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TAP0010.1177/0959354318794899Theory & PsychologyTeo

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Theory & Psychology

Homo neoliberalus: From

1­–19
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DOI: 10.1177/0959354318794899
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Thomas Teo
York University

Abstract
Based on a Neo-Sprangerian approach to forms of life in Western cultures, and drawing on
humanities-based ideas about personality, a critical-hermeneutic description of a neoliberal form of
life and its corresponding form of subjectivity is presented. In the neoliberal form of subjectivity,
the self becomes central, but in a way that the distinction between an ego and the self is no longer
relevant. Neoliberal thinking is reduced to utilitarian, calculating thinking in all domains of life
from work, to interaction, and to identity. Feeling is considered to be more relevant than thinking
and is used to manage stress while aiming for happiness, which is core to this subjectivity. It is
argued that agency is reduced to self- and family-interests while consequences for the conduct of
life are presented. Concepts such as new nihilism, reduction of individuality, and (im)possibility of
resistance in neoliberalism are discussed.

Keywords
agency, form of life, neoliberalism, personality, subjectivity

In the early part of the 20th century, Eduard Spranger (1882–1963), who contributed to
the humanities and pedagogy as much as to psychology, applied the idea of a geisteswis-
senschaftliche research psychology to “personality” (Spranger, 1921/1928), as well as to
youth (Spranger, 1924). The main title of the German original of his “personality”
approach translates as Forms of Life (Lebensformen) rather than Types of Men (English
book title), in order to do justice to the notion that a form of life, a term now associated
with Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), expresses an individual that embodies and ful-
fills a “personality” in a cultural context, rather than being a fixed trait. A form of life is
not connected to biology but to culture, and thus, Spranger’s basic forms of life are not
stable, nor independent from society or history (Teo, 2017b).

Corresponding author:
Thomas Teo, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.
Email: tteo@yorku.ca
2 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Spranger (1921/1928) identified six ideal (typical) forms of life that he labeled theo-
retic, economic, aesthetic, social, political, and religious. Spranger’s description of these
forms resulted from a conceptual abstraction, whereby the forms corresponded to a
Gestalt quality and to basic ethical systems in a given culture. The types are idealtypic in
that they represent a tendency, thus, they cannot be found isolated or pure; and in socio-
cultural reality they are mixed and historically contingent. In addition, Spranger described
subtypes when he discussed, for instance, various religious forms of life. His “method”
was hermeneutic and required an in-depth knowledge of cultural being during his time
and in his society. In contrast to Dilthey’s hermeneutics, Spranger’s concept of under-
standing required to overcome individuals, empathy, or personal experience, in order to
understand a culture’s objective cultural connections and its historical and social condi-
tions, from which a form of life was derived (see Teo, 2003). The process of understand-
ing required Spranger to attend to meaning relations that may not be given to individual
consciousness.
Spranger (1921/1928) did not intend to develop a personality psychology in the cur-
rent meaning but was interested in a general perspective from which to comprehend how
persons conduct their lives in a concrete culture, while being aware that a typical form of
life does not transcend time and space. Yet, while Spranger was aware of the historical
limitations of his own research, as well as the historical embeddedness of forms of life,
he did not analyze how forms of life are themselves constituted through a social system.
For instance, he did not ask how an important carrier of human history, such as political
economy, may contribute to the production of certain forms of life, or how overarching
trends, such as modernity, the Enlightenment, Western worldviews, or Western civiliza-
tion, may contribute to the shaping of those forms in Germany.
Critical theory for a long time had the goal of understanding and conceptualizing the
relationship between society and the individual, going back to Marx’s (1888/1958)
Feuerbach Theses. Horkheimer (1937/1992) posed the conceptualization of the dialecti-
cal society–individual relationship as core to separating traditional from critical theory.
Horkheimer and Adorno (1947/1982) argued that epistemology, morality, and art are the
outcomes of a unique process of enlightenment, which generated and was engendered by
the development of economy and politics, which produced certain forms of subjectivity.
For these thinkers, it is not Immanuel Kant but the Marquis De Sade who is the real phi-
losopher of the Enlightenment. The character or idea of Juliette (De Sade, 1968), who
was rewarded and became successful for her misdeeds based on a self-interested and
callous rationality, was produced by a particular history and society.
Horkheimer and Adorno were more interested in a social-philosophical analysis than
in a psychological one. The psychological link between economic society and the indi-
vidual was proposed by the French thinker, Lucien Sève (1972/1978), with the concept
of forms of individuality. In his personality psychology, which differs from traditional
psychological theories of personality, he argued that particular societies produce forms
for the personal expression of individuality (an idea expressed in psychological anthro-
pology; see Hsu, 1971). Following a traditional Marxist stream of thought, Sève sug-
gested that large forms of production modes create corresponding forms of individuality.
The form of individuality is not an individual choice, but the result of objectively exist-
ing production relations.
Teo 3

Yet, from a critical-psychological perspective, integrating these streams of thought, I

suggest that society, culture, and history provide forms (molds) of subjectivity, whereby
(developing) individuals have the agency to sometimes choose, expand, or change forms,
and in rare circumstances, they even transcend these forms. Under normal circumstances,
however, humans adapt, (ful)fill, and actively “suture” into these forms, allowing for
variations and new actualizations. Thus, idiosyncrasies can make individuality unique.
There is no contradiction in arguing that subjectivity can be unique, distinct, and irre-
placeable, but at the same time can fit into preformed molds. Forms of life and forms of
subjectivity correspond to a certain degree. The former type is prior to the latter (bio-
graphically) and expresses a sociological or social-psychological perspective more than
a psychological one. This critical Neo-Sprangerian psychological study suggests that the
dominant proliferated and internalized form of life and subjectivity is the neoliberal one.

