Pierre Valentin: «Therapeutic culture has become a mass phenomenon»

In his essay Malaise dans la génération Z («Malaise in Generation Z»), Pierre Valentin addresses the causes of the surge in psychological problems among young people. In his view, these causes are primarily moral and cultural.

Never before has mental health played such a prominent role in public discourse. Depression, anxiety, burnout, trauma: therapeutic terminology is now ubiquitous, while young people report unprecedented levels of distress. But is this crisis solely a matter of psychology?

In his latest essay Malaise dans la génération Z («Malaise in Generation Z»), Pierre Valentin argues that the roots of this phenomenon are primarily cultural, moral, and political. Contrary to purely medical explanations, he urges us to rethink our relationship to freedom, responsibility, and meaning.

Le Regard Libre: Your thesis is almost a paradox: the therapeutic culture, which is supposed to treat mental distress, actually exacerbates it. You’re not questioning medicine itself, but rather its encroachment beyond its legitimate scope. Why do you think this is a central issue in this crisis among Generation Z?

Pierre Valentin: When I wrote this book, I had the Anglo-Saxon world—where I grew up—most firmly in mind. That world has gone much further than France in developing this therapeutic culture and has tried everything to address its mental health crisis, which began earlier and is more profound than France’s. Between 1946 and 1960, the membership of the American Psychological Association quadrupled. It quadrupled again between 1970 and 1995. At the same time, spending on mental health has continued to rise. Yet the United States is currently experiencing a crisis more severe than ours. At the very least, we can therefore say that this approach has not worked. I don’t see why it would work for other countries.

How can this paradoxical effect be explained?

One of the concepts I explore in the book is that of ’external locus of control« (sometimes called »external determination«), which refers to being driven by factors outside oneself rather than by one’s own values or motivations. There is an established link between this external locus of control and depression.

The very purpose of therapeutic culture is to tell the individual, «It’s not your fault.» But this message also amounts to telling them, «You are not in control of your own destiny.» There is a close link between the erosion of guilt and that of competence. The historian Christopher Lasch saw this clearly: whoever says «you are not guilty» is also saying «you are not capable.» Therapeutic culture thus transforms deviance into illness—Lasch speaks of the shift «from sin to illness»—while declaring the patient incapable of managing their own life and placing them in the hands of an expert.

Another point struck me during my research. When you read the World Health Organization’s definition of mental health, you come across a seemingly endless web page that mentions the role of inequalities, education, fundamental rights… In other words, a description of what, a few decades ago, would have been called politics in the noble sense: the good life, life in community. Except that we now refer to all of this as «mental health.» Yet this shift in vocabulary is not neutral. Politics belongs to everyone; everyone has a legitimate right to participate in it. Mental health, on the other hand, falls within the realm of medical expertise. Renaming communal life using the vocabulary of health thus amounts to shifting the political debate into the realm of expertise. It is this shift that worries me.

One could argue the opposite: that the surge in cases of mental illness does not reflect a real increase in severity, but rather a greater willingness to speak openly about it. People were already suffering before; they just talked about it less. Why do you dismiss this hypothesis?

I don’t entirely dismiss it. I think it’s probably true for some of the people involved. But we also have objective data—not just anecdotal evidence. Psychiatric hospitalizations, for example, show that young people’s mental health has objectively deteriorated over the past few decades. The same is true of suicide attempts and self-harm. The idea that there is just as much suffering as there used to be, but that we simply talk about it more today, is therefore not enough to explain the phenomenon.

What worries me even more is the direction French culture is taking as it gradually follows the Anglo-Saxon world. We are seeing certain medical identities become symbols of distinction—almost like trophies—amid a strong quest for identity.

We are thus seeing a rise in self-diagnosis, but also a desire among some young people—sometimes encouraged by their parents—to obtain a «scientifically validated» label. In the book, I quote clinical psychologist Maxence Carsana, who describes seeing patients who try to steer the diagnosis toward the label they want to receive. Some even go so far as to memorize the symptoms of a disorder in order to obtain the desired diagnosis. We see the same logic at play with the WAIS-IV test, often nicknamed the «HPI test,» so highly sought after is that label. In my view, this phenomenon is difficult to understand without taking into account a therapeutic culture that specifically values these medical identities.

In certain social groups or regions, seeing a psychologist remains a difficult step to take. In France, there is nearly one suicide per day among farmers alone. Can we really speak of a pervasive culture of therapy, or does your analysis describe, above all, a phenomenon limited to urban, educated populations?

That’s a good question. I’d say, unfortunately, that what originates in urban and affluent circles often ends up spreading throughout society as a whole. This is the classic pattern of cultural change: many trends first appear in the United States and then spread to the affluent classes in the West before gradually reaching other social groups. One example is the cigarette, which was long associated with Hollywood glamour before becoming a symbol of the French working class.

