Scripts for the ‘good couple’: Individualization and the reproduction of gender inequality

Introduction

The phenomenon of real-life, ordinary couples doing battle and receiving therapy to solve their problems on TV would have seemed bizarre just a few years ago, but forms part of the everyday TV experience today. Therapists, life-coaches and other experts – not only on TV, but also in magazines, self-help books and other media – are eager to share their analysis of what is wrong in people’s lives, and to offer methods, tools and solutions to achieve a happy life. The above excerpt is from a Swedish TV programme entitled Between You and Me (‘Mellan dig och mig’), in which couples were filmed before, during and after receiving therapy. The man and the woman, Markus and Madeleine, were – as is obvious from the excerpt – quarrelling about housework. The experts’ analysis of the problem was that Madeleine had a ‘need to control’ and, after offering various tools for the couple to ‘work with’, the experts – and the viewers – leave them, harmoniously laughing over a romantic dinner.

Therapeutic thinking plays a significant role in today’s cultural, individual and also sociological narratives. The terminology of therapy has entered into everyday language and gained the status of common sense, making it almost impossible to avoid. Expressions such as ‘increase your self-esteem’, ‘work on yourself’, ‘find your inner self’ or ‘talk it through’ have become taken-for-granted truths for the pursuit of a happy life and happy relationships (Furedi, 2004; Johansson, 2006). Originally belonging to psychological science and practice, therapeutic ways of thinking have spread to other areas, both professional (such as family counselling, social work and various ‘coaching’ services) and, increasingly, to popular culture (Gauntlett, 2002; Johansson, 2006; Rose, 1999; White, 1992). In popular culture, therapeutic narratives play a significant role in constructing and reproducing images of the ‘good life’, as well as methods of how to realize this. At the centre of therapeutic thinking is the autonomous individual: the assumption that everyone has the potential to achieve happiness if he/she – with the help of therapeutic expertise – overcomes the blockage of ‘self-realization’ (Gill, 2007; Rose, 1999).

In sociological theories of individualization and the future of family and intimate relationships, popular therapeutic thinking and culture have come to play a significant role. Popular therapeutic manuals for heterosexual couples have been declared a symptom and an effect of individualization processes, both argued to be evidence of individualism and the end of scripts for a life together (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, 2002), and, on the contrary, to hold the potential for a more democratic, gender-equal couple (Giddens, 1992).

In this article, popular therapeutic culture for couples is analysed. Taking my point of departure in the – somewhat divergent – analyses provided by the theorists of individualization, I carry out a critical analysis of the constructions of the ‘good couple’ in popular therapy. In particular, I analyse the paradoxical relation between, on the one hand, individualized gender-neutral assumptions about the couple, and, on the other, the reproduction of gender inequality. The empirical material for this investigation is Swedish popular therapeutic culture for couples, a discourse that I argue is of great interest considering the long-standing history of an ideology of gender equality in Sweden.

Individualization theories and the threat or promise of popular therapy

Through the metaphor of individualization, Anthony Giddens (1992), Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1995, 2002) draw a picture of changes in heterosexual relationships from a traditional to a modern – and late modern – marriage and couple relationship. This historical narrative has a long history in sociological theorizing on the family, e.g. in Parsons’ (1971) structural functionalist model of the ‘normal’ family (cf. Roman, 2004). As Gross (2005) argues, theories of modernization went out of fashion in the 1960s and 1970s, but reappeared in the early 1990s in theories on post and late modernity and focusing in particular on changes in the ‘private sphere’ (cf. Bauman, 2003; Castells, 2000). In theories of individualization, marriage is suggested as having shifted from an economic to an emotional unit: feelings of love and satisfaction rather than economic necessity make a man and woman stay together today, it is argued. Earlier scripts on how to run one’s life and relationships have disappeared, leaving the individual with (at least the impression of) endless choices and possibilities of constructing one’s self-biography. Individualization also brings the ideal of gender equality to the fore: since both men and women enter the paid labour market, an equal sharing of housework and care of children is assumed to follow.

