One of the first things I learned after beginning to practice psychotherapy was that everyone is at least a little neurotic, and everyone, at one time or another, could do with a little therapy. I'm understating my case.
I'm tempted, and yet I'm not going to broaden the notion of therapy to mean any kind of guidance and help from friends and family. When I say that everyone needs it, I'm referring to structured, formal psychotherapy. Everyone could benefit from it once in a while.
We are not as rational as we might believe or act. Passions can get the better of the best of us. I have yet to meet a completely healthy, adjusted neurosis-free person. I include myself. I have clearly needed therapy on several occasions, and I still reflect on insights, dreams, stories and events from my experiences as a client in therapy.
It appears that the public doesn't always understand what therapy is all about. Still today some people avoid therapy because it could cost them their jobs and reputations. The public seems to think that if you can't maintain the illusion of mental health, then you are not fit to belong to normal society. You become what the Gospel calls a "leper," referring not to a physical disease but to a condition of exclusion. You are ostracized because you are not perceived as conventionally normal.
Apparently there are two kinds of discourse about therapy: the public version that associates it with a Frankensteinian messing with a person's head, and the discourse of those who practice it or know it from experience, the version that sees its benefits and effectiveness.
Like all things humane and full of soul, in a mechanistic society people prefer pills and behavioral techniques -- and maybe a little electricity -- to talk. It's popular in some circles today to pooh-pooh therapy as mere yakking, branding it laughably simplistic compared to pharmacology and hardware. Yes, talk is simple and yet sometimes more difficult than making a pill.
If you are in good professional hands, therapy can help you get through your depression and grief, find work that you love, work out those marital strains and discover the fascinating universe of your soul.
I know, some people don't like the soul word. But let me remind you that it has been around for thousands of years and has been explored with remarkable intelligence. In fact, the word "psychotherapy" comes from two key terms that Plato and other philosophers studied closely: psyche meaning soul, and theraps meaning attendant or servant. The word "psychotherapy" means literally "care of the soul."
In some training programs, students of therapy have to go through an intense course of therapy themselves. It helps them spot their main complexes and work through their past so they don't act out their own issues at the expense of their clients. I think this is a model that could spread to other professions and jobs; indeed, maybe all of them.
I'd like to see doctors spend some time in therapy before practicing medicine. The same goes for lawyers, media personalities, business leaders and, of course, politicians. Imagine if our leaders had sorted out the main issues that make them neurotic on the job.
Many of our social problems are not as literal as the participants and media coverage would have us believe. Many of our leaders are clearly banging at windmills of their own when they make public decisions. We all act out our anxieties and past conflicts in our current affairs. But we have almost no opportunity for reflection.
Now I'll allow some softening of the word therapy. Yes, it can take place in probing conversations among friends and in the quiet whisperings of intimate partners. Teachers and spiritual leaders can practice it and all of us can help each other cope. In a way we are all therapists and we're all patients. But I still think that formal therapy would be good for everyone.
Follow Thomas Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thomasmoore_nh
Thomas Moore: Updating Your 'Old Time' Religion
Delia Lloyd: 5 Ways Talk Therapy Can Help You
Kaitlin Bell Barnett: What Is a Psychiatrist, Anyway?
Psychotherapy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GoodTherapy.org - Therapy, Find a Therapist or Marriage Counselor
Find a Therapist, Psychologist, Counselor - Psychology Today
Interesting claim. Formal psychotherapy, as practiced today could be very beneficial for all if it weren’t for two glaring details: its unrelenting focus on the individual and its inclination toward “truthiness,†a kind of duplicitous behavior noted by comedian Stephen Colbert. Truthiness is noticeable in the one who exhibits it for its insistent hubristic defiance in the face of evidence to the contrary. It is, minus Colbert’s obvious irony, characteristic of our age. “Keep fear alive†indeed. Why else would the Colbert persona be so easily recognizable and popular?
If there were more like Mr. Moore who take a public stance toward the state of the world, more psychotherapy would seem reasonable. One has a sense of his values, if only through his writings. I’m not thinking of specific moralistic values, but values simply made known. Why aren’t more therapists as transparent to and with the public as he is? If we’re all neurotic then why don’t more in the discipline speak out directly? They seem oddly inert except when promoting their ideas only in their isolated practices and wares and not more public forms of social action. Are they hiding? If so why and from whom? Are they able to talk the talk but cannot walk the walk? Are they defended against their own neurosis?