Contexts for the neoliberal form of subjectivity

In recent decades, particularly in North American and European locations, which were
economically more “developed” than many other regions of the world, a new form of life
and subjectivity has emerged, namely, the neoliberal form of subjectivity (NLFS). This
NLFS did not appear out of nowhere; rather, it has been emergent from the earliest devel-
opment of a capitalist mode of economy. Both continuity and discontinuity can be
observed in its development. Continuity can be found, for instance, in terms of Spranger’s
(1921/1928) description of the economic form of life that applies the intellect to com-
mercial purposes and utilitarian goals, and where technical knowledge and pragmatics
are combined with an egoistic attitude. Horkheimer and Adorno’s (1947/1982) descrip-
tion of Juliette, for instance, as planning, scheming, self-interested, and utilitarian, is not
outdated, but relevant when it comes to understanding precursors of the NLFS.
Discontinuity can be observed when it concerns the relationship among existing and
possible forms of life. The NLFS colonizes all other forms of subjectivity, including
Spranger’s (1921/1928) theoretic form of life that focuses on intellectual or scientific
pursuits (with the goal of pure knowledge and truth for itself), the aesthetic form of life,
which is embodied in the artist or the person who has a rhythm for works of art and an
imagination to transform the powers of emotion, the social form of life that lives in and
through others, the political form of life with the will to power, and the religious form of
life, for which value arises through salvation, conversion, or revelation.
In neoliberalism, for instance, the intellectual form of life becomes subsumed under
neoliberal principles (as universities can attest; see Ergül & Coşar, 2017). An artistic
conduct of life is dependent on the market, even more so than a theoretic form of life, and
political forms of life are dominated by a donor class. Although Spranger was correct in
suggesting that power becomes more important than facts in the political form of life, he
did not grasp how the economic form of life may colonize the political form. Community
organization and public initiatives and services have reached a point in a neoliberal envi-
ronment where they cannot avoid neoliberal principles. Even religion, especially in the
American context, embraces neoliberal thinking; evangelical Christians are often strong
supporters of neoliberalism (see, for instance, Hoksbergen & Madrid, 1997).
4 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

The idea of the colonization of all forms of life and the emergence of a single domi-
nant one has been described by Marcuse (1964), who aptly coined the term one-dimen-
sional man emerging from Western society (although his analyses remained more
philosophical). Following Marcuse, one can suggest that the dominance of one form of
life has led to the reduction of individuality and that subjectivity has become one-
dimensional. This appears to be paradoxical, as from a historical point of view, with the
increasing complexities of societies, more forms of life should be possible in theory,
when in practice many of these minute forms of life are dominated by an overarching
NLFS. Thus, peak individuality may have been reached some time ago. The oppressors,
the oppressed, and even the marginalized (to use a traditional terminology) are now all
embodying a NLFS, which makes other forms of subjectivity increasingly impossible.
For example, the idea of a community-based sharing economy (for instance, transpor-
tation and housing) is thoroughly subsumed under a neoliberal logic, as are its
participants.
How is it possible that one form of life began to dominate other forms of life? Sève
(1972/1978) did not anticipate this colonization of all spheres of life. The assumption
that a class-divided society produces capitalist-bourgeois and working-class forms of
subjectivity has been overcome by the historical reality of a NLFS that targets all classes.
With the erosion of manufacturing and the dominance of the service sector, the emer-
gence of precarious work in all domains, the decline of the welfare state, the outsourcing
of public services to the private sector, and continuous global dispossessions, the busi-
ness owner and its embodiments in an entrepreneurial self have become central to the
NLFS as the standard for all human beings. Spranger (1921/1928) did not understand
how a form of life could become dominant because he did not analyze the relationship
between society and the individual in terms of power.
Habermas (1981/1987) provided a social-philosophical answer for the emergence of
one dominant form of life with his analysis of the intrusion of the system in domains
of the lifeworld. He pointed to the pathologies and problems that occur when all spheres
of human life become dominated by the reification of communicative action, monetari-
zation, and bureaucratization. Instrumental thinking, cost–benefit analyses, and utilitar-
ian arguments dominate in areas that are better addressed through equalitarian
communication. Harvey (2005) provides a more concrete analysis of neoliberalism by
identifying political individuals in the West (e.g., Reagan and Thatcher), who were
responsible for this new economic configuration. Accordingly, neoliberal agents empha-
size the entrepreneurial individual within the institution of free markets, free trade, and
private property rights, and within a state willing and able to support these ideas without
interfering. Indeed, neoliberalism colonizes and privatizes all areas of life from business
to government, education to hospitals, and the military to the prison system. Most impor-
tantly, it colonizes the self.
Foucault (1997) understood that the relationship between power and subjectivity can-
not be understood as one-directional, which would produce only oppressed subjectivi-
ties. Neoliberalism understood that as well. The process of subjectification requires
active and agentic subjects that derive meaning and identity from this process. Developing
a NLFS is not only a process of reinforcement, learning, adaptation, appropriation, or
internalization, but also a process of suture through which subjects stitch themselves into
Teo 5

a larger system, while experiencing a kind of agency (see Teo, 2017a; at least as much as
they are stitched into the system). This suture allows subjects to embody a NLFS and to
have access to the fruits of neoliberalism.
The term homo neoliberalus is a neologism that would be nonsensical within Latin.
The term homo refers to a tradition of thinking about what it means to be human, and
neoliberalus connotes semantics and pragmatics within contemporary critical as well as
mainstream discourses. This neologism cannot escape its sexist bias, similar to tradi-
tional theories of human nature that have often been exclusionary. Indeed, the term
emerges from the idea that the archetypical neoliberal subject is male (despite Juliette,
who existed in a man’s fantasy). Still, this form of life and subjectivity is now assumed
by all genders. The term expresses a new but emerging constellation in human personal-
ity, corresponding to this social reality. The following description of the mindset and
conduct of life of the homo neoliberalus is idealtypic and hermeneutic-empirical as the
term form of subjectivity expresses. As such, the NLFS cannot be reduced to thinking or
to an ethical core and needs to begin with what has become central: the self, from which
other dimensions such as thinking, feeling, and agency are developed.