Both Beck and Beck-Gernsheim and Giddens refer to popular therapeutic discourse as a symptom and an expression of the effects of individualization. However, they interpret the discourse in different ways. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim see evidence of radical individualism. The ‘relationship work’ they see promoted in their analysis of self-help books, where ‘[c]ouples have to get involved in a continuing dialogue’ to find ‘compatible definitions of love and marriage’, is indeed aimed at helping couples stay together, but the actual message of the books is, according to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, not to give advice for a life together but rather to stress the importance of ‘protecting “me” against “us”’ (1995: 92, 97). There are no scripts for a life together anymore, they argue, and thus people are very much on their own when entering the increasingly risky enterprise of couple relationships (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 11). According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, the future will therefore lead to more conflicts between the genders and to relationship upheaval. Giddens, in contrast, sees potentials for new ideals and ways of living. He suggests that when the ‘self’ becomes ‘a reflexive project’ for everyone (1992: 30), ties to predestined traditions and patterns, such as old norms of marriage and love, diminish. This reflexive project of the self is ‘carried on amid a profusion of reflexive resources: therapy and self-help manuals of all kinds, television programmes and magazine articles’ (Giddens, 1992: 30). These reflexive resources – especially therapy and self-help manuals, which he labels ‘texts of our times’ – are expressions of processes of reflexivity within society, processes that they ‘chart out and help shape’ (1992: 64ff.). Furthermore, he argues, many of the reflexive resources are emancipatory and ‘point towards changes that might release individuals from influences which block their autonomous development’ (1992: 64). For Giddens, the emancipated couple is captured in the term pure relationship, a relationship centred on individual satisfaction (maintained only as long as both individuals get something out of it), constant self and couple reflections, democracy and gender equality (1992: 58ff.).

Critical of the image drawn by these theorists of late modernity, feminist research shows that heterosexual couple relationships continue to be a significant ideal for organizing intimate life and, most importantly, that gender inequality continues to prevail (e.g. Gross, 2005; Jamieson, 1998; Smart, 2007). Even in the Nordic context, with its strong gender equality ideal, practices of heterosexual couples reveal a reproduction of gendered inequalities (Ahlberg et al., 2008; Ahrne and Roman, 1997; Grönlund and Halleröd, 2008; Haavind and Magnusson, 2005; Holmberg, 1995). ² However, apart from acknowledging that late modern theorists, in particular Giddens, seem to avert from sociological thinking and adopt both the language and solutions of popular therapy (Jamieson, 1999; Smart, 2007), there has been relatively little interest in examining critically the actual interpretation of popular therapy made by these theorists. There is indeed a long tradition of feminist problematizition of therapeutic approaches (Miller, 1974; Mitchell, 1974), for example in relation to child abuse (Mellberg, 2011; Nelson, 1987) and domestic violence (Lundgren, 1995), stressing the problematic consequences of individualizing understandings of the situation of women within the discourse (see also Haavind and Magnusson, 2005; Magnusson, 2002; Magnusson and Marecek, 2002). Given the tremendous growth in therapeutic culture, especially within the domain of popular culture (Berlant and Warner, 2000; Danielsen and Mühleisen, 2009; Engdahl, 2009; Furedi, 2004; Gauntlett, 2002; Johansson, 2006, 2007; Lasch, 1977; Rose, 1998; White, 1992), as well as the increased presence of therapeutic thinking in individuals’ and couples’ narratives (Danielsen, 2008; Eriksson and Nyman, 2008; Haavind, 1984; Johansson, 2007), and, not least, the recent affirmation of popular therapeutic methods for couples by Nordic welfare state institutions (Danielsen, 2008; Danielsen and Mühleisen, 2009), ³ I argue for the necessity of continuing this critical investigation, as well as the need for an analysis of the underlying assumptions, logics and effects of therapeutic culture. In line with the theorists of individualization, then, I argue that popular therapy for couples is an important discourse to study when looking at intimate relationships and gender today. However, as the following analysis shows, and contrary to the conclusions drawn by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, there is neither a disappearance of scripts for a life together, nor, and contrary to Giddens’ argument, a simple potential for democratic gender-equal couple relationships in the discourse.

