Riff: Psycho-Analyzing the Psychologist
I wholeheartedly agree with xmargins (xire) take on psychologists and their field: the incentives are misaligned, none of the people that I know practicing it (or attending it) are particularly bright either (both raw IQ and emotionally funny enough), and you got to do all the work anyway.
I have known few people that went, and still are going after years, to therapy, and they come from all walks of life really, but one thing they do have in common: they are alone.
Not in the common sense of the term, these people have friends, partners, colleagues, kids and parents, no, they have people around them all the time actually, but still they are alone.
Lonely is the path to madness
Back in the day we didn’t sanitise our language as much, mental-health was yet to enter the vocabulary, so you would go with with crazy and mad to describe who had to seek professional help for their problems, even if the most common reason was the umbrella-term depression.
Most normal regular people didn’t go to therapy, not because of the stigma (there has never been any real stigma if not self-induced one, the whole concept is gaslighting at its finest1) but because people in their life covered the therapist role:
- a childhood friend that went hell and back with you and that you see almost daily
- a wife that knowing all the bad parts of you still finds the patience, compassion and courage of loving you for who you are
- a ragtag group of friends where between a joke and a laugh everyone let their guard down and can teach/learn from everyone else
And of course, if you really had to get something off your chest to s steanger, you would go to the original therapist: the priest in the confessional.
But then what happened? Where are these wonderful people I am talking about?
Have a look in the mirror!
- You were someone childhood friend, doing everything together - are you now?
- You were a loving, attentive and caring companion - are you now?
- You were part of a group of loose cannons friends where nothing was off-limits but everything was forgiven - are you now?
If you said three (painful) no, then you are (most likely) in therapy.
Stigma implies people knowing, and going somewhere for an hour a week doesn’t require anyone knowing - unless you tell them!↩