Abstract
Generation Z (born between 1997 – 2012) is characterized as having both unprecedented mental health awareness and unprecedented mental distress. An apparent contradiction with troubling implications for the mental health field: Either the response to the mounting crisis has been insufficient or the field forms part of the problem. Taking seriously Wilks’ (2023) criticism of “therapeutic overreach” of the contemporary mental health field in the lives and development of youth, this paper attempts a selfanalysis and moral inventory about the field’s potential complicity in the crisis and in the history of hysteria. Lacan’s writings on the “analyst’s discourse” are considered a potential resource for course correction. However, drawing from Byung-Chul Han’s (2015, 2017) writing on the "achievement-subject" and Lacan’s own discourse theory, we are doubtful of Lacan’s (Lacan & Copjec, 1990) comment on psychoanalysis as a “way out of capitalist discourse” (p. 16). Rather, we consider whether psychoanalysis and its psychotherapeutic translations have helped to embed Gen Z in new, more advanced political-economic diversions.
Recommended Citation
Dubitans, V. (2025). Psycho-Analysis Will Not Save Us: Reflections on the Gen Z Mental Health Crisis. Middle Voices, 3 (1). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/middle_voices/vol3/iss1/2