Empirical material and methods

Inspired by Giddens’ concept of ‘reflexive resources’, I collected an archive of texts on couples and relationships – texts aimed at identifying and solving ‘problems’ – from which certain fields were chosen as case studies – the ‘corpus’ (Fairclough, 1992). To be included in the corpus, as well as focusing on couples’ problems, the texts had to have a therapeutic emphasis, be directed at offering concrete help to readers or viewers and be in a popular format (which excluded professional texts for, for example, counsellors or therapists; cf. Hochschild, 1994; Starker, 2002). Because of a special interest in the Swedish context, with its long-standing tradition of gender-equality politics and discourse, the field was limited to texts in Swedish. However, considering the globalized reality of media, texts translated into Swedish were included. The entire project consists of three case studies: ⁴ self-help books for couples, therapeutic TV programmes focusing on relationships and web discussion boards linked to the TV programmes. ⁵ In this article, the analysis of the TV programmes is in focus. This choice is motivated by the will to present a form of popular therapy that is becoming more and more widespread (Gauntlett, 2002; Wood et al., 2008), and also, I argue, represents a more complex cultural text than, for example, self-help books. In self-help books, which is the primary empirical material referred to by Giddens and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, the expert’s voice can dominate almost entirely. In the TV programmes, the expert’s voice is heard alongside, and in relation to other voices, both directly (through the presence of the individuals receiving therapy) and indirectly (through the construction of the dramaturgy of the programmes). ⁶ In the TV programmes, the discourse presented in the self-help books is played out in relation to the narrative of a specific couple, thus simultaneously offering the potential to analyse the programmes as representations of popular therapeutic discourse on couples, and also to see how this discourse ‘works’ in a specific case. This, as we shall see, opens up for a more thorough analysis of the discourse than the one presented by the theorists of late modernity.

Two TV shows produced for Swedish television, where couples received therapy from experts, have been transcribed and analysed. These were Together (‘Tillsammans’) and Between You and Me (‘Mellan dig och mig’) – in all, 22 episodes. The methodological tools used in the analysis are drawn from post-Marxist discourse analysis (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985/2001) and narrative analysis (Riessman, 1993). ⁷ Central nodes and subject positions (such as the good couple, couple’s work, couple–individual–expert) as well as contradictions and silences (e.g. regarding the simultaneous presence and absence of gender in popular therapy) have been identified. Since the aim of the analysis was not only to identify the underlying contours of the popular therapeutic discourse on couples (which could be done more easily in the self-help books), but also to see the ‘workings’ of the discourse, a systematic analysis of what was said and done, and by whom, on the shows, as well as what was presented in images, was carried out. For example, through focusing on how the couple’s ‘problem’ was defined throughout the episodes, the complex constructions of agency, responsibilities (to oneself, to the other, to the expert and to the ‘process of change’), dependencies and autonomy could be identified. Also, the dramaturgy and the use of images could be contrasted to what was said and done on the shows. Together, this enabled an analysis of conditions for change and implicit and explicit references to the ways in which gender seems to matter for what comes out as viable solutions in the discourse.

Recognition and change: The dramaturgy of therapeutic TV programmes

The outset of popular therapy in general is a wish to provide knowledge by an expert, knowledge thought to be of practical use for a general audience (cf. Simonds, 1992; Starker, 2002; White, 1992). ⁸ The dimension of recognition is important in the discourse in that the expert needs to convince the viewer that the expert’s particular analysis and method says and contributes something to the viewer’s own life. An important enhancer of this feeling is the sharing of ‘real-life’ stories – stories that describe a contextualized ‘real-life’ experience of a particular individual or couple (e.g. the expert or a patient of the expert). In self-help books, these stories – which are usually plenty, and drawn from different contexts and situations – play a central part in bringing out the expert’s argument (cf. Hochschild, 1994: 4), while in therapeutic TV programmes they assume even greater importance as the focal point around which a whole episode is built. Capturing the ‘real’ interactions of the couple and thus giving the impression of authenticity is important in therapeutic TV programmes. Familiar tools from the reality TV genre are used, such as the use of hand-held cameras or the camera placed in a fixed position in, for example, the couple’s living room, giving the impression of ‘fly-on-the-wall’ observation (cf. Hill, 2007). The dimension of recognition is paired with the most central dimension of the discourse: to enable change in people’s lives. In the TV episodes, change is present in the dramaturgical makeover format of the shows: the couple are filmed in sequences that are believed to highlight their problems (the ‘before’ dimension); the experts enter, give their analysis and offer tools to the couple (the intervention); and, finally, the changed and improved relationship is displayed in new film sequences of the couple (the ‘after’ dimension) (cf. Wood et al., 2008). While self-help books for couples usually offer a generalized and complete picture of how to change and achieve a good relationship, TV programmes are more individualized, focusing on a specific – though generalized as a ‘common’ – problem (e.g. lack of family time, different views on sex, finances, whether to have children, parenting). The tension between individualized and generalized aspirations in the discourse – the ‘real-life’ stories, on the one hand, and the assumption of general truths about the life of a couple, on the other – enables, I argue, a construction of responsible autonomous couples (Rose, 1999), a construction with effects on how gender can be perceived in the discourse.

