Double Consciousness and Systemic Surveillance

Introduction: The Weight of the Watchful Eye

This article is inspired by the work of one man, W. E. B. Du Bois, his concept of double consciousness, by personal experience, and by the experiences of women I’ve met along the way.

Double consciousness is the experience of living under the gaze of a dominant culture—of constantly seeing oneself through the lens of external perception, while struggling to hold onto an internal sense of self (Du Bois, 1903). It was originally formulated in the context of race, but this theory has deep resonance in my work as a psychodynamic psychotherapist working with mothers with compromised socio-economic status, many of whom are facing social services interventions. These women describe a feeling of being watched—judged, assessed, measured—particularly in contexts where institutional power is involved. And - importantly - they feel this even when nobody else is around.

For women who have navigated social services interventions, medical misogyny, or obstetric violence within healthcare systems, and other forms of state intervention, this surveillance does not simply disappear when oversight ends. Instead, it leaves an imprint:

an internalised authority that reshapes their relationship with their own instincts, emotions, and bodily experience.

The psychological and embodied effects of systemic scrutiny are profound, shaping how women see themselves, how they interact with institutions, and even how they relate to their own children.

This article explores the shadow side of institutional intervention—the ways in which systemic surveillance becomes an enduring, embodied experience, shaping subjectivity long after the external gaze has lifted.

The Impact of Systemic Surveillance on Women

1. The Body as a Site of Surveillance

Whether in healthcare, social services, or public discourse, women’s bodies are frequently positioned as objects of regulation and control. This is particularly pronounced in contexts like pregnancy, motherhood, and welfare assessments, where women’s personal decisions—how and what they eat, how they parent, how they manage their emotional world—become subject to external monitoring (Bordo, 1993).

This scrutiny does not merely exist in institutional settings. It filters into daily life, leaving many women in a state of chronic self-surveillance—questioning their own instincts, anticipating external judgment, and adjusting their behaviour accordingly.

2. The Mother as an Institutional Subject

For mothers involved with social services, the weight of institutional oversight overrides personal reality (Gillies, 2007). The focus shifts from their inner experience—grief, joy, exhaustion, love, sorrow, regret—towards risk assessments, compliance, and external validation. Instead of being supported as complex individuals, these women often become case files to be managed, their subjectivity flattened into procedural concerns.

This institutional dynamic reinforces a sense of powerlessness and mistrust in one’s own maternal instincts. The mother is no longer the primary authority on her own children; the system is.

3. Internalised Surveillance: Feeling Watched Even When Alone

Michel Foucault (1977) described how

disciplinary power functions not through direct coercion but by encouraging individuals to regulate themselves—

to behave as though they are being observed, even when they are not.

Women who have experienced institutional scrutiny often describe this exact phenomenon:

• A deep, bodily sense of being watched, even in private moments.

• Adjusting behaviour not in response to actual oversight but to the anticipated judgment of an invisible authority.

• A persistent state of vigilance, where every decision—what to say, how to act, what emotions are safe to express—feels like it carries potential consequences.

One woman described a supervised visit with her children; she had cooked them a big lunch—she longed to demonstrate love, care, and competence to the supervisor, to her children and, of course, to herself. The social worker noted the large quantity of food in her notebook. She said she "needed help with portion sizes”. From that moment on, the mum was so terrified about how this would be interpreted—what it might mean, how it might be used against her—that she barely remembers being in the room at all. The visit became secondary; she was consumed by managing the system’s gaze. “I felt lightheaded and I was just on autopilot. I hope she didn’t notice I was acting weird.”

4. Women Second-Guessing and Overriding Their Own Instincts

The long-term impact of systemic surveillance is that it reconfigures a woman’s relationship with her own instincts. Women might:

• Feel paralysed when making everyday parenting decisions, fearing their own judgment is flawed.

• Automatically seek external validation before trusting their own inner knowing.

• Experience somatic symptoms of stress (tightness in the chest, shallow breathing, a frozen body posture) when making decisions that once felt intuitive. In the long-term, chronic health conditions may emerge.

When an external gaze has dictated one’s reality for long enough, the inner compass begins to feel unreliable, or totally absent and un-contactable.

The mind, shaped by repeated exposure to external scrutiny, begins to turn against itself—

second-guessing, self-correcting, and pre-emptively curating behaviour in anticipation of judgment.

Towards Recognition Rather Than Surveillance

For many women, therapy offers a space to unpick these layers of internalised scrutiny—to recognise where external authority has been absorbed into the psyche, and to begin the process of reclaiming a more authentic self. But this is easy work. For some women, the vulnerability this demands is simply too much. It represents too much existential risk.

Addressing systemic surveillance in therapy isn’t just about unpacking personal history—it’s about understanding the wider social structures that shape how women see themselves. It’s about undoing the inherited vigilance that comes from years of being measured, assessed, and subtly (or overtly) told they are not enough.

The impact of systemic oversight doesn’t vanish when a case is closed or a file is archived. Its echoes remain in the nervous system, in the thought processes that anticipate judgment, in the ways a woman carries herself in the world. Therapy has the potential to bring these dynamics into awareness, not to erase them, but to loosen their grip—so that hopefully,

the gaze of the institution does not become a permanent imprint upon the self.

References

Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk. A. C. McClurg & Co.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.

Gillies, V. (2007). Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting. Routledge.