42. For Better or for Worse: Christian Gelder, Eda Gunaydin and James Jiang on varieties of therapeutic experience

Has therapy come to define modern life? In this special episode of Fully Lit, Sydney Review of Books Editor James Jiang is joined by writer and scholar Christian Gelder and award-winning essayist Eda Gunaydin to probe the depths of contemporary therapeutic culture. Together, they consider how different therapeutic practices shape our ideas and language around identity, responsibility, and personal transformation, while also reflecting on the promises and limitations of therapy itself. The conversation offers perspectives from both the psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioural traditions, while touching on the best-selling book The Body Keeps the Score, the links between therapy and literature, and what our fascination with therapy tells us about our politics. At its psychic core, this episode asks how contemporary culture has come to understand itself through a therapeutic lens. Voices James Jiang is Editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Christian Gelder is an ARC DECRA Fellow in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural therapy and the history of therapeutic culture. Eda Gunaydin is an award-winning essayist, a lecturer in politics at the University of Wollongong, and the author of Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance. She is the current Parramatta Laureate in Literature. Credits Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros. Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang. Recorded and Edited by Regina Botros. Recorded at 2SER FM studios. Further Reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk Against Understanding by Bruce Fink What Is Madness? by Darian Leader "Self Unhelped" by Christian Gelder (Sydney Review of Books) "Where Have All the Addicts Gone?" by Christian Gelder and Rob Boncardo (Sydney Review of Books) Root and Branch: Essays on Inheritance by Eda Gunaydin For more conversations about literature, ideas and contemporary culture, explore the Fully Lit back catalogue.