Therapy culture? Attitudes towards emotional support in Britain 169

course, a like-for-like comparison, it is a useful corrective to the image of an all-
pervasive therapeutic culture. For most people, emotional support continues to
be sought and given against a backdrop of relationships with partner, friends
and family rather than contact with therapeutic professionals.
Perhaps even more importantly, though, is the relationship between use of
formal and informal support. Again, if Furedi is correct, one might expect to see
less reliance upon friends and family among users of formal emotional support.
In fact, the opposite is true. Those who have experience of talking to GPs,
counsellors and other professionals are markedly more likely to say they would
be likely to talk to friends or family, and actually to have done so. So, among
those who have used formal support in the past, one in five (22 per cent) talk to
friends and family at least once a week (compared with 14 per cent of those
who have not used formal support), and one in three (33 per cent) talk to their
spouse or partner this often (compared with 21 per cent who have not used
formal support).
Conclusions
Furedi and others have posited a society in which therapeutic ideas and
practices have become all-pervasive. In the critical realm of emotional support,
however, this does not yet appear to be the case. There is undoubtedly an
emerging consensus about the general value of ‘talking about things’ and a
sense that we are now more open about difficulties in our emotional lives than
we once were. But this does not translate into a universal or even widespread
acceptance of formal therapeutic intervention. A sizeable proportion of the
population remains wary of the idea of therapy or counselling, or simply
understands very little about it. Meanwhile, the number with direct experience
of ‘professional’ emotional support (with the exception of that offered by GPs)
remains relatively low, certainly by comparison with the figures Furedi himself
cites for the United States, and there is little evidence of a groundswell of unmet
everyday demand.
But perhaps more interesting than the idea of a universal or dominant
‘therapeutic culture’ is the notion of one that is highly patterned or
differentiated. Gender is obviously a key dimension here. While there may be
evidence from elsewhere that, despite popular stereotypes, men and women
have similar communication skills even if they choose to behave differently
(Cameron, 2007), these findings suggest that women do tend to be more
positive about the value of emotions talk and more attuned to the possibilities of
formal emotional support – even if they are no more likely than men to make
actual use of talk-based therapies. The point here is to highlight how continuing
inequalities within interpersonal relationships – and powerful constructions
about how we should act as men and as women – shape our beliefs and
practices when it comes to talking about our emotions. The findings also
suggest, however, that significant variations between different groups of men
and women need to be taken account of.
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