Normal fantasies and good couples: Constructing the ‘responsible autonomous’ couple

The characterizations of a good, healthy and mature relationship in popular therapeutic culture for couples are, as is the argument of Giddens (1992), indeed very similar to the characterization of pure relationships. The ideal constructed is a very attractive one indeed: the ‘good couple’ consists of two equal partners, constantly communicating about their selves and their relationship – doing the ‘relationship work’, as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) put it – always there for each other and respecting each other’s individuality. However, what does not emerge in the analysis of the theorists of individualization is how this ideal couple are closely connected with constructions of normality, constructions that are, in a complex way, related to the ‘individualism’ of the discourse identified by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995). Together, I argue, this leads not to the erasure of scripts for a life together, but, on the contrary, to reproduction of the ideal of the ‘good couple’.

The ideal couple are closely connected with ideas of normality in the discourse. As pointed out earlier, there is a construction of ‘general truths’ about the couple, e.g. the idea that all couples go through the same phases and have ‘normal problems’, a construction that can be seen as a key justification of the discourse as such (e.g., Von Sivers and Lindgren, 2006: 9 ff., 19). The stress of normality, however, is accompanied by a strong emphasis in the discourse that being a good couple does not come easily: the healthy relationship needs to be worked at (e.g., Böhm, 2006: 37, 225). Working on your relationship means dedicating time to talk and reflect on your self and the relationship: where you are heading, what feels good and not so good. In the TV programmes and on the programme websites, a number of different methods, ‘tools’ and solutions to facilitate the couple’s work are suggested; for example, in the form of personality and relationship tests or five easy-to-follow steps. A successful couple’s work is demanding, it is argued, but the rewards are great. The dramaturgy of the TV programmes displays this through the makeover format: the problematic ‘before’ and the enhanced ‘after’ when the couple are presented as happy and working on their process of change.

In charting out the contours of the good, normal and ‘working’ couple, a complex relationship between the individual and the couple emerges. On the one hand, it is argued that the individual alone is responsible for creating a good relationship; it is stressed continuously that the individual should only try to change him or herself, never his or her partner. In one episode of Together, the woman, Julia, is angry and frustrated with her partner, Johan, who plays computer games all day and takes no responsibility for their shared life. The expert gives Julia the advice not to try to change Johan.

‘Julia can’t do anything about this’, the expert says and turns to Julia. ‘You cannot make other people do things, you might think you can, but you can’t, absolutely. You only have power over one person in the world and that is yourself. So to solve problems together with your husband means going back to yourself, look at yourself, and decide for yourself.’ (Together, episode 5)

On the other hand, the similarly continuous stress of the wonderful gains of living in a couple makes the goal of defining the individual’s needs and dealing with one’s own faults rather fixed: the goal is to create and sustain a good couple. Julia is told to ‘grab a piece of paper and a pen’ and have a moment to herself, writing down what she needs to make the relationship and the family work. The focus on the individual detected is thus a focus that still assumes the direction of the individual’s needs as being towards creating the good couple. The unquestioned goal of the programmes is to ‘get the tools from the relationship-coaches to make your relationship into a good one’, as is stated in the introduction of the first episode of Between You and Me.

A successful realization of the good couple is also dependent on the willingness to change according to the definitions and routes provided by the experts. The case of Tomas and Therese in one TV episode of Between You and Me illustrates this. According to the experts, Tomas and Therese’s problem is that things ‘are going too fast’ in their lives. Because of their demanding jobs, they do not have enough ‘family time’ together, that is, time to care for each other and their relationship. The suggested tools are to focus on making the couple realize that they need to slow down and satisfy their ‘needs’ better. Tomas seems to accept the experts’ analysis at an early stage in the programme. Therese, on the other hand, disagrees and is not sure whether a lack of family time is their real problem; in her view, their main problem is financial insecurity. The experts do not like Therese’s analysis and argue that they need to ‘focus on their private life given the financial situation they are in’. As the programme continues and Therese insists that her definition is the right one – and as she also refuses to perform one of the ‘tools’ suggested by the experts (painting a self-portrait in the woods) – Therese herself is constructed as the major problem. One of the experts now talks about Therese as ‘unwilling to change’.

