From "Is It Toxic to Tell Everyone to Get Therapy?/It has become a social credential to be in therapy. It’s also incredibly difficult to access" by Zachary Siegel (NYT).
The link on Lasch goes to a 2010 essay — by Lee Siegel — about Lasch's 1979 book, "The Culture of Narcissism":
In Lasch’s definition (drawn from Freud), the narcissist, driven by repressed rage and self-hatred, escapes into a grandiose self-conception, using other people as instruments of gratification even while craving their love and approval. Lasch saw the echo of such qualities in “the fascination with fame and celebrity, the fear of competition, the inability to suspend disbelief, the shallowness and transitory quality of personal relations, the horror of death.”...
In “The Culture of Narcissism,” Lasch again blamed both the right’s veneration of market forces and the left’s cultural progressivism for weakening the bonds of family and community — and thus deforming the growth of solid character....
Zachary Siegel... Lee Siegel... — are they related? Whatever. The point is Christopher Lasch said some notable things 40 years ago, and Zachary Siegel is saying that things have reversed — "funnily" (he seems to think it's funny). Lasch thought people had gone too inward, into individual therapy, and Siegel is saying that people are taking therapy and aiming it outward.
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(AA, you're up early today.)
How soon until Trump is referenced in the NYT comments?
"Lasch thought people had gone too inward, into individual therapy, and Siegel is saying that people are taking therapy and aiming it outward. "
Isn't 'aiming [therapy] outward' what the Soviets used to do to dissidents, by committing them to mental hospitals?
Zachary Siegel... Lee Siegel... — are they related? Whatever. The point is Christopher Lasch said some notable things 40 years ago, and Zachary Siegel is saying that things have reversed — "funnily" (he seems to think it's funny). Lasch thought people had gone too inward, into individual therapy, and Siegel is saying that people are taking therapy and aiming it outward.
The underlying assumptions of the psychotherapy culture is that there is a highly structured "unconscious" and that talk-therapy methods provide "a royal road to the unconscious." Many later theorists strongly object to the fundamental assumptions of Freudian-type analysts, and instead focus on cognitive processes and biological constraints. The work of old-school psychology analysts can strongly resemble literature and creative fiction rather than science. Cognitive and biological theorists posit that unconscious processes are broken into dozens brain subunits and information storage methods. The bits and pieces become meaningful to oneself only in combination, and often only fleetingly so. Temporary organization rather than hard absolutes.
So, yes, the old-school therapy crowd is often wildly inward, narcissistic, or self-centered.
Siegel vs. Siegel -- many academic disciplines are often highly Jewish (and in recent decades highly Japanese, Chinese, and Korean). This is exactly the same in contemporary Classical music. I'd be surprised if these two were related.
It's easier and more fun to call people you disagree with 'crazy' or 'toxic' than it is to say that they are wrong and try to explain why, especially when literally the whole of human history and experience is a example of why your project is doomed to failure.
Where does that entire display you mentioned in your first post on SBF at the NYTimes event fall into this?
What sort of 'therapy' is SBF undergoing, using the Andrew Ross Sorkin like a parasite using it's host, to engage with the audience for his own personal therapy session?
Just wondering.
More Mumbo jumbo jargon honored as if it’s a medical science. The history behind Freudian practitioners tells us more than maintaining a Faith in their oldest or their latest theories. Give me that old time therapy, it’s good enough for me.
My law office is between two therapists. My building has about 10 therapists. The customers are 98% women. I think these customers just need a friend to talk with. And it’s an annuity for the therapist. Insurance covers the cost.
Having lots of friends whom you regularly get out into nature for vigorous exercise and eating a well balanced whole food omnivorous Mediterranean diet is the best therapy. Also, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman and Marie Kondo are correct... Eliminate clutter, organize your stuff Clean your room do the dishes, stand up straight take a morning sunrise walk.
If it's not okay to tell a morbidly obese person to lose weight, why is it okay to tell someone who (may or may-not have mental health issues) to seek treatment?
One of these morbidities is visibly obvious to the layman, the other requires a professional, who renders and opinion. Is it because the one which is obvious, is obvious? It would be easier to believe this if there wasn't such a concerted effort to convince the general public that obesity is fine, perfectly healthy.
Mainstream publishing, steering, influencing, education is all therapeutic culture designed to corrupt the individual, to force them to take a knee, beg, "donate". #ReligionThatCannotBeNamed
This is why I believe paying for a Twitter blue check will tremendously improve the platform. Something in the street vernacular about not taking a shit where you eat. For good and sometimes ill, but good mostly, the socials are therapeutic.
We need to have a say and if we don’t… “the stones would immediately cry out.”
I think “these stones” are the nonbelievers, the Alex Jones, the ones everybody seems to want banned. The ones Sam Harris and Quollete founder wants banned.
Question. Do I have to turn into a stone not to hear the cries of the banned?
people are taking therapy and aiming it outward
Projection.
Therapy is an example of Thorsten Veblen's "conspicuous consumption" by the wealthy.
Doing household chores often works just as well to alleviate the stress and worry some have over their social standing. And then rather than a therapist bill, you have an organized sock drawer or a made bed.
I'm sorry, but this is people with entirely too much extra time* on their hands.
*yeah.....it's euphemism for watching TOO MUCH TV.
How soon until Trump is referenced in the NYT comments?
Probably at least a little longer than it took in these comments!
Lee Siegel is an interesting commentator who sometimes tries to be too provocative. He's the guy who lost his job (or was suspended) for commenting "stridently" about his own articles as the "sock puppet" "Sprezzatura" (I sometimes wondered if Siegel was commenting here as well). Was it wrong to participate in online discussions about one's own work under another name? Maybe not, but it can be tacky and annoying. Lee Siegel has been slowly rebuilding his career since then.
Zachary Siegel has an interesting idea, but doesn't take it far enough. If in the 70s people focused on "on personal psychological well-being instead of external collective struggles," today they make their personal struggles and their grappling with personal identity into political issues. The various liberation movements were going on in the 60s and 70s, but they focused more on real, external abuses and injustices. Now the point appears more to be salving inner wounds and feelings that one hasn't been properly recognized and acknowledged.
Then of course there is always the option of buckin' the fuck up, quitting your whimpering, and getting on with your life. (aka the Bob Newhart/Dr. Switzer option)
Clean out those engrams, rise above Clear and be all the Operating Thetan you can be.
"I sometimes wondered if Siegel was commenting here as well"
Oh, he did. And got into a very stupid dispute with me. Click the tag if you want to find that.
As a kid, when hearing that someone was 'in therapy' I naively assumed that it would end, when the issue had been figured out and worked on. You learned new coping skills which you could put into practice independently and move on. Nope. I later figured it was a lot like going to a chiropractor. Regular 'adjustments' that might/might not work and you're always having to go back for maintenance. And there's no way these folks are gonna work themselves out of a regular stipend, so the visits go on forever. Nice work if you can get it.
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