Therapy culture? Attitudes towards emotional support in Britain 157

nationally representative character of the sample also allows us to ask whether
such developments can really be said to be universal and to explore the ways in
which experiences of therapeutic culture may vary between different social
groups.
It’s good to talk?
We start by examining general attitudes towards talking about emotions (or
what we will call ‘emotions talk’). To examine this, the survey included a
number of attitude statements to tap not only individuals’ own orientation
towards talking about their feelings but also perceptions of whether such
practices are now more common than in the past. Respondents were asked to
show the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with each statement. The
wording of the statements is shown in Table 7.1.
The table shows significant support for Furedi’s assertion (2004) that British
society is no longer characterised by “reserve, understatement and reticence”.
Just over a half of people say they find it easy to talk about their feelings
(although a quarter do not) and around two-thirds indicate that it is important to
them to be able to do so. Views are relatively evenly balanced on the issue of
whether people “spend too much time talking about their feelings”. There is
certainly no evidence of widespread unease about the extent of ‘emotions talk’,
though there is a sizeable minority (two-fifths) who do express such a view.
It is striking that two-thirds agree that “people nowadays spend more time
talking about their feelings” while a half indicate that they grew up in a
household where “people didn’t talk about their feelings”. Both these findings
suggest that, regardless of changes in actual ‘emotional practice’, there is a
widespread perception that emotions are now discussed more freely than in the
past.
Table 7.1 General attitudes towards ‘emotions talk’
Agree Neither Disagree
I find it easy to talk about my feelings % 55 20 25
People spend too much time talking about their
feelings – they should just get on with things % 35 25 40
It’s important to me to be able to talk
about my feelings % 68 18 14
I grew up in the sort of household where people
didn’t really talk about their feelings % 48 14 37
People nowadays spend more time talking about
their feelings than in the past % 66 19 12

Base: 2102


To examine attitudes towards talking about emotions in more detail, we
constructed a scale to act as a summary measure of people’s responses to the
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