Tomas is concerned about life going too fast and wants more pauses in life. Therese is more reluctant and not sure whether that is really possible. ‘Do I believe what they [the experts] have to offer, and where is the miracle solution they promised me?’ To achieve a change, you have to want to change, and to be willing to scrutinize what can be changed. And in the end it is you [pointing her finger at the TV screen] and no one else who makes the change. (Between you and me, episode 4)

Once again the focus on the individual is ambiguous: on the one hand, the individual should define her or his needs, make up her or his mind about what she or he wants, and deal with her or his own problems (not those of her or his partner); on the other hand, however, she or he has to comply with the experts’ analysis and solution to the problem. Otherwise she or he will limit the possibilities of achieving the goal: the good couple.

What is constructed here is, to utilize Nikolas Rose’s term, an autonomous responsible couple (1999): a couple that is simultaneously autonomous and dependent. On the one hand, the narrative builds on the supposition of the individual as independent and responsible for ‘working’ on his or her ‘own change’; on the other hand, it constructs individual as dependent on the experts’ definition of the ideal of the ‘good couple’ as well as on guidelines of the way to get there. The dream of the good couple is often experienced as very private – a fantasy that gives pleasure and ambition as well as guilt and anxiety when reality cannot live up to this dream. In the popular therapeutic narrative, this dream is given a generalized form in what I term ‘normal fantasies’ of the couple, where everyone is expected to go through the same ‘phases’ and face the same problems. The possibility of fulfilling the dream is always there – if you can just succeed in making the right relationship work.

Gender neutrality and the reproduction of gendered stereotypes

The construction of the responsible autonomous couple also enables the simultaneous disappearance and reproduction of gender in Swedish popular therapy. This is made possible through the dominance of the gender-neutral stance in the discourse. ⁹ For example, women and men are rarely referred to in gendered terms, but rather talked about as ‘individuals’ or ‘partners’. The gender-neutral stance is, one could imagine, close to the kind of reflexive resources Giddens had in mind when talking about emancipation and autonomy. This, I argue, makes an analysis of the discourse of utmost interest: do gender-neutral (or almost gender-neutral) texts on couples enable a more gender-equal and emancipated relationship?

In the popular therapeutic discourse, there seems to be an underlying agreement that the ‘good couple’ is a gender-equal one (cf. Danielsen and Mühleisen, 2009). A good couple is a couple characterized by ‘accessibility, appreciation, belonging, independence, responsibility, equality and legibility’ as is stated in a popular self-help book (Von Sivers and Lindgren, 2006: 117). But it is also a couple in which gender is often assumed to have no significance at all. The ideal of gender equality becomes a taken-for-granted point of departure in these popular therapeutic narratives, a point of departure that seems to make it unnecessary to talk about gender at all. The ‘normal couple’s’ problems come from ‘differences’ – different personalities, different ‘tempos’, different goals in life – but this difference is not related to gender.The couple consists of two autonomous individuals, doing ‘relationship work’ in a vacuum, free and independent of cultural constructions and social structures of gender.

The absence of an explicit discussion of gender is, paradoxically, the very reason that gender can still be reproduced in the narrative. When the gender-neutral language meets the actual practices of the couple – present in the ‘real-life’ examples of the filmed sequences of the TV programmes – gender inevitably emerges. The ‘tools’ and solutions offered by the experts often place the participants in narrow and traditionally gendered frameworks: men ‘take action’, ‘set limits’ and decide the time and place for relationship talk. Women connect with their feelings (preferably in nature or close to the children), ‘mirror’ the man and refrain from ‘controlling’ by keeping quiet, to mention a few examples from the programmes.

