In this episode, pastoral theologian and psychotherapist Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn—pastoral theologian, clinician, and author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age—exposes how today’s mental-health system locates suffering in individual pathology while ignoring the social and economic forces producing widespread distress.

He explains how research funding, psychotherapy models, and the biomedical frame all shift attention away from the societal roots of depression, anxiety, and addiction. Instead of understanding suffering as a meaningful response to harmful conditions, the neoliberal model blames the individual and demands “resilience” and compliance.

This conversation doesn’t stop at critique. Bruce reframes depression as a meaningful signal, not a malfunction; argues for therapy as deep transformation instead of symptom deletion; and offers a concrete starting point for care that resists adaptation: make friends, build comradeship, recover solidarity. We connect the dots between research policy since 1980, the rise of resilience talk and positive psychology, and why mindfulness without tradition can become just another corporate tool. 

Key Points

• The biomedical model serves neoliberalism by hiding systemic causes of suffering.
   “It’s a way neoliberalism covers its own ass… so nobody can trace back their suffering to the system.”
• Research funding was redirected in the 1980s to brain-based explanations, shutting down community-level studies.
• Modern therapy focuses on symptom removal, not transformation.
   “Psychotherapy today has become a sophisticated exercise in blaming the victim.”
• Competitive individualism isolates people, fragments identity, and undermines community life.
• Rising mental-health treatment and worsening mental-health outcomes reflect a disconnect between what’s treated and what’s causing harm.
• Debt, workplace performativity, and isolation create what Rogers-Vaughn calls “third-order suffering”—distress whose source is invisible but pervasive.

Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn is a pastoral theologian, licensed psychotherapist, and longtime faculty member at Vanderbilt Divinity School. With four decades of clinical experience, he is known for his groundbreaking book Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, which critiques how contemporary mental-health systems adapt individuals to unjust social conditions. His work brings together psychoanalysis, political economy, and pastoral care to reveal the deep links between suffering and the structures of neoliberal capitalism.

About Religion and Justice
Religion and Justice is a podcast from the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School. We explore the intersections of class, religion, labor, and ecology, uncovering how these forces shape the work of justice and solidarity. Each episode offers space for investigation, education, and organizing through conversations with scholars, organizers, and practitioners.

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