Self
The self is fundamental to the neoliberal form of subjectivity. Although the self has
become more important throughout the course of civilization (Elias, 1978), it has never
been a predominant focus of political economy until neoliberal capitalism.. The self has
undergone significant changes in the context of neoliberalism, an outcome of psycholo-
gized processes of globalization (De Vos, 2012). While James (1890/1981) was still able
to distinguish a Self and a pure Ego, with the former addressing material, social, and
spiritual dimensions, the distinction between the two has been disappearing in neoliberal
contexts (a similar argument could be made for Mead’s I and me, 1934). In a unique
reduction of the self, the NLFS has given up on the idea of a transcendental ego, and
instead concentrates on “myself” (self and ego) as a source for being in a neoliberal
world. More precisely, the pinnacle self is achieved, when “I” not only have an instru-
mental, entrepreneurial relationship to the “self,” but “myself” is an entrepreneurial
entity. A good example, as reported by Heller and McElhinny (2017) in their analysis of
brave new selves, is the statement by the American artist Jay-Z: “I am not a businessman,
I am a business, man” (p. 242). It is also an example of how Spranger’s aesthetic form of
life has given way to a neoliberal form of life, which has become life itself.
Myself as an entrepreneurial entity entails an identity between “Me” and the “Business
Me” in the conduct of everyday life. Consequently, as Sugarman (2015) points out,
branding in neoliberal realities is not limited to corporate or business entities, but applies
to oneself, where one becomes the CFO, CEO, or COO of a brand called “self” that
needs to be built, marketed, distributed, and sold, as are any other goods or services.
Business terminology infiltrates self-discourses (“market yourself!”), while psycholo-
gized terms move back into business (e.g., identity management, group think). The
changing selves are not only an outcome of shifts in language but in material practices.
In neoliberalism’s fluctuating needs, on the background of precarious work realities, and
in markets where demands shift quickly, a flexible self is required, one that rapidly
6 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

adapts its skills, in order to not be left behind (Urciuoli, 2008; see also Lifton, 1993). The
flexible, skilled, mobile, and fast self is more important than any stable self, and continu-
ity and coherence are now achieved not through an “I” but through the market.
The NLFS is told and actively endorses the need to develop a small business rela-
tionship to the self, similar to the way in which instrumental, functional, and cost–
benefit relationships are established with products, services, and other people. To gain
legitimacy, the NLFS is not only the object but also the subject of managing the self.
Because of establishing subjects (which are still subjected), neoliberalism relies heavily
on the psydisciplines that play a significant role in articulating the NLFS (Papadopoulos,
2008). Yet, working on the self is not confined to the psydisciplines: the NLFS can
equally draw on religious discourses, particularly on Protestant or evangelical ones
(Weber, 1904–1905/1958, already identified the relationship between capitalism and
Protestantism), which put the self-focused individual at the center, or even on New Age
discourses and practices, combined with expressions of pop-psychology. Positive psy-
chology is the latest to adapt to and embody the values and goals that human beings
should achieve in a neoliberal world (e.g., Brown, Lomas, & Eiroa-Orosa, 2018; Power,
2016).
The NLFS is thoroughly individualized or psychologized, as reflected in the use of
psychological/business terms to refer to addressing, understanding, and working on the
self: self-regulation, self-management, self-promotion, self-mastery, self-reliance, self-
control, or the resilient self, are all examples of such terms. Thus, the popularized and
empirically supported idea of self-regulated learning reproduces inequality and neolib-
eralism (Vassallo, 2015), while the concept of resilience aligns with the idea of govern-
mentality and individual responsibility (Joseph, 2013). Psychological self-control
scales can be read as measures of the degree to which an individual has submitted/
embraced neoliberal values and behaviors. Items such as “I never allow myself to lose
control,” “I am reliable,” “People would say that I have iron self-discipline,” “I engage
in healthy practices,” “I am able to work effectively toward long-term goals,” or “I am
always on time,” or reverse items such as “I wish I had more self-discipline,” “Pleasure
and fun sometimes keep me from getting work done,” or “ I often act without thinking
through all the alternatives” (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004), are self-skills that
are important to maintaining a neoliberal economy. It is not surprising that individuals
who score high on self-control measures are “successful.” It is tautological to state (see
also Smedslund, 1988) that being more neoliberal in a neoliberal world is more
advantageous.
From a Foucauldian (e.g., 1997) perspective, the NLFS has thoroughly internal-
ized responsibilization, governmentality, and subjectification. The NLFS accepts
being responsible for tasks that were solved in a welfare state by a collective con-
sensus, such as health care or education (see also Yen, 2016). Yet, the NLFS realizes
that in disaster capitalism (Klein, 2007) it may be more beneficial to find solutions
that serve “me” and “my family” (not literally me, as this term is used in this article
from a generalized first-person perspective). If there is a water crisis in “my” town,
then “I” cannot rely on public institutions or environmental justice movements to
address and solve this crisis; rather, “I” need to move “myself” or “my” family
away from this town, or purchase water or filters until “I” am ready to move (see
Teo 7

