Rise of Individualism in Crisis of Welfare State - published: 10/07/2026
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Welfare State crisis, individualism, humanistic psychology, self-fulfillment, Abraham Harold Maslow, Carl Rogers, solidarity, collective identity
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Abstract
The decline of the Welfare State and collective solidarity has led to a focus on individual happiness and self-fulfillment, driven by theories of humanistic psychology.
Contents
A paradoxical weakening of the collective and solidarity institutions...
A Welfare State partly responsible for the disintegration of solidarity logics...and now in crisis
The 20th century, a period marked by the failure of the great ideologies
...which displaces the fulfillment of oneself into the field of the personal...
A movement of recentring on the individual
New orientations for individual development
...but whose benefits remain shared
The individual, a new paradigm of humanism
Personal fulfillment of the individual, new path for intersubjectivity?
A paradoxical weakening of the collective and solidarity institutions...
A Welfare State partly responsible for the disintegration of solidarity logics...and now in crisis
The 20th century, a period marked by the failure of the great ideologies
...which displaces the fulfillment of oneself into the field of the personal...
A movement of recentring on the individual
New orientations for individual development
...but whose benefits remain shared
The individual, a new paradigm of humanism
Personal fulfillment of the individual, new path for intersubjectivity?
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Extract
[...] This dynamic seems to'the more that the social structures of the Welfare State are failing today to absorb social problems as it had been thought during the 20th century. But in what way and how are we led to think that each of us must today highlight and assert the meaning and benefits, both for himself and for others, of his personal and professional development path in which he has engaged? To answer this question, we will first see that the issue of the individual is part of a context of the erasure of the collective and institutions responsible for promoting solidarity. [...]
[...] In d'In other terms, the individual's recognition of a belief system contributes to relegating his personal aspirations and his conception of happiness to the background. Hinshelwood reminds us that adherence to capitalism involves adopting practices such as consumption and recognition of free trade, while adherence to communism involves admitting that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the collectivization of the means of production are important political and social objectives. In doing so, individual desires are reduced by common objectives that take precedence over them. [...]
[...] Review of History, n° 97. - Levy Moreno J. (1965). Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, PUF. - Rogers C. (1963). The Therapeutic Relationship: The Bases of Its Efficacy. Bulletin of Psychology, No. 17. [...]
[...] ?which displaces the fulfillment of oneself in the field of the personal . A. A movement of recentring on the individual Or l'the collapse of the Soviet bloc sounded the end of the polarization of the world according to political constructions, and in fact led to the erasure of ideologies in the construction of individual identities. In this context - and even before the collapse of ideologies - philosophical and psychological currents gradually emerged to propose alternatives to personal development. [...]
[...] A paradoxical weakening of the collective and institutions of solidarity . A. A Welfare State partly responsible for the disintegration of solidarity logics . and now in crisis If the'The Welfare State constituted in the aftermath of the Second World War a concept allowing to apprehend the reduction of social inequalities and to favor the search for happiness, its progressive reduction from the 1970s marked an important reorientation of the conception of individual and collective happiness. While access to health, retirement and unemployment insurance had seemed to constitute necessary prerequisites for self-fulfillment and aspirations, the reforms undertaken in Anglo-Saxon countries, in particular, have undermined this statist conception of happiness and individual security. [...]