In one episode of Between You and Me, when Linus and Linnéa express anxiety over their situation as parents of a small child, the tools given to them put them in very different situations. Linus is told to start paying more attention to his ‘needs’, to stop trying to be the perfect dad and to allow himself to be ‘just Linus’ and spend more time with his friends. Linnéa, on the other hand, is instructed in ‘speechless communication’ – ‘the communication you have with the child’ – sitting up a tree with one of the experts; she is also asked to consider that ‘the years with young children are indeed a short period in life, and soon after there will be time for your own needs’. Linus is seen as a person with needs, able to separate his role as ‘Linus’ and his role as ‘father’, while Linnéa becomes only mother, inseparable from the maternal role. Linus is further directed outwards, to friends and social relations, while Linnéa is asked to turn inwards, to find and be assured in her abilities as a mother. On the TV programme’s website, the tools allocated to Linus and Linnéa are presented as neutral and useful for all – despite gender. Put in context, however, the reproduction of the traditional gender roles of the institution of hetero intimacy is rather striking.

The tools offered to Markus and Madeleine – the couple in the introductory example quarrelling about housework – are also illustrative. Madeleine is given a tool by the experts called a ‘stop button’, a symbolic button that she should place over her mouth every time she feels the need to ‘control’ someone (that is, to tell Markus about her dissatisfaction with the lack of work he does in the home). Markus gets a tool ‘to hold a meeting’ with Madeleine, in which they should discuss ‘expectations and production’. ¹⁰ The outcome of the couple working with these tools is discussed in a final meeting with the experts.

‘He [Markus] told me yesterday [in the meeting] that he is scared of me and my reactions’, Madeleine says in a sad voice. ‘He is scared of disappointing me. He says this is the reason why he doesn’t take the initiative at home. And that’s not good. It made me think, if Markus feels that way as a grown-up, what about my kids?’

‘Focus on the things that work’, the expert replies, ‘and tell him you see those things. The things that do not work, well, register them and put them right at the back of your mind. Because it won’t make any difference if you tell your other half that “you didn’t do very well there, you could have done better”. Most of the time, the other person already knows that anyway.’

In Markus and Madeleine’s case, the tools offered to solve their problems result in Markus getting the power to decide the contours of the couple’s communication, while Madeleine starts questioning her own experience of what their problems really are (perhaps her attitude is the problem, not Markus’s lack of participation in housework). She is told to stop making demands on her husband and be happy with the few things he does do at home. In the end, Madeleine’s role as responsible for housework is reinstated, while Markus is given the possibility of retraction.

Reproduction of gendered stereotypes, such as those presented in the examples of Linus and Linnea and Markus and Madeleiene, is made possible in the popular therapeutic narrative because of the gap constructed between, on the one hand, the assumption of the autonomous individual as the starting point of the therapy and, on the other, the normal fantasy of the couple (that is, the assumption of there being generalized truths of life in a relationship). When the narrative of the autonomous individual is said to be the point of departure of the therapy, it is considered irrelevant that for example it is primarily individuals with a female gender who express dissatisfaction about an unequal sharing of housework. In the same way, it is then irrelevant that the solution or tool that, according to the experts, ‘works best’ in a specific case – a solution and tool that is formulated in general terms – reproduces gendered stereotypes in practice. In the episode of Linus and Linnéa referred to above, the experts make a (very rare) reflection upon the fact that the advice given to Linus might seem provocative.

The experts meet between the coaching and therapy sessions with the couple to discuss what solutions and tools they should suggest. The expert who has been talking to Linus tells the other expert that he suggested that Linus should spend more time with his friends, ‘just hanging out’, as Linus ‘wants to be so good at everything, at work and as a father’ and is losing the part of himself that he is when he’s with his friends.

‘Hmm’, the other expert replies, ‘sounds like a good idea. But the question is, is it “politically correct”?’

‘Well, it isn’t, not at all’, the first one replies emphatically. ‘But it is so easy to put people into prescribed categories. “If you’re a parent you should do like this, if you have small kids life is like this.” And I think that the whole point of coaching and therapy is to view individuals beyond the stereotype.’

Thus, the responsible autonomous couple is constructed as an entity of two independent individuals without gender who fulfil the fantasy of the ‘good couple’ through the general and gender-neutral solutions and tools offered by the experts – the very solutions and tools that paradoxically place them in gendered frameworks. By navigating between the individual and the general, the popular therapeutic narrative manages to obscure gender as a social and cultural category, while simultaneously reproducing traditional assumptions of gender by referring to ‘what works’ for the individual.