Cooper, 2017, for the importance of family in neoliberalism). The public water
problem is “my” responsibility, in that “I” solve it for “me.” It is clear that neolib-
eral institutions profit from this form of subjectivity, because friction is removed
when subjects pre-emptively submit “themselves” to the demands of a neoliberal
state, institution, corporation or government, or when they pre-emptively comply/
embrace any possible requirement that could arise. The neoliberal world thrives on
subjects that have internalized neoliberal mechanisms and even derive an identity
from it (“I am always on time”).
The subjectified person submits and identifies with demands, and paradoxically
appears to have control and self-control (“I” can always work on “myself” to fit better
into the mold). Self-control has become more significant than self-esteem in neoliberal-
ism. However, control and self-control extend only to the borders of the form, but not
beyond. Sugarman (2015), following a Foucauldian stream of thought, has argued that
neoliberalism connotes a shift from external control to self-imposed self-control.
Psychology has participated in both types of control, from Miller’s (1969) vision to sell
psychological control, to give psychology away as a form of human welfare, to the ideas
of positive and pop-psychology on the self (see also Brinkmann, 2017). Neoliberal socie-
ties operate through (self)discipline and (self)control to hold the individual accountable
for success or lack thereof (interiorized by the subject) and to provide “knowledge” on
how to achieve success. Because the neoliberal society is presented as quasi-natural, as
an entity to which the successful self must pro-actively and inevitably submit, and
because successful individuals suture themselves into a given, resistance cannot be part
of NLFS. Indeed, such resistance would constitute an anathema, or perhaps even a
pathology, within such a “logic.”
Classical critical theories have been wrong to assume that experiences of alienation
would necessarily result from submission. Instead, the active process of suture makes
processes of alienation go away, once contradictions are internalized and addressed
internally, meaning that the requirements of adapting the self are embraced. The idea that
one is living in the best possible world or country, typical in US-American discourses,
for instance, removes radical change from the external: the neoliberal self is internalized,
adapts and sutures to economic realities, and is separate from a world that could ever be
changed. Change belongs to the self, occasionally to the family, whereby the rhetoric of
personal change is borrowed from those academic, professional, and public discourses
that are useful to adapting to the status quo.
One could even argue that the postmodern self (Gergen, 1991) that lacks coherence,
continuity, and stability is the outcome of neoliberal demands. The critical self, espe-
cially the one that transcends traditional critical thinking—which itself has become an
element of neoliberalism because of its adaptability to varying demands—understands
critical thinking as dangerous thinking (Giroux, 2015). Dangerous thinking about the
pathologies of capitalism, for example, are not useful within a NLFS, which becomes the
cheerleader for neoliberalism, and is self-confident when it comes to defending the status
quo of a neoliberal world. Although the community has no primacy in the NLFS, the
social-media based community can be used as support for those cheerleading activities.
The NLFS is not reluctant, but rather is fully committed to neoliberalism, in its embodi-
ment of neoliberal rhetoric and practices.
8 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Thinking
Although thinking is secondary to feeling in a NLFS, it is still important to understand
the characteristics and limitations of thought. Traditional philosophy makes the distinc-
tion between theoretical and practical reason, the former referring to epistemic and the
latter to moral issues. As the distinction between Self and Ego disappears, so does
the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Utilitarian thinking takes on the
main role when it comes to issues of knowledge and values. Spranger (1921/1928)
already proposed that the economic type has no time for knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, which consequently means the end of knowledge. If all is subsumed under
applicability and practicality, and cost–benefit analyses, then large parts of the humani-
ties, the social sciences, and critical approaches have no legitimacy (which then engen-
ders crisis discourses).
A type of thinking that is reduced to rational choice, under the guidance of utilitarian
thinking, has already been described by Horkheimer and Adorno (1947/1982), who char-
acterized Juliette’s thinking as fully rational, calculating, and based on self-interest. The
spread of neoliberal, utilitarian thinking has had its professional impact in the discipline
of psychology through the defense of torture, and is reflected in psychiatrists’ lack of
moral concern with financial conflicts of interest (Aalbers & Teo, 2017; Pope, 2016; Teo,
2015; Whitaker & Cosgrove, 2015). The NLFS is based on practical-utilitarian reason-
ing, while moral thinking that applies the principle of generalizability (Kant, 1788/1968),
based on the notion of a collective obligation, is counter-intuitive, or is not considered
meaningful in the conduct of an entrepreneurial life.
Holzkamp (1973) identified perceptual-intuitive thinking as being typical within cap-
italist societies, thinking which is based on immediate observation and on what appears
as concrete, as on the surface, and which can be observed and intuited in the world. Such
thinking solves problems within a utilitarian framework, orients itself within an existing
order, but does not go beyond the status quo. Perhaps perceptual-intuitive thinking can
be best described in opposition to conceptual thinking, which is able to abstract from
immediate experiences and comprehend the nexus of individual life. Conceptual think-
ing is able to move from a utilitarian practice to a critical praxis. Because of the
utilitarian self, conceptual thinking has become alien to a NLFS, which prefers perceptual-
intuitive thinking that is concrete and useful. Concepts such as society remain inexplica-
ble to the NLFS, because they cannot be observed immediately and require abstraction
from a variety of institutions, practices, and embodied behaviors. The NLFS sticks with
individuals and families when considering social reality.
In the NLFS, truth (external) and truthfulness (internal) have disappeared or are sub-
sumed under one’s personal, sexual, or economic interests. Truth no longer has relevance
outside the self, as thinking is only relevant insofar as it serves the entrepreneurial self
and its processes. As a consequence, thinking has become not only a-critical or a-social,
but also anti-critical and anti-social. Thinking in neoliberal practice must destroy chal-
lenges to one’s own subjectification and must allow one to maintain illusions about con-
trol and self-control. Intellectual education is seen as relevant only as long as it is
beneficial to one’s career or economic success, and education as training is analyzed in
terms of cost–benefit calculations. In this process, the concept-driven liberal arts,
Teo 9

