"Back then, it was called psychobabble.... The concept survived the hedonistic ’80s, the grimy ’90s, and the low-rise aughts only to reemerge in the social media age with a new name and a more sinister purpose.... Isn’t it odd... that the most selfish people you know always seem to be the ones who are armchair diagnosing their friends and family with personality disorders? I’m reminded of the minor scandal that erupted a few years ago when an A-list actor allegedly wrote private messages to his then girlfriend telling her that if she needed to post photos of herself in a bathing suit, he was not the right partner for her. Elsewhere he wrote, 'I’d love to know before the premiere so I’m not put in the position of publicly flaunting our love if my boundaries are going to be continued to be disrespected. That would be hurtful and triggering for me.' The girlfriend was a professional surfer...."
This is an important general issue, but if you're interested in the A-list actor part of it, here's a Newsweek article from 2023:
"Jonah Hill, Sarah Brady Text Messages—Full Transcript." It's really long and a massive invasion of privacy. Why did Newsweek publish all that? Or maybe the better question is why do people have their arguments via text? Why would anyone want to leave a cold record for the whole world to read? And this was a man concerned with "boundaries."
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I think the problem is worse than just therapySPEAK, though I agree that the 70s has a lot to answer for. "I'm OK, you're OK" was the supposed aim (and of course is ridiculously facile and fails to acknowledge the fact that not everyone is OK), but "I'm OK, therefore all my problems are your fault" is the way it's played out.
What we see now is people employing therapyspeak not just to deflect their own responsibility for their own problems and to deny their own agency in solving or mitigating them, but to force everyone around them to act in prescribed ways. The most "damaged" person calls all the plays, holds all the cards, choose your metaphor.
And even religion (or, let's say, Christianity), which used to offer at least somewhat of a corrective in its declaration that all people fall short and that redemption is available to all but requires one particular, chosen action on every individual's part, now seems largely to buy into the "therapeutic" model that no one is actually responsible for the exercise of free will that can result in sin (or redemption), and the arbiter of what constitutes sin is how a person *feels* about an action. What's left?
That’s a peculiar title because “boundaries” is therapeutic psychobabble and Vanity Fair is one of the most reliable purveyors. The omnipresent psychobabble diagnosis for over a decade has been “narcissist.” Everybody you don’t like, or no longer get along, with is a narcissist. Especially popular with women to describe exes. Leftists can hardly write “Trump” without pairing it with “narcissist.” Because he doesn’t convey proper “empathy.”
The framing betrays the shallowness of this thesis and ignorance of the author. The 70s were widely hedonistic; the 80s had hair metal hedonism too but were drifting conservative and tech-driven (Reagan; MTV; CDs; cable syndication). The 90s were hardly 'grimy' -- is the author alluding to the niche grunge music genre? The 90s were when PCs went mainstream. Fashion reverted from the 1960s-1970s garish excesses to timeless and traditional with the 1980s young Preppies and more broadly by 1990.
Regarding the topic: People need to talk about stuff that they like or that bugs them. Emotional descriptions. This can be primitive direct reactions (smiles, grimaces, etc.), or grounded in religion (e.g, lust, pride, envy, etc.), or through trendy jargon. Yes, the 20th century had a load of psychobabble and Carl Rogers' shallow Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) framework (1960s, not 1970s) contaminated the thinking of millions (to include AI chatbots today).
I see the texts as Jonah Hill's general anxiety and modesty. That duplicates 14th century thinking, Victorian thinking, etc. Ignore the precise wording language.
In the poetry of the J. Geils Band:
"...
Years go by I'm lookin' through a girly magazine
And there's my homeroom angel on the pages in-between
My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold
..."
…fine R C- How does me talking like a therapist make you feel?
My niece and nephew (and all of their friends) are fluent in therapy-speak. (Do the sexes even *like* each other anymore? All they talk about is "trauma" and "boundaries", never love or affection. Sigh.)
Dump all the therapy speak and go for cognitive behavioral therapy. Or, as Dr. Albert Ellis called it Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Took me about three sessions with a psychologist to get over my divorce. Ellis based his therapy on the Stoics; Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Can’t recommend these three enough.
Now, this is one hell of a “by the way.” Soft White Underbelly did a 2 hour 20 minute interview with Hunter Biden! SWU is the ultimate therapeutic interview podcast. Even funnier, the YouTube video is bracketed with a warning: “You Are Not Alone” and advice on how to call 988, the Suicide Hotline. I will watch the whole damned thing. Hopefully, Hunter will not drive me to slit my wrists.
https://youtu.be/kH-_E62Jm54?is=3xek32W_XwUBzK2y
Wow. Jonah Hill had a surfer girlfriend, and he messed it up.
Shouting Thomas said...
"Now, this is one hell of a “by the way.” Soft White Underbelly did a 2 hour 20 minute interview with Hunter Biden! SWU is the ultimate therapeutic interview podcast. "
Soft White Underbelly was Blue Oyster Cult's pseudonym when they played secret pop-up shows on Long Island.
