The Medicine & Its Objects Workshop Presents:

“The Limits of Therapeutic Design: Rethinking Ecology in the Utopian Milieu” 

Zach Lazarus  | PhD Student, Crown School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice 

Wednesday, April 13th from 4:30-6:00pm CT

Hybrid: Zoom and Cobb 119

To RSVP and receive a copy of the pre-circulated paper or the zoom link, please email mmacgregor@uchicago.edu

 Abstract: In the field of social work, dominant conceptions of mental health emphasize the interconnectedness of individuals and their ecological contexts. So-called person-in-environment research aims to understand how the environment affects individuals and to create environments that are maximally conducive to healthy psychological functioning. This paper critically analyzes the concept of a “therapeutic milieu,” a built environment designed on the basis of psychoanalytic principles. This concept was developed by psychologists in the late twentieth century and remains influential in the field of youth residential care. I turn to three foundational texts to explore how they theorize the environment as a therapeutic agent and what image of human-environment relations emerges. I show that the idea of the milieu aims to mobilize the therapeutic possibilities of normative, everyday life, while simultaneously insulating itself from the outside world. I suggest that this tension reflects American anxieties about the limits of institutional forms of care, as well as a utopian impulse that is implicit in social work’s efforts to scientifically know and reconfigure the world. I conclude by considering how we might rethink the goals of applied ecological research.