One Nation Under Therapy

Currently reading (among other books):
One Nation Under Therapy
by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel

Hot off the press and quite a long-awaited dose of reality. Having just completed the Masters program in Psychology at Pepperdine, I studied not only the requirements for the degree but watched and listened closely to confirm what I had already suspected regarding the over-psychoanalyzing of America - especially our youth. I can vouch for the need for someone to stand up and speak truth to this issue.

And, uhhh ... no, no, no - I do not believe for one moment that there is no place for therapy. Duh - I just spent 28 months completing an M.A. in Psych. I am a living example of the positive outcomes of good therapy, correct therapy, healthy counseling, that which consists of challenging, thought-provoking, realistic, wholesome and honest facing-up-to-one's own-responsibilities/actions/behaviors and forgiveness-encouraged therapy! Plus I'm up for going thru more as the needs arise. (Gosh, do I ever still consider counseling!) If/when people need help, when people are hurting and have been wounded, when life throws the painful curve balls that hit us square where we live and our hope is deferred, it's best that people should seek help, get out of the trap of suffering within themselves as best they can, pursue counseling if they can. But everyday people with the American way of blame-others-first mentality over life's hardships need to honestly pursue the professional and/or spiritual help that will help them, not babysit and cater to their behaviors and addictions while blanketing the real responsibilities to action in order to change from the inside out. Besides, all of us can name someone who have had rough, even awful experiences and tragedies in life, and made it through without therapy. It is my opinion that there's no argument as to what the bigger picture of over-psychoanalyzing in our country exemplifies as having a not-so-positive effect on our society - especially when it comes to America's youth (just look at the hundreds of thousands of drug-induced child & teen robots walking around under the over-diagnosed misguided label of ADD) - and how other societies and cultures do not have these psychological issues for very good reasons.

Some of the topics discussed in this book are as follows:

• How "therapism" and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives -- in children's classrooms, the workplace, churches, courtrooms, the media, even the military

• How therapism promotes self-obsession, self-pity, dependency, and a belief that one is not responsible for one's actions

• The Myth of the Fragile Child: how the therapeutic regime pathologizes healthy young people as stressed-out, homework-burdened, hypercompetitive, and depressed or suicidal. How the remedial measures it aggressively promotes for nonexistent vulnerabilities not only waste students' time, but impede their academic and moral development

• The alarming extent to which our nation's classrooms have been invaded by programs and exercises that encourage children to talk at length about their private feelings and thoughts

• How, at the heart of therapism, is the revolutionary idea that psychology can and should take the place of ethics and religion

• Refuted: the idea that uninhibited emotional openness is essential to mental health. Evidence that, on the contrary, reticence and suppression of feelings can be healthy and adaptive

• Why most victims of loss or tragedy do not benefit from therapeutic intervention. How trauma and grief counselors have "erred massively" in this direction

• The myth that continuous monitoring of one's feelings is healthful and liberating -- and why it is not only false but dangerous

• How excessive introspection and self-disclosure can lead to severe depression

• Why healthy children are most in need of guidance on how to be civil and ethical -- not how to be self-obsessed

• The absurd lengths many educators are going to today to protect children from stress and competition -- such as the National Education Association's new version of schoolyard tag "where nobody is ever 'out'"

• How "nonjudgmentalism" has become a cardinal virtue -- while concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, have come to be regarded as anachronistic and intolerant

• The cult of "self-esteem": how a growing body of evidence suggests there is no connection between self-esteem and achievement -- while unmerited self-esteem is associated with antisocial behavior, even criminality

• How the notion of sin has been replaced by the concept of mental illness -- encouraging crime, drug and alcoholic abuse, and other vices

• How Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has evolved from an affliction of war veterans to one affecting nearly everyone who has experienced a setback or troubling incident

• "The triumph of the therapeutic": How the assumption that emotional disclosure is always valuable, and that most people are incapable of dealing with adversity without professional help, has slipped its moorings in clinical psychology and drifted into all corners of American life

Personal note: It's about time someone begins to write about this reality - thank God there's a wake-up call to this field of study and practice (if anyone will hear it). I think I'm in line to write on this subject myself --- if only there were time to do everything we'd like to do!