Rebranding the soul : Rituals for the well-made man in market society

This article discusses how contemporary coaching and laymen therapy can be discussed as modern revival movements well adapted to contemporary individual-centered and therapeutic society. The search for a soul to redeem has been transformed into new religious concepts as searching for the “true inner self”, “the inner potential” or “the authentic me” and new ritualized practices are designed as help for the lost. Questions raised include: How do the new formalized practices work as both models of and visions for society? In other words: How are practices designed to be experienced as natural means for the participants to achieve therapeutic healing and better self-confidence and what are the visions and goals that are implicitly built into the practices and communicated to society and the individual? And is the search for the “authentic self” really a reflection of finding the complex inner self of the individual or only a way to design a streamlined raw model for the perfect man in neoliberal society? Has neoliberal society with developing these new concepts and practices succeeded in transforming even the human way of being into a product to be sold on the market and who is the winner