L. Ron Hubbard was psychobabbling before it was cool.
Damnit, we were never to speak of the 70's again. Except for Red Forman.
"trigger" or "triggering" is a leftwing woke word that makes my skin crawl.
@Peachy+2 hereby admits to being "triggered" by the word "triggered." The infinite regression. The hall of reflecting mirrors. The stack of turtles holding up the Earth is complete.
I'm triggered by triggered too.
Jonah Hill will always want a hot girl friend and never feel confident of her love.
Most men understand that they can't compete with their wives' therapists. These women are "seen, heard and understood in a way" that they haven’t in years. And, of course, the therapist is only getting half (sometimes even less than that) of the story.
In this case, there has been role reversal. Yes, Mr. Hill's fiance was poorly treated. But so what? This is something men go through all the time. And we should celebrate fairness and equality. When women start to suffer through all this bull about emotional dumping and boundaries and gas lighting, maybe, maybe, they'll give it up for a bit.
"Isn’t it odd... that the most selfish people you know always seem to be the ones who are armchair diagnosing their friends and family with personality disorders?"
Never mind the personality disorders. The one most over-used and meaningless diagnosis is "fascist "
“Jonah Hill will always want a hot girl friend and never feel confident of her love”
…now this here is quality analysis…
Jonah Hill and Sarah Brady: those names lept out at me and I assumed they were arguing about gun control. But wouldn't they have been more or less on the same side?
Is "psychobabble" as prominent as it was in the Seventies? I think it was replaced by talk about identity and power differentials. Freudian (Jungian, Adlerian, etc.) talk isn't as common and seems a bit out of place today.
Should an AI be expected to pull himself or herself by its therapystraps?
The biggest surprise in all of this is that someone thinks that Jonah Hill is an A-list actor. He has talent and a solid list of credits, but A-list is a serious stretch.
Abigail Shrier wrote a good book called Bad Therapy.
Enigma -
I am annoyed by "triggered"
Triggered means - "I am a delicate victim - and you hurt me!"
Therapy is certainly not the only field which is infected by academic or technical argle-bargle.
"Counselor Troi's pedantic psychobabble." - Q
Modern societies are full of Lumpen-marxists and Lumpen-freudians, and the hybrid Marxifreudians.
One of the biggest surprises to me when I started on discussion groups back in the mid-90s was all the free psychoanalysis.
Bottom story of the day: Miliband forces builders to put solar panels where sun doesn’t shine.
From the Telegraph, Miliband is the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
I had a bizarre interaction with a young female pharmacy manager with flaming red hair who said to me as I was explaining to her in a low voice why she was wrong, "I'm feeling very uncomfortable right now."
It came out of the blue and I replied, "So am I!"
Might have been my first exposure to a fully indoctrinated SJW.
Psychobabble never went away. The babble adapted to a new set of rules.
The psychobabble of the 1960s and 1970s occurred when a whole lot more people were practicing Christians and attended church and knew a huge number of biblical expressions from sunday school.
The babble of today was generated/morphed from poorly-understood academic concepts (e.g., real cognitive biases with no political relevance became the asinine "unconscious bias training" of HR departments).
When you throw the baby out with the bathwater, the baby gets covered in mud and bruised before it crawls back to its crib.
I, for one, stand by each and every comment I've posted on Althouse blog, except for the ones where I was incorrect, and of course the ones I've since changed opinions about. Other than that, yeah, I stand by them all, unless they make me look dumb. Those don't count either. And the ones where I was mean to Inga or Chuck or Howard. Well, wait, never mind those last, they can still count upon my support.
Therapyglut is a clear and progressive problem (PP... no pun intended. Maybe, baby) with forward-looking collateral damage in transition through popular publication.
Disappeared for 3 decades? Really? Seems like it's been with us forever.
People use psychobabble because most therapy is bullshit.
How can someone have boundaries but support open borders?
And can we bury the term gaslight?
Surfer Girl was wrong to release the texts. But she’s right about Jonah. He’s selfish & manipulative.
Generational Affirmation Therapy. Bloc therapy, perhaps, to treat color and class dysphoria... bigot. This is the reason to force sociopolitical climate change.
Vanity is one of the seven deadly sins and a nano aggression in Fair minds.
Jonathan Haidt and other sociologists have highlighted the key global milestones which are highly correlated with poor mental health (particularly for young girls):
1) The move from creating your own content and relationship with the Internet to monolithic social platforms.
2) The transition from posting photos and comments to automated threads hijacking our dopaminergic reward systems, turning us into listless scrollers (a great book that goes into this is called Dopamine Nation)
3) Instagram
These technologies have flourished in a vacuum of cultural meaning. With the decline of religion, people are trying to construct their own sense of purpose. This is hard when the town square has been replaced by a set of nihilistic digital platforms.
The 1970s also gave us another bad idea
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-the-last-time-the-us-tried-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent-180979742/
I think the first three decades of the 21st Century can each hold their own in any stupidity contest.
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