The 'will to empower' in contemporary mental health practice

One of the effects of removing the physical structures of standalone institutions is their replacement with virtual institutions which are substantiated by modern forms of government. Scholars have recognised that advanced neo-liberalism promotes the ‘ ethic of the self ’ to reproduce forms of self-mastery, self-regulation and self-control necessary to govern a population made up of individual subjects who care for themselves as ‘ free subjects. Altermark argues that contemporary modes of neo-liberal governance rely on a process of crafting ‘ free ’ citizens while simultaneously monitoring and correcting their conduct, sometimes through law and sometimes by brute force, whenever an appropriate ‘ citizen ’ fails to materialise. According to Altermark, neoliberal governance in the twenty-first century is anexquisite mix of coercion and freedom, or coercive freedom, characterised by the selective withdrawal or denial of rights. The chapter examines the intersection of corcion and recovery in mental health settings arguing that it represents an exemplar of the virtual institution.