humanities, and fine arts are discarded as useless, as long as they cannot be translated
into financial benefits. Ignorance is professed with pride, and bullshitting (Frankfurt,
1986/2005) has equal or even more value than in-depth analyses or reflection, in a mar-
ket of opinions. Public relations are more important than knowledge.
Economic dispossessions based on the “privatization of land,” the “expulsion of peas-
ant populations,” “private property rights,” “slave trade,” “national debt,” the “credit
system,” “stock promotions,” “ponzi schemes,” “asset destruction through inflation,”
“corporate fraud,” or the “raiding of pension funds” (Harvey, 2004, pp. 74–75), core to a
neoliberal economy, can only be thought of as personal dispossession because large-
scale processes that must be conceptualized are incomprehensible in perceptual-intuitive
thinking. Dispossession is individualized, personalized, and psychologized as a lack of
initiative or motivation. The volatility of the NLFS and the risk of losing one’s own pos-
sessions in a volatile market, is not thought in terms of a collective work to be shared and
acted upon, but as an individual task, where physical and psychological possessions are
defended by clinging to individual and individualized solutions.
In terms of political values, thinking about liberty dominates thinking about equality
or solidarity, a trend that a neoliberal form of life clearly encourages. When solutions can
be found only within oneself, liberty must gain primacy over projects such as solidarity,
which may not be successful, or equality, especially when one profits from the Other’s
dispossession, low wages, and marginalization in society. Competitive thinking and act-
ing work better when it comes to liberty than collective projects such as solidarity or
social justice. Such thinking and acting reduces liberty to economic liberty and orients
one’s focus towards lower taxes, even towards fighting for them. The idea of unjust
privilege is dismissed in a NLFS because one cannot observe structures and systems, but
one can observe that one does not feel privileged (which supports the idea of a shift
towards feelings). Perceptual-intuitive thinking corresponds to the idea that one is color-
blind (see Neville, Gallardo, & Sue, 2016), in the meaning that structural racial injustice
is not considered, nor the possibility that, as a privileged person, one can endorse racist
ideas. Such thinking serves to maintain the status quo.
If one were to make a distinction between radical critical thinking and traditional
critical thinking, it is only the latter that is supported by a NLFS, where thinking about
the possibilities of resistance to existing norms, values, and practices does not appear as
a thought or action option. Marcuse (1964) called it positive thinking, which accepts the
facticity of the status quo and no longer considers the possibility or necessity of alterna-
tives. Yet, a critical thinking that is dangerous must go beyond positive thinking, opinion
and rhetoric, instrumentality and technology, success and benefit, and beyond utilitarian
pragmatics to conceptual knowledge and careful analyses of the status quo and its alter-
natives. It is exactly this status quo transcending thinking for which the NLFS has
contempt.

Feeling
Neoliberalism means a return to feelings, and also engenders what has been called the
affective turn in the social sciences and humanities (Clough & Halley, 2007) as well as
in psychology (Pettit, 2017). There are external and internal reasons for the
10 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

return to feelings (a term used here to include affects, emotions, moods, passions, and
sentiments—without discussing the semantics and pragmatics of these terms; see
Cromby, 2015). External sources include the cultural and intellectual move away from a
reason- and enlightenment-driven modernism, a move supported by some progressives
as well as conservatives, as well as the fact that the expansion of capitalism relies primar-
ily on emotions in Western countries (Han, 2015). While the usage value of things has
decreased, the emotional need to purchase goods and services has increased. Many
“things” that are bought and consumed are often not needed and are acquired more
because of a feeling or an aesthetic emotion, most often because these “things” make
people feel good, happy, productive, proud, or distinct (at least temporarily). Indeed,
feelings are booming, as is research on affects.
Although a variety of social sciences currently deal with affect (which includes not
only individual but also collective emotions; e.g., Anderson, 2016), psychologists typi-
cally do not ask why there has been a turn to emotions or how individual affects relate
to the larger dynamics of an era. In this argument, individual and collective emotions
are connected, assuming that society expresses and provides forms of feelings that
subjects occupy, more or less, and inhabit significant aspects of neoliberal feelings.
This argument is not to dismiss internal reasons for the affective turn in psychology.
For instance, the nexus of psychological functions, faculties, or experiences is unbal-
anced, in a context where all attention has been devoted to cognition in academic
psychology. From a critical perspective, the turn to feelings corresponds to subjective
experiences on the background of the development of advanced societies. Thus, the
increasing complexity and differentiation of knowledge makes it difficult to establish
competence, expertise, or trust in thinking. It is much easier to trust “our” own feel-
ings, on which “we” see ourselves as experts, and which are much more difficult to
challenge (“that is what ‘I’ feel”). Further, “we” are more open to learning from psy-
experts about emotional regulation, our own or that of others, than to being “lectured”
by experts on epistemology.
Powerful subjects have learned both to work with feelings and that subjects need to
work on feelings. Emotions are understood as a resource or tool for manipulating and
controlling other people, most explicitly since Machiavelli (1532/1985) promoted nega-
tive emotions (fear) as an important tool for managing the conduct of other people. But
in neoliberalism, emotion is not only a means for “guiding” other people, but also for
managing one’s own feelings that become instrumental in achieving one’s goals, or
which need to be worked on, if not already leading to success. Although increasing ine-
quality (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015) and neoliberalism makes us (feel) sick (Schrecker &
Bambra, 2015), the return to feelings means a turn towards a need to work on oneself, on
autonomous solutions for “myself” and “my” family, and not on collective, generalizable
solutions (e.g., a national health care system in which all members can benefit). The
NLFS’s approach to problem solving is to work on one’s own feelings as individualized,
psychologized, and privatized products.
Stress is probably at the core of the emotional NLFS (see also Becker, 2013). Whether
the term is a metaphor or of a natural, social, or psychological kind, or whether stress is
constructed or representing something objective or external to the subject, is not dis-
cussed here, because stress is taken for granted in the experiences and pragmatics of the
Teo 11

