May 25, 2021

"In an echo of his mother, Harry repeatedly entwined the intimate details of his mental health struggles with attacks on his family."

"He accused his father of emotional neglect and his family of insisting he 'play the game' and bury his feelings of anxiety and helplessness. He even questioned the way the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had raised their children, describing a cycle of 'genetic pain and suffering' they supposedly created. In fact, Prince Charles may have been too soft as a parent, in contrast to his own father’s rigour. Equally, Harry’s characterisation of Charles as unsympathetic about mental health was wide of the mark. Only months into their marriage, after Diana had shown symptoms of depression and anxiety, Charles introduced Diana to a psychotherapist in London, Dr Alan McGlashan. Diana saw him briefly, and Charles ended up in therapy with him for 14 years."

From "Like Diana, Harry doesn’t see the damage his interviews are doing" by Sally Bedell Smith (London Times).

2 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Birches writes: "I'd agree that Prince Harry is putting too much trust in the journalists and celebrities. These same types were the same who took advantage of his mother. I watched Prince William's video message concerning the misconduct of Martin Bashir a few days ago. To me, it seemed as if there was some subtext directed at his brother, "Don't trust these people. They're jackals." He's not wrong. Whatever problems Harry has with his family are not going to be fixed by talking with people who only care about ratings and clicks. Unlike Martin Bashir (or Oprah), at least the paparazzi doesn't pretend it's after anything else."

Ann Althouse said...

David writes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_McGlashan

A couple of days ago you posted something from Sally Bedell Smith about Princess Diana seeing Alan McGlashan, a British Psychiatrist who also treated Prince Charles.

I had been somewhat familiar with McGlashan because Laurens van der Post mentioned him in his writings. I knew he was a Jungian psychiatrist, that he had been an air ace in WWI, and that he also served as a psychiatrist to van der Post’s son, John when he was dying from cancer. Van der Post was quite admired by Prince Charles and they had a close relationship until van der Post’s death. One of the funnier stories is that Prince Charles wanted Diane to like the things he liked and think the way he thought and brought some works by van der Post on their honeymoon and wanted her to read him. Although I like van der Post unless someone is interested in what he writes about, some of his works seem wholly inappropriate to foist off on a very young and relatively intellectually unsophisticated Princess Diana. My understanding it she didn’t like the works, didn’t complete them which disappointed the Prince who also showed his disappointment. In any event Prince Charles sought out McGlashan on van der Post’s recommendation. Van der Post is also enamored of Jung, knew him and wrote about him.

I pulled up the Wikipedia interest and am forwarding it to you since you might find it of interest. (Van der Post’s second wife, Ingaret Giffard was a Jungian lay analyst. I assume that van der Post met McGlashan through her, although it may have been the other way around).