The ‘equal problem’

The assumption of the responsible autonomous couple also hinders an understanding of the couple relationship as unequal. The two individuals in a couple may well be ‘out of balance’, apparent for instance in talk about ‘her being too fast’ and ‘him being too slow’ when describing different attitudes and amounts of work carried out in the household. But since the couple is assumed to be detached from social structures and cultural norms of gender, this ‘imbalance’ cannot be explained in terms of power or inequality. The construction of an equal problem, that is, the assumption that both partners are responsible for creating and reproducing the problem, as well as for carrying out ‘couple work’, makes compromise the most common solution: he is wrong, she is wrong, and they both need to change. In the case of unequal distribution of housework, the consequences of this become apparent. Interestingly, in the TV programmes and self-help books, conflicts about housework and caring responsibilities are rarely cited as a typical (general) couple’s problem. However, in some of the ‘real-life’ stories, as well as in TV episodes, an indirect presence of conflicts about these issues emerges; for example, in the episode of Åke and Åsa. The couple’s problem is introduced as ‘having become friends rather than sexual partners’, and is seen as a consequence of Åke’s and Åsa’s ‘differences’.

‘Åke and Åsa have absolutely different tempos’, the expert says. ‘Åke is too slow and Åsa is way too fast. What they both need is to adjust their speed, so they can meet in the middle.’ (Between You and Me, episode 7) 

To the viewer it becomes apparent that the main area where Åsa is ‘too fast’ is housework and caring. The solution – which is presented to the couple in an exercise where they ‘change roles’ for a couple of days  – is compromise: he needs to care more about their shared life, and she needs to ‘slow down’ and ‘let go of her control’ over the situation. In this way Åke’s and Åsa’s main problem (according to the experts) – a lack of sex – can be solved.

The unwillingness of the popular therapeutic discourse to cite conflicts about housework as a ‘common problem’ in relationships is startling in the light of research identifying this as an area of great importance to heterosexual couples, and especially for women (e.g., Ahrne and Roman, 1997; Eldén, 2011; Grönlund and Halleröd, 2008; Magnusson, 2006). And when the issue appears, as in the case of Åke and Åsa, or as in the example of Markus and Madeleine above, there is an underlying notion of the problem as being equal and shared: that she does too much is just as big a problem as his doing too little. As Epstein and Steinberg (1995) argue, the assumption of an equal point of departure that is characteristic of the therapy discourse usually ends up reproducing inequality:

[T]he therapy discourse serves to reinforce the notion of equal responsibility in any and all relationships. Yet, to expect and demand equal responsibility by people who do not have equal power…effectively places an unequal burden on the less powerful. (Epstein and Steinberg, 1995: 99ff.)

The construction of responsible, autonomous couples and ‘equal problems’ seems to delegitimize women’s experiences of injustice and inequality regarding housework. Madeleine’s and Åsa’s dissatisfaction with the division of labour is defined in terms of having a problem of a ‘need to control’. It becomes an individualized, gender-neutral and equal problem, to be solved through acknowledging the equal responsibilities of change, regardless of gender.

Conclusion

The analysis of Swedish popular therapy suggests that individualizing processes primarily have the effect, not of ‘freeing’ people from constraining scripts, but of individualizing those scripts. In arguing that scripts for a life together are disappearing in late modern society, and pointing to the individualism of popular therapy as proof of this, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995, 2002) overlook how taking a point of departure in the individual in itself enables the reproduction of scripts for the couple. The constant assurance of the responsibility of the individual to do the ‘relationship work’ and to complete the fantasy of the ‘good couple’ strengthens the idea of the institution of heterosexuality as desirable and possible. Failure to fulfil the ideal lies with the individual or the couple, never the expert, leaving the ideal of the good couple unproblematized (cf. Berlant and Warner, 2000; Epstein and Steinberg, 1995; Evans, 2003). Rather than telling the story of how to ‘protect “me” against “us”, as expressed by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995: 97), popular therapy for couples tells the story of the wonders of the ‘good couple’ if you could only manage to protect ‘us’ through yourself, that is, by taking your responsibility and doing your ‘relationship work’ of reflection and communication.