NLFS. Fully internalized as a psychologized term, stress is more important than anxiety
(or may include anxiety; see also Berg, Huijbens, & Larsen, 2016). Forgotten are the
origins of the term’s meaning in engineering, where wear and tear (stress in a mechanical
system) may lead to a breaking point. Yet, stress in neoliberalism cannot go to the break-
ing point (except in extraordinary circumstances such as PTSD), because to do so would
risk losses in compliant subjectivity. Neoliberalism requires a state of constant stress, a
feeling of being stressed all the time as a form of existence, which is then balanced with
the search for happiness. While Holzkamp (1983) identified anxiety as a constant com-
panion of emotions under capitalist conditions, one could argue that stress has taken over
this function. Stress is not an existential entity, but the result of living under conditions
of precarity of work, competition, loss of trust, instrumentality of relations, and loneli-
ness and isolation. Compulsion as an important aspect of emotions in capitalist societies
(Holzkamp, 1983) is perhaps the outcome of permanent stress, which becomes an inter-
nalized feeling.
Stress is dialectally integrated with the search for happiness or harmony (the latter
being the Chinese version; see also Yang, 2018) in a neoliberal society (see Davies,
2015; Power, 2016). “I” work hard at “my” job, “my” relationships, and “myself,” a
stressful experience, which needs to be accompanied by “my” search for happiness. A
central feature of the NLFS is the need to be happy and to put happiness at the core of
self-activities, from which a whole happiness industry and psychologists have benefit-
ted. Not only are shopping, consuming, and leisure activities considered in terms of how
well they produce happiness, but all self-activities (including entrepreneurial ones) in
neoliberalism are considered for their happiness-producing potential. Happiness is one-
dimensionally quantifiable, autonomous, individualized, and often connected with mon-
etary value. The old saying that “money does not buy happiness” has become obsolete
and is dialectally turned into its opposite (money should make you happy). Feeling happy
is more aspirational than anything else, and is considered something one should be agen-
tic about, but it also seems that the distinction between the aspirational and actual dimen-
sions of happiness have collapsed.
Working on oneself as a tool for achieving happiness includes both the mind and the
body. Indeed, physical activities, sports, or sex appear to be a last resort for having an
authentic inner feeling, while societal isolation takes place. Feelings have made a come-
back in culture through the body, which is experienced as an irreducible first-person
perspective, especially since feelings constitute experiences and are the source for psy-
chological life (Cromby, 2015). Of course, it is forgotten how much the (gendered) body
(for instance) is subject to societal control, interventions (Butler, 1990), and politics
(Foucault, 1997). Yet, in neoliberalism, gone is the phenomenological body, the body of
pain (Scarry, 1985), or the critical body of distinction (Bourdieu, 1979/1984), which is
substituted with a normative, healthy, fit, and hedonistic body. The “disabled” body and
mind, which is the reality according to the human sciences, supports a whole industry of
(gendered) betterment, with fitness studios and plastic surgery being the most obvious
examples. Although collectivity is embodied in social norms and standards, when con-
suming, working, playing, or eating in everyday practices, such norms are never felt this
way in a NLFS. From a critical perspective, embodied feelings are equally based on
molds available in this culture.
12 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Religious or moral hurdles to the hedonistic body are gone, as is guilt, while feeling
deficient in other respects remains. Guilt is not a primary feeling under neoliberalism. On
the contrary, guilt may be the least prevalent feeling in the NLFS when it is emphasized
in a culture that one does not need to feel guilty if one is rich, wealthy, greedy, more
educated, healthier, and prettier through privileged institutional access, otherwise eco-
nomically or socially privileged, or if one is destroying the environment by consuming
excessive carbon-based resources. The NLFS tells you that you deserve all of it because
you earned (or inherited) them. Guilt takes on a monetary form, which is expressed more
effectively in certain languages (for instance, in German the word Schuld refers to debt
and to guilt), indicating their close relationship (see also Graeber, 2011). The cycle of
spending and debt is encouraged in neoliberalism in times of crises as well as at all other
times, because it maintains a neoliberal economy, and because it produces loyalty and
submission, externalized and internalized, in the NLFS. Having debt is not experienced
as an existential anxiety (even death is commodified), but rather is translated into feel-
ings of stress to pay off one’s debt. This can mean paying such debt directly, or it can
refer to strategies and choices that change taxation policies to the benefit of the NLFS
(“write off” certain debts, or to claim tax deductions, etc.).
The NLFS attempts to work on toxic emotions in other individuals and in oneself.
Anger, impatience, dissatisfaction, and moodiness are not understood as sources for
social action, based on the notion that large underlying sources of stress can be found in
a political economy. Rather, the move from feelings to actions of solidarity is disappear-
ing with a neoliberal form of life. The idea of collective emotions as a source of collec-
tive engagement is no longer conceived. Society and groups simply remain an assembly
of individuals and their families. The saying that “we are all in this together” is a rational,
but not an emotional, process, if one does not feel that one’s fate is connected to the col-
lective’s fate, and certainly the NLFS does not contain that sentiment. The NLFS does
not re-evaluate situations, processes, and contexts, as this would require the inclusion of
critical reflexivity in feeling. Rather, the NLFS prefers the immediacy of situation and
the primacy of feelings that are always understood as individual. Feelings of solidarity
are diminishing because solidarity is diminishing in a neoliberal society.

