Promoting recovery in Denmark

This chapter examines political rationalities, expertise, and techniques of government involved in the emergence and implementation of recovery in Denmark. Our overall argument in this chapter is that recovery as a government technology unfolds right between the reciprocally depended practices of what Foucault refers to as government of others and government of the self. While the facilitator of recovery is the health professional, whose professionality comes down to being a coach, the expert of recovery is in fact the patient who is over and again urged to reflect upon herself and the possibilities of improving her current health and functions. The focus of mental recovery is on the lived life, experiences with mental illness, hopes, and dreams. It is in the merging of the expertise of individual transformation and the expertise of experience that recovery operates as a government technology.