be noticed more fully upon critical review of its various realizations
in clients' lives and relationships. Neoliberal discourses and techniques become oppressive when
they leave little space for alternative possibilities, contestation, or critique. Ahmed (2010) theo-
rized how objects are assigned meaning and value through social circulation, arguing that “the
more happy objects circulate, the more they accumulate affective value, as signs of the good life”
(p. 38). It seems that ER has become a happy object promising happiness and success to those who
manage to master it. We have argued that therapy can be a context that circulates ER as a happy
object and fosters people's affective attachments to it, but also where clients could be invited af-
fectively to dis-­attach from ER as an ultimate source of success and wellness. Our hope is that ex-
amination of the micro-­practices of neoliberal subjectification and individualization might open
space for the creation and recognition of various forms of selfhood, kinship, and affectivities that
lie beyond and outside of economic logics.

AC K NOW L E D GE M E N T S
We would like to thank Stephen Lewis and Vanessa Vegter for their feedback on an early draft
of this paper.

F U N DI NG I N F OR M AT ION
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ORC I D
Olga Smoliak https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1679-6774
Eleftheria Tseliou https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9114-731X

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How to cite this article: Smoliak, O., Rice, C., Rudder, D., Tseliou, E., LaMarre, A.,
LeCouteur, A., Gaete, J., Davies, A., & Henshaw, S. (2024). Emotion regulation as
affective neoliberal governmentality. Family Process, 00, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/
famp.13064