The ambiguities of autonomy in youth training programmes

Abstract

In recent decades, young people have been provided with various support systems, including therapeutic training programmes to enhance their mental health and well-being through empowerment and support of individual autonomy. In this paper, we examine the ideal of autonomy professed by training programmes for young people. We focused on analysing the inherent ambivalence surrounding the nature of this autonomy, and its manifestation in two youth support systems, specifically cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) based training programmes. By utilising Michel Foucault’s theoretical work on ‘technologies of the self’, we examined how these training programmes aim to guide individuals to transform themselves, and how they define the boundaries of autonomy within practice. Our findings indicate that rather than a stable capacity, autonomy emerges as a dynamic ideal that is always on the verge of its opposite – heteronomy. These programmes not only assume autonomy but require its ongoing cultivation through structured psychological labour. Ultimately, we argue that therapeutic training enacts a paradoxical model of subjectivity in which autonomy and heteronomy are deeply interwoven within the logic of contemporary governance.