Lost in Perfection : Impacts of Optimisation on Culture and Psyche

This volume examines the question of how the incessant demand for improved performance and efficiency, the pursuit of self-improvement and everyday multitasking affect not only relationships with others, but also with body and self. Bringing together contributions from renowned scholars from the fields of sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis, it explores the impacts of optimisation on culture and psyche.

The permanent struggle for optimisation can be seen as one of the most significant cultural principles of contemporary Western societies: the demand for improved performance and efficiency as well as the pursuit of self-improvement are con-sidered necessary in order to keep pace with an accelerated, competitive modern-ity. This affects not only work and education, but also family life, parent–child relationships and intimate relationships in respect to the body and the self, in regard to the public as well as the private realm. Bringing together contributions from renowned scholars from the fields of sociology, psychology and psycho-analysis, this book explores the impacts of optimisation on culture and psyche, examining the contradictions and limitations of optimisation, in conjunction with the effects of social transformations on individuals and shifts in regard to the meaning of ‘pathology’ and ‘normality’.