c'mon people! A couple of depressed people telling a bloke in a chair about the way their older bother belittled them once at a school sports day was definately more important than aeroplanes, motor cars, the telephone, computers, TV and Radio.
I'd have thought the notion of healing the mind was a compassionate and extremely important one. Perhaps the difficulties start when this becomes "psychotherapy" with its professional cadres whose first question is what the max-out is on your Mastercard (that's an example from my own experience). This then leads to the idea that unhappiness, sadness, melancholia are sicknesses alien to the human condition whereas they are intrinsic to it.
I'm with J.G. Ballard who said that marketing was the 20th century's most important invention. "Alain de Botton" is a pretty impressive invention too, come to think of it.
It is interesting to watch how the authority of psychotherapy and psycho-babble is working its way down the socio-economic ladder. Sort of like amusement arcades. No serious student of psychology takes them too seriously anymore, but I've come across people who, while they seem to have difficulty keeping a job or even remembering to pay the rent, can talk circles around me about self-esteem and learning to love themselves.
I think something similar is starting to happen with Darwinism. Serious scientists know there are some big problems with it, but you risk being throttled in a pub by an angry yob if you question whether nature really selected us to be hunters and gatherers.
Mark says "I'd have thought the notion of healing the mind was a compassionate and extremely important one." It probably is. That's why I'll be writing to Michael Gove to suggest all schoolchildren get a free copy of Burton's "The Anatomy Of Melancholy", the reading of which ought to be compulsory homework.
Psychotherapy was to the 20th century what phrenology was to the 19th: a load of scientific sounding tosh.
ReplyDeleteObviously too much Proust.
ReplyDeleteThis is a link
c'mon people! A couple of depressed people telling a bloke in a chair about the way their older bother belittled them once at a school sports day was definately more important than aeroplanes, motor cars, the telephone, computers, TV and Radio.
ReplyDeleteI think we should talk about this at our next session...
ReplyDeleteCouch+shrink = overdraft. If it was that important then how come there ain't a chain of them in the high streets, next to the tanning parlours.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, it don't work. I've still got me twitch.
I'd have thought the notion of healing the mind was a compassionate and extremely important one. Perhaps the difficulties start when this becomes "psychotherapy" with its professional cadres whose first question is what the max-out is on your Mastercard (that's an example from my own experience). This then leads to the idea that unhappiness, sadness, melancholia are sicknesses alien to the human condition whereas they are intrinsic to it.
ReplyDeleteI'm with J.G. Ballard who said that marketing was the 20th century's most important invention. "Alain de Botton" is a pretty impressive invention too, come to think of it.
It is interesting to watch how the authority of psychotherapy and psycho-babble is working its way down the socio-economic ladder. Sort of like amusement arcades. No serious student of psychology takes them too seriously anymore, but I've come across people who, while they seem to have difficulty keeping a job or even remembering to pay the rent, can talk circles around me about self-esteem and learning to love themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think something similar is starting to happen with Darwinism. Serious scientists know there are some big problems with it, but you risk being throttled in a pub by an angry yob if you question whether nature really selected us to be hunters and gatherers.
Mark says "I'd have thought the notion of healing the mind was a compassionate and extremely important one." It probably is. That's why I'll be writing to Michael Gove to suggest all schoolchildren get a free copy of Burton's "The Anatomy Of Melancholy", the reading of which ought to be compulsory homework.
ReplyDelete