The promise of the popular therapeutic narrative as an emancipatory tool for the democratic and gender-equal couple, as suggested by Giddens (1992), must also be questioned. The analysis of Swedish popular therapy – a cultural product of a society and context where the ideals of gender equality are considered to be esteemed – shows that the individualistic assumption of the discourse enables a reproduction of gender stereotypes and provides a legitimizing cultural narrative for the reproduction of gendered inequality in heterosexual intimate relationships. A key element here is the presence of gender neutrality. The Swedish popular therapy for couples reproduces a gender-neutral stance, talking about individuals and ‘different personalities’, an approach that indeed appears more tolerant and fluid than for example the archetypical talk of men from Mars and women from Venus (cf. Crawford, 2004). However, a gender-neutral stance paints a picture of an ideal world beyond gender inequalities and thereby risks obscuring – and indirectly reproducing – the gender stereotypes and inequalities that still very much inform heterosexual couple relationships. Conflicts and inequalities, such as the one related to (a lack of) shared responsibility for housework, are hard to discuss and even harder to change in a framework that individualizes the problem and refuses to see that – socially constructed but still very ‘real’ – men and women gain differently (and unequally) from a change of the order of things.

The gender-neutral approach has been identified as a signature of Nordic gender equality discourse (cf. Andenæs, 2005; Eduards, 2002). In research on couples and gender equality, some have argued for the possibilities emerging in gender-neutral reflexivity (Aarseth, 2008), while others have pointed to the problematic effect of gender-neutral assumptions in limiting the ways in which issues of gender can be formulated (Danielsen and Mühleisen, 2009; Haavind, 2008; Magnusson, 2006). Gender-neutral and individualizing understandings of couple relationships are indeed very common in individual’s and couple’s narratives in the Nordic context, understandings that very often seem to, in practice – and as in the popular therapeutic narrative analysed here – reproduce gendered stereotypes and legitimize gendered inequalities (e.g., Eriksson and Nyman, 2008; Haavind, 1984; Holmberg, 1995; Magnusson, 2006). The similarities between individual and cultural narratives call, I argue, for the necessity of taking seriously how discourses and practices are mutually implicated in each other in studying family and relationships in general (Morgan 2011), and also, especially, for the necessity of future analysis of the effects of the expansion of therapeutic discourses on intimate relationships in the Nordic countries and elsewhere.

The problem of gender-neutrality identified in the discourse can also be argued to extend to other forms of ‘neutrality’ present in the general narrative of the ‘good couple’. In what ways are the ideal that is being constructed also a reproduction of a classed and racialized ideal, of the white middle-class couple? International research on popular therapy has argued that the ideals constructed are indeed very closely connected with the subject position of the white middle-class (Illouz, 1997; Skeggs, 2006; Wood et al., 2008). ¹¹ In a Nordic context, Hilde Danielsen (2008) has argued that popular therapeutic discourse for couples constructs a certain kind of reflexivity and communication – what I would call the ability to perform the ‘relationship work’ necessary for pursuing the ‘good couple’ – that is in itself a classed skill. Although this was not the primary focus of the analysis of the TV programmes in this project, ¹² differences in how the participating couples were treated by the experts could be seen, where the middle-class couples were praised for their ‘better’ (or rather ‘right’) skills in communication. ¹³ The construction of general truths about the couple, then, seems to become a construction of a very particular couple: the autonomous, responsible, gender-neutral, respectable (middle-class) and white couple. When, in addition, this narrative is taken into sociological theories as a legitimate picture of the state of being for intimate relationships today – as is the case in the theories of late modern intimacy – we run the risk of obscuring the ways in which the ideal in itself is reproducing inequalities and exclusions.

TV episodes

Tillsammans (Together), 12 episodes at TV3 (Commercial broadcasting channel, part of Viasat). Spring 2004.

Mellan dig och mig (Between You and Me), 10 episodes at SVT channel 2 (Swedish public service broadcaster). Autumn of 2005.

Websites

Sensus adult education institute (2011) PREP. Available at: http://www.sensus.se/prep.

Swedish National Institute of Public Health (2011) Föräldrarelationen – prevention av konflikter [Parent’s relationships – prevention of conflicts]. Available at: http://www.fhi.se/Handbocker/Uppslagsverk-barn-och-unga/Foraldrarelationen--prevention-av-konflikter/