Therapeutic Governance: Psycho‐social Intervention and Trauma Risk Management[Note 1. I would like to thank Mark Duffield, Yvonne McEwen, ...]

This paper critically analyses the significance of psycho‐social intervention as a new form of international therapeutic governance based on social risk management. First, the paper examines the international psycho‐social model and its origins in an Anglo‐American therapeutic ethos. Second, the paper argues that psycho‐social approaches jeopardise local coping strategies. Third, the paper highlights the potential political, social and psychological consequences of the pathologisation of war‐affected societies. Finally the paper concludes that therapeutic governance represents the reduction of politics to administration.