Agency
To a certain degree, the overarching psychological dimension that includes thinking and
feeling is agency. Agency can take on different shapes and is highly significant in neolib-
eralism, as choice is an important feature when moving from control to self-control, and
a NLFS requires that it be chosen willingly, so that it can be experienced as free. Of
course, the “logic” of neoliberalism demands that one chooses a neoliberal form of life,
with severe consequences if one does not desire it. Agency is also tied to practical reason
where utilitarian and pragmatic (not in a philosophical meaning, but in an ordinary lan-
guage sense) choices dominate. The utilitarian choice begins with the domain of work,
but is extended to relationships and interactions, as well as to one’s relationship to one-
self. Cost–benefit analyses in all these domains (working, interacting, selfing) dominate,
with the goal of maximizing one’s own financial, pleasure-based, or advantage-based
profit.
Teo 13

Combined with the colonization and corruption of the lifeworld, one finds a cultural
phenomenon that can be called the new nihilism (see also Teo, 2018). This case requires
and is sustained by a NLFS that no longer entertains the idea that one can change one’s
collective life conditions in order to change individual ones. Because change is only
perceived to be possible on the personal level (“you can only change yourself!” in the
logic of psychology) or on the family level (sometimes the community level is included),
agency is focused on individual self-change, a form of personal change that reflects a
cultural-collectivist individualism. The historical fact of collective movements or revolu-
tions, including the recent history of collective actions in Eastern Europe, is not con-
ceived in the NLFS, despite the evidence demonstrating that changes to the basic
structure of society are possible. The NLFS implicitly assumes the end of history, with
the neoliberal form of life being the best possible world, where significant change is
unnecessary and impossible. That there exists nothing good outside, and nothing beyond,
a neoliberal form of life, engenders a self-imposed, limiting agency.
Holzkamp (1983) coined the term restrictive agency as being characteristic of choices
in capitalist societies, connoting the idea that one gives up long-term goals of changing
or improving one’s societal life conditions for short-term personal gain, and in doing so,
reinforces the increasing reduction of agency. Holzkamp argued that in choosing restric-
tive agency one becomes one’s own enemy. Although not disagreeing on a philosophical
level, the NLFS, on a psychological level, does not experience agency in that way, and
that is what is important to neoliberalism. Although it is philosophically correct that we
can justify why maintaining a healthy environment is good, and why solutions to envi-
ronmental destruction need to be proposed on the collective and not individual level
(because of the extent of the problem), neoliberalism and a NLFS propose individual
solutions, including moving away from environmental disaster areas and buying luxury
units in bunkers that supposedly can sustain any catastrophe. Money then becomes the
resource for making this happen, which in turn provides legitimacy for a neoliberal com-
petitive economy.
In the work sphere, the NLFS chooses activities that benefit the self, including selling
one’s curriculum vitae, achievements, or competencies, whereby the limits of accuracy
can be stretched or abandoned, as long as it serves one’s goals. Modesty is counter-pro-
ductive in neoliberalism, as is introversion or shyness (see also Sugarman, 2015). Agency
should focus on overcoming both, through working on oneself and one’s skills. The
NLFS aims for extraversion because in the market place the loud and daring voice is
heard, which entails the ability to sell more. The neoliberal form of life has no time for
the person who looks inside, if this internal reflection does not result in skill manage-
ment, regulation, or achievement, and it has no time for ideas or feelings that cannot be
sold. This example of a one-dimensional reduction means also that forms and contents of
education that maximize financial benefits must be chosen, based on cost–benefit analy-
ses (how much will “I” pay versus how much money will “I” make given this specific
choice of training?).
Agency in work and personal relationships is instrumental, and even the choice of
partner can be reduced to utilitarian principles. The neoliberal form of life equally colo-
nizes the seemingly last sacred place of daily life, the family. In fact, the family has
become the primary location where neoliberal transformation occurs. Choosing to send
14 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