I think we’re seeing a similar phenomenon in the field of psychotherapy. Several indicators show that it extends far beyond urban areas alone. The percentage of French people who have undergone psychotherapy rose from about 5% in 2001 to 28% in 2013. In just over a dozen years, it has gone from being a relatively marginal practice to an experience shared by more than a quarter of the population. And that was already more than ten years ago.

These 28%s could very well be urban…

That’s possible. But beyond this statistic, there are many signs that the phenomenon extends far beyond urban centers alone. Therapeutic cultivation has become a true mass phenomenon. We see this first and foremost in popular culture. In therapy was one of the biggest hits in French television. Podcasts focused on mental health are on the rise. After the 2018 World Cup, several world champions appeared in the documentary Diving Heads to share their psychological struggles.

More recently, the winner of Miss France 2026 dedicated her first speech to her mental health, while Stromae played a major role in normalizing the topic by discussing his suicidal thoughts during a television news broadcast. Opinion polls point in the same direction. Today, nearly three-quarters of French people say they take care of their mental health. All of these factors lead me to believe that we are witnessing a profound cultural transformation.

In your essay, your examples focus primarily on the victim mentality on the left and its impact on young people. But at the same time, surveys show a clear increase in youth support for right-wing nationalist parties in recent years in the West, and it is indeed this camp that is on the verge of power in several major European countries. How does this phenomenon fit in with your analysis?

In the book, I explain precisely that the construction of identity around a common enemy is a constant feature of this generation. Whether on the left or the right, the mechanism is quite similar: people define their identity in opposition to a pejorative abstraction, whether it’s patriarchy, capitalism, the elites, or «the system.» This has an obvious psychological advantage: the line between good and evil is immediately drawn, and everyone is assigned a role in this moral battle. It’s a way of providing meaning and identity.

In the long term, however, this line of reasoning tends to shift responsibility away from individuals, and it can be found on both sides of the political spectrum. That said, I see a key difference between the two phenomena. To my knowledge, there are no studies showing that shifting to the right has a negative effect on mental health. On the other hand, there are several studies from the Anglophone world that establish a link between certain forms of identity-based activism on the left and a decline in psychological well-being.

You also draw a connection between the feeling of losing control over one’s destiny and the rise of conspiracy theories. How do you explain this?

Conspiracy theories are indeed on the rise throughout society, and not just among young people. They’re also found among many older adults. In my view, they stem from the same underlying condition: the feeling of no longer having control over one’s collective destiny. There is a parallel between what I call “extrodetermination” at the individual level and a form of political extrodetermination—that is, the impression that citizens no longer control the course of events.

In France, this sentiment has grown stronger over the decades. Referendums have become rare, and the last one, held more than twenty years ago, was not implemented in accordance with the French people’s vote. As a result, many feel that their voices carry less and less weight. This feeling is particularly strong among young people, who rarely feel politically represented.

This encourages people to embrace broad interpretive frameworks, whether populist or conspiracy-based. Conspiracy discourse claims to reveal the hidden causes of all problems, but it almost never offers a path forward. It paints a picture of a world in which individuals are no longer truly in control.

You attribute much of this generation’s anxiety to a crisis of meaning and authority. But concern about the future is also rooted in tangible realities: the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence (AI), certain consequences of climate change… Isn’t it overly optimistic to think that rediscovering meaning and a collective moral framework would be enough to alleviate anxiety rooted in established facts—and sometimes in experiences that are simply endured?

As I worked on this book, the issue of the crisis of meaning gradually came to the forefront. What particularly struck me was the work of American psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. Their research is based on surveys conducted over several decades among American high school students. One of the statements presented was: «My life often seems meaningless to me.» Yet agreement with this statement skyrocketed in the early 2010s—precisely when the mental health crisis among young people began, even before the pandemic.

Other trends are emerging at the same time. Political orientation is becoming a predictor of poor mental health among young Americans, whereas this was not the case before. Conversely, religious practice is becoming a predictor of good mental health. This leads me to believe that questions of meaning are taking on new importance. It is as if, with social fragmentation and the erosion of traditional frameworks, politics has gradually taken on an existential role that was once fulfilled by religion.

Yet you don't deny that this generation is facing major changes.

These concerns are, of course, legitimate. But every generation has faced its own existential threats: others grew up amid war or the prospect of a world war. What sets our era apart is not so much an abundance of dangers as a future that has become much harder to predict. In fact, I prefer to contrast a predictable future with an unpredictable one, rather than an optimistic future with a pessimistic one.

As philosopher Hartmut Rosa points out, we live in a society of acceleration where professional and personal trajectories are becoming increasingly unstable. In the United States, college graduates change jobs an average of eleven times over the course of their careers. With AI, we no longer even know what jobs will exist tomorrow. Yet anxiety is fundamentally a relationship with the future. The more possibilities there are, the harder it becomes to know which path to take. This constant acceleration fuels a sense of uncertainty that, in my view, is one of the main sources of contemporary anxiety.

