The Narratives of «Self-help» in Contemporary Russian-language Podcasts

Therapeutic discourse has integrated in contemporary Western European and Russian society, implying the massive use of psychological conceptual apparatus outside the professional therapeutic field. The current study examines one of the aspects of therapeutic discourse – the culture of «self-help». It is based on the idea of a person's ability to independently solve life problems and develop personally through reading books, listening to podcasts and seminars. In this work the focus is on the study of podcasts that are one of the most popular modern mediums for the dissemination of therapeutic narratives. The senior thesis examines how the narrative of «self-help» is constructed in Russian-language podcasts. The analysis is based on four podcasts: «You are important», «It's easier to cope», «It's good that you said that» and «Otvet.co». The theoretical basis of the research is the theory of therapeutic turn proposed by E. Illouz and O. J. Madsen. This work is divided into two parts. The first part - the theoretical one - investigates the phenomenon of the therapeutic turn, conceptualizes «self-help» and analyzes Russian-language podcasting media market. The second part - the empirical one - analyzes the narratives of four releases of selected podcasts through narrative analysis of U. Labov`s scheme and through CDA in the logic of N.Fairclough. The study has shown that strategies for constructing «self-help» narratives in Russian-language podcasts are based on broadcasting the personal experience of guests, providing listeners with few theoretical cues from experts in the field of psychology and few practical tips that podcast listeners can apply in their lives. The analysis has demonstrated that podcasts that has position as useful to listeners, to a greater extent, are platforms for advertising their own psychological products and do not carry truly valuable and applicable self-help knowledge.