one’s children to private schools in order to have an educational advantage over other
children, or to expand on social and cultural capital, is one example. The instrumental
approach taken in such a choice contradicts the need for a family to remain the refuge
away from current conditions. While single-parent families struggle even more, both
partners in two-parent families need to work to maintain a neoliberal lifestyle (except in
the case of the financial elites), which grinds on the conventional role of the family as a
possible psychological support system.
Coupled with the erosion of public institutions, government agencies, and communi-
ties, enormous pressure is put on families (that need to become small businesses in neo-
liberalism), which often cannot cope with the traditional promise of healing and salvation.
Not only individuals, but also families, need to compete with each other for recognition
and, more importantly, for remuneration. Every member of the family needs to partici-
pate in a NLFS, from childhood to adulthood. A colleague once mentioned in an honest
account that she only pretends to care about what is happening to other people’s children,
when in fact she only cares about what is happening to her own children. The pretence is
required in a lifeworld where good relationships between parents and teachers and among
parents is needed for maintaining a communication-based institution. Yet, the logic of
the lifeworld is abandoned for giving one’s own children an advantage in a neoliberal
world. The point of being a father or a mother is to remove obstacles, to train self-con-
trolled children, and to increase opportunities for one’s own children (e.g., a second
language is not a value in itself but offers more opportunities in the market place). The
pretence of care for the other is no longer required in an anonymous labor market (yet,
pretence might be required for certain service jobs).
Agency is focused on liberty and for that reason the entrepreneurial self is not occu-
pied with social justice issues. Concepts such as gender, race, or class, are reduced to the
assumption that one has a color-blind, gender-blind, class-blind approach to other human
beings. In reality, agency is not about being neutral in one’s thoughts and actions, but
about being blind to the realities of injustice. Within the “logic” of neoliberal agency,
“black lives matter” can only be countered by “white lives matter.” On the other side,
social characteristics including marginalized ones can be co-opted by a NLFS when they
are used as instruments to get ahead of other people, not because of the value of social
justice. Relationships and friendships have no intrinsic value but are maintained as long
as they are useful. Or, friends and family may be defended against government interven-
tions, but not against the interventions that stem from corporations or a neoliberal
market.
Agency focuses on communication skills that become increasingly important in the
intersubjective sphere. The spoken word and the spoken-written word (as in social media)
are more important than the carefully composed-written text. The self presents itself in
the spoken or the spoken-written word, which are based on brevity and speed. Speed
means to react or move quickly when it comes to work, interactions, the self, or food,
travel, leisure, and even research, as if all were a race or competition. Agency is focused
on acquiring those communication skills that increase profit, sell goods and services,
increase one’s value, or dispossess other people. Communication itself becomes instru-
mental to the degree that “we” already know that “we” cannot trust what the salesperson
is trying to sell. Being fast also means reinforcing a limiting agency, and ultimately the
Teo 15

status quo, because many problems cannot be solved in a short time, and participating in
social justice organizations operates with long horizons.
Agency aims for success, whereby success is not confined to work or relations, but
also applies to the self. Success can be measured in terms of money and material posses-
sions, but is also applied to self-related and psychological activities, such as successful
ageing (as if ageing is always under “our” control). Success is not operationalized in
terms of making long-term contributions to societal change, or in terms of participating
in political action outside of the existing political system, or in terms of contributing to a
generalizable idea about the common or collective good or wealth. Success and the
agency for success also target the body that needs to be perceived and self-perceived as
useful. The NLFS develops an instrumental bond not only in relation to the psychologi-
cal self but also in relation to the physical body. But instead of directing agency towards
challenging society, or questioning gendered body norms, the class-based performativi-
ties of the body, or the ableist and ageist constructions of the “normal” body, the NLFS
appropriates and sutures itself actively into such norms. Agency may target neuroplasti-
city in order to mold oneself into existing ideas and in order to enhance the self for the
neoliberal order (see Pitts-Taylor, 2010).

Conclusion
Spranger (1921/1928) characterized the economic attitude as focused on the useful, self-
interest, self-preservation, and practical interests in the affairs of the business world, ful-
filling the concept of the average American businessman. This economic type believes
that education should be practical and that pure knowledge is a waste of time, and is more
interested in surpassing others in wealth than in dominating or in serving them. The NLFS
goes beyond that classic form of subjectivity in that it has become all-encompassing and
colonizing of all spheres of life, including interactions and the self. But, following
Spranger, it is conceptually helpful to suggest that there is no pure NLFS, but only tenden-
cies and amalgamated forms, and that descriptions refer to idealized phenomena.
The proposed NLFS does not address social characteristics nor their possible intersec-
tionality. The NLFS may also take on different shapes in culturally different locations,
and generalizations are historically embedded. The description of the NLFS is a collec-
tive project and should not end with an individual attempt that itself appears located
within the logic of neoliberalism (as reflected, for instance, in practices of neoliberal
publishing). Clear articulations of the NLFS allow one to identify tendencies such as its
colonizing function, from which resistances can be envisioned (see also Richardson,
Bishop, & Garcia-Joslin, 2018). One can conceive of alternative forms of subjectivity
against the trend in capitalist and advanced-capitalist countries to reduce subjectivity
one-dimensionally. The rhetoric of individualism can be understood as a form of cultural
irony. In addition, being aware of historical predecessors and of change as part of the
conditions for the possibility of human agency, subjectivity has the tendency to act once
the reduction of individuality reaches a tipping point.
In the meantime, it is possible to embrace resistances, such as the refusal to be happy
or to be resilient in the “prescriptive logic” of the psydisciplines. Such a project would
be about resisting forms of subjectivity that are based on consumerism and would focus
16 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

on what Fromm (1976) once described as being, rather than having. Thus, a starting point
for resisting the NLFS includes working on conceptual thinking; expanding the limita-
tions of common sense but also of status-quo-supporting critical thinking; targeting
thinking, feeling, and agency in their nexus; experimenting with emotions as well as with
cognitions; and in doing so engaging the whole body. Yet, this project cannot be achieved
idealistically or psychologically, if one understands that the NLFS cannot be transcended
without a transformation of the neoliberal form of life that includes the neoliberal econ-
omy. The concept of a form of subjectivity entails understanding that individual subjec-
tivity is connected with society, and that subjectivity, in and for itself, does not exist.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No: 435-2017-1035).

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Author biography
Thomas Teo is a professor of psychology in the Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of
Psychology Program at York University (Toronto, Canada). He has been active in the advance-
ment of theoretical, critical, and historical psychology throughout his professional career. His
research has been meta-psychological to provide a more reflexive understanding of the founda-
tions, trajectories, and possibilities of human subjectivity. He considers his research program to be
contributing to the psychological humanities. His latest book was published in 2018: Outline of
Theoretical Psychology: Critical Investigations (Palgrave Macmillan).