In order to cope with a patient’s neurosis therapists are taught to detach from emotional engagement with clients, i.e. “not getting involved with results.†This effort, purportedly in the service of psyche, may protect therapists from becoming entangled with clients, but I would argue it has exacerbated more cultural neurosis, suffering, and narcissism than healing. Individuation may be its goal (the client’s or the therapist’s?), but what kinds of individuation have transpired over the last 100 years? One wonders if Bernie Madoff was in therapy. Didn’t he get his needs met?
Current practice appears to promote detachment from values, from others, and from locale. Responsibility is only to self. It seems the discipline is so tantalized by a limited understanding of psyche and personal liberty that caring has been demoted if not misplaced or entirely forgotten. What about caring for, and ones involvement with the anima mundi? Psychotherapists are in this world too. Might one implore physicians to heal themselves first by reflecting on their implied assumptions and judgments of others? Might one remedy be for therapists to periodically get out of the confines of the office and engage society like the rest of us?
As mentioned, don’t prominent techniques of psychotherapy and truthiness have much in common? Namely, the disparaging hinting, crude changing of the subject, subtle dissembling, and sneaky deception. I’m even leaving out the more bogus practices of clumsy, misinformed interventions, and outright betrayals of trust. Therapists may call their version of truthiness the poison that heals the wound or allowing the trickster part of psyche to create a useful narrative, but in other eras this was simply called lying. Now it seems in therapeutic circles truthiness is valued as intelligence. Even if only inadvertently, detachment has become a learned, modeled, even promoted new value: a liberated psyche means getting your immediate needs met. Psyche is certainly enormously more complex.
Sadly no, one is tempted to think psychotherapy as generally practiced isn’t part of the solution, it’s part of the problem. Long-ignored social facts, i.e. the ways we treat each other collectively and not what we achieve or fantasize about our identities, are tearing us apart. Could it be the societal house is on fire, some psychotherapists are shocked to find their pants aflame too, and they don’t know what to do about it?
If the GOV did not have the safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid..........those professionals who cater to them would not be able to PAY OFF their college CC debts.
So they should thank UNCLE SAM..................
Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.
Kudos to Mr. Moore for blowing the lid off of ADD though! If only more people saw it as a different beneficial hard wiring that helps you... ah look unicorns! Um...
My psychology professor in college concurred with your basic premise. That is, that everyone could benefit from counseling. He also iterated that over 90% of psychotherapy occurs in the United States. That means that the rest of the entire global community shares a mere 10% psychotherapy sessions. Including cosmopolitan europe. Scary facts. Is the U.S. really so mentally ill that it requires a full 90% of all psychotherapy? I really question that.
I agree that discussing issues with friends and family can provide an opportunity to work through problems. Frankly, that needs to be emphasized, because a root problem in our nation is the lack of interaction and dialogue with our neighbors, friends, and family. Every thing does not need to be bought and paid for, such as "therapy" sessions. We need to return to those old fashioned values of consideration and compassion.
I also have read several of Mr. Moore's books. My spouse has had them around for ages but it was never the right time. I am discovering my soul and realizing it is a scary but rewarding process.
However why do you say everyone ?
If so you should SUPPORT the idea of Mental H C insurance..paid by the GOV ......because obviously millions could not afford it.
Let's make therapy affordable......................how ?
You sound more like a spiritual advisor . which is not bad of course .
Of course, this isn't the place for details, but I wish there were mechanisms in place to be able to sue therapists. We can return a sweater to a store when it is not made properly, but we are helpless when a therapist ruins our whole lives. There is something wrong with this system.
Sorry to sound so negative, but they are nothing more than pill pushers who don't seem to want to do the real work of finding out exactly what the issues are and working with you.
I will never, ever, ever go into therapy and would advise everyone to make sure that they know what they are doing beforehand. We tend to put these doctors on pedestals and not give ourselves credit for our own pain and inner strengths.
It's funny, but I find it true. I have a shrink who is brilliant at quietly re-framing things for me and usually one session (after having seen him for a series previously) works wonders. As an author, finding the right words that connect with the experience is crucial for me.
He helped me tremendously after an expectedly traumatic medical test that left me shattered and one of the things he said was that I needed to write about it. As soon as he said that, I felt myself lifted out of the experience, observing it, reflecting on it. And it became my latest blog here on HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/they-tortured-me-for-my-h_b_713703.html
Would I have written about it without his suggestion? I don't know. I was so overwhelmed by the experience, I didn't see a clear way out.