You criticize contemporary individualism as the product of an extreme conception of freedom, inherited from the 1960s. But this individual freedom has also led to emancipation. In your analysis, how do you distinguish between the aspect of individualism that liberates and the aspect that isolates and weakens?

What I wanted to show in this book is that there is a kind of Gaussian curve of emancipation. Up to a certain point, greater freedom is obviously a step forward. But once a certain threshold is crossed, the accumulation of choices tends to alienate rather than liberate. This idea is sometimes hard for the baby boomer generation to accept, as they grew up in a society where the collective moral framework was much more restrictive. We often continue to think within that framework, even though the world has changed profoundly.

French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg sums up this shift well when he explains that we have moved from «the neurotic man»—a pathological figure in a society of prohibitions—to «the depressed man»—a pathological figure in a performance-driven society. We no longer live in a world defined by the opposition between what is permitted and what is forbidden, but rather between the capable and the incapable. Once emancipated, we no longer have any excuses for not succeeding, which fuels a constant anxiety about performance.

Does this quest for freedom therefore, paradoxically, lead to a search for new rules?

Today, opportunities have multiplied in every field, and many young people are, on the contrary, seeking to relieve themselves of the burden of these choices. This, in my view, explains certain contemporary phenomena. Young people ask ChatGPT to plan their meals based on what’s in their fridge or to tell them whether or not they should go to a party. They’re looking for a guide rather than just a tool. The success of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson stems from the same logic: his book isn’t titled Do whatever you want, but 12 Rules for Life.

Similarly, many influencers have achieved immense success by promoting highly structured routines. Ultimately, behind this search for rules lies an attempt to find a sense of direction in a world where choices have become almost infinite.

Your essay focuses primarily on diagnosis, but in your conclusion you outline a few possible solutions, notably a return to morality. How can we bring about this return without it becoming—as may have been the case in the past—a leaden weight that stifles individuals rather than providing them with structure?

That’s a good question. In fact, I’m much more cautious when it comes to solutions than to the diagnosis itself. Among the most concrete avenues to explore is, of course, the issue of screens and social media, whose effects on young people’s mental health are now well documented. The challenge lies in striking a balance between measures that are truly effective—and cannot be immediately circumvented—and respect for individual freedoms.

Jonathan Haidt, in fact, proposes several interesting solutions in The Anxious Generation. He himself is deeply committed to civil liberties and would be the first to refuse to allow his work to be used to justify measures that infringe on those liberties. For example, he suggests that manufacturers build a system directly into the hardware—rather than into the software—that would identify when a device belongs to a minor. This would, by default, prevent the download of certain apps, particularly social media apps, without paving the way for more widespread censorship.

But when you talk about a «return to morality» or the question of the «good life,» you’re shifting to a whole new level. We’re talking about a genuine civilizational shift.

Yes, absolutely. I simply wanted to show that there are also very concrete measures—particularly regarding screens—that could have a significant impact. But the core of my argument lies elsewhere. The whole purpose of the book is to take mental health seriously, while showing that it has become the preferred lens through which to view problems that go beyond it. First, because we live in a society fascinated by what can be measured. Second, because we tend to frame issues that are also social and political in psychological terms.

Mental health is, of course, a legitimate topic. But we need to reframe it within a broader discussion of what constitutes a good life and a political community. I don’t see how we can emerge from this crisis in a sustainable way without rebuilding social bonds and without combating the isolation of young people.

In fact, it’s a bit misleading to talk about a «return to morality.» Morality is always present. The real question is whether it is explicit or implicit. The therapeutic paradigm also conveys a moral framework, but it never presents itself as such. In my view, the challenge is therefore less about returning to morality than about reconnecting with a conscious reflection on what is desirable for a human community.

Your book also touches on the topic of spirituality. Do you believe we’re seeing a resurgence of religion?

We need to be cautious. Those who speak of a major resurgence of religion are likely being a bit too optimistic. What we’re seeing is more of a stir than a genuine reversal of the trend. There are certainly more baptisms, but that doesn’t make up for the large number of people who are no longer being baptized, and many of the newly baptized do not continue to practice their faith afterward.

On the other hand, attitudes toward religion are changing. Younger people are generally less anti-clerical than their elders and have a more positive view of the Church, which surprised even me. Above all, I believe this reflects a thirst for meaning and commitment. Many young people are looking for institutions capable of offering a shared vision.

Yet the disengagement from associations and institutions is such that what often remains is simply a one-on-one relationship between the individual and the state. In this void, a wide variety of forms of “re-enchantment” thrive: religion, meditation, astrology, esotericism… Behind these very different phenomena, I see a shared quest for meaning.

Federal Palace Correspondent for the newspaper L'Agefi, Pablo Sánchez is the editor-in-chief of the Regard Libre. Write to the author: pablo.sánchez@leregardlibre.com.

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