Up from the Archives – A Half Century of the Neoliberal Individual: Tom Short Thinks with

‘An institutionalised art: Therapy as ideological carrier in the 1970's’ ( Foster & Williams, 1980 ) explores a time and place, Melbourne in the 1970's, in which the logic and ideology of therapy was becoming increasingly prevalent. The therapeutic culture they examined has only become more entrenched in the last 45 years. This introduction traces the argument made by Foster and Williams (1980) , situating it within the historical context of the 1970's, a period of upheaval for Australia and the discipline of psychiatry. The logics of governance and psychiatric pathology that emerged/re-emerged in this period – neoliberalism and the biomedical paradigm – persist to today. At the heart of both logics is a focus on the individual. Despite a dated attachment to modernist ideals, Foster and Williams’ (1980) article provides an analysis of a changing society that is still relevant today due to the persistence of both neoliberalism and the biomedical paradigm in psychiatry.