This book began to take shape in 2019, and the actual work began in the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022 when I presented the initial ideas at the Sociology Days at Uppsala University in the Medical Sociology working group. At that time, I presented arguments for sociotherapy as a research program. This was followed up during the 2024 Sociology Days at the University of Gothenburg, once again in the Medical Sociology working group. During that conference, I also presented Aristotelian Balance Theory (ABT) as a proposal for a grand theory in the Sociological Theory working group. ABT was presented in the book The Mediocre Society and Aristotelian Balance Theory (Berglund, 2026), which in this book is used to construct a framework for sociological diagnoses and sociotherapy.
The idea for sociotherapy emerged after reading books that, in various ways, addressed the role of psychology in society. First and foremost were Frank Furedi’s and Eva Illouz’s critiques of psychotherapy and the costs they argued arise from its proliferation in society (Furedi, 2004, 2019; Illouz, 2008). However, I felt that Furedi and Illouz failed to point to an alternative beyond psychotherapy. A thought began to take shape: why couldn’t sociological insights be used in a therapeutic context in the same way as psychology? Mimmi McGee’s book Self Help Inc. is one of several books that offer a critical analysis of self, help literature in today’s society (McGee, 2005). McGee has written a critique of self, help literature but at the same time points to an opportunity to learn from its cultural successes. The energy and desire for self, improvement that exist among people could be channeled and supported in different ways, becoming less individualistic in approach and more sociologically informed (McGee, 2005).
Later, Roland Paulsen published the book What If 2020, which analyzes why modernity has led to an increased prevalence of “what-if” thoughts that can be burdensome for the individual to bear. The book concludes by suggesting that a form of “sociological self-help” could be created, focusing on increasing care for the external world and other people, which in turn leads to better care for one’s own self (Paulsen, 2020). This stands in contrast to an overemphasis on overly individualized inner care, which tends to be encouraged in psychotherapy (Paulsen, 2020; Morrall, 2008).
By that time, I had discovered the field of clinical sociology and sociotherapy. I had naively believed that no one had ever considered the idea of sociology, based therapy, but to my surprise, there was a field called clinical sociology that I hadn’t heard of. This was because clinical sociology, with sociotherapy as a field of research, basically no longer exists and has very few practitioners. Since the field was so small, it didn’t take long to get an overview. Hardly any research had been done on this topic; there were two defunct journals with a few studies and a handful of handbooks. One journal was still being published, featuring a little bit on clinical sociology but mostly on generally applied sociology. The most extensive research conducted in this field was in medical sociology, but it did not focus on therapeutic applications.
Insights from sociology are generally not used in a therapeutic context, and this is something that can be problematized. Therefore, this text was written as an attempt to thoroughly re, examine the potential of sociotherapy, to consider whether a research program should be initiated around sociotherapy, and to explore how such a program might be designed. I wanted to build upon the work of, for example, Mcgee (2005), Rose (2019), Furedi (2004), Rose (1996, 2019), Illouz (2008), Paulsen (2020), Morrall (2008), Scull (2022), Moloney (2013), Cohen (2016), Ingram (2015), and Scheff (1990), I wanted to build upon. In the final stages of the project, I discovered another ally in Lindblom (2023), who has formulated a “social, psychological psychiatry.”
One danger of writing a book that attempts to lay the groundwork for a field is that it may be so flawed that critics conclude the field has no potential. Therefore, I would like to point out that even though I am attempting to contribute in various ways to a research paradigm surrounding sociotherapy, the potential of this field is not exhausted by what is written on these pages. The following is a summary of the contributions this book attempts to make, followed by the introduction, which provides a more comprehensive framework for the book’s purpose and arguments.