VV(12) - Therapy

[Judy]

Just thought I'd add : We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the
World's Getting Worse" (1992) by James Hillman and Michael Ventura (although
this book's probably common knowledge since Pynchon called it "provocative,
dangerous, and high-spirited" and said about it "Finally somebody has begun
to talk out loud about what must change, and what must be left behind, if we
are to navigate the perilous turn of this millennium and survive...Ventura
and Hillman deserve our thanks as well as our closest attention."):

Hillman: "The vogue today, in psychotherapy, is the "inner child." That's
the therapy thing - you go back to your childhood. But if you're looking
backward, you're not looking around. This trip backward constellates what
Jung called the "child archetype." Now the child archetype is by nature
apolitical and disempowered - it has no connection with the political world.
And so the adult says, "Well, what can I do about the world? This thing's
bigger than me." That's the child archetype talking. "All I can do is go
into myself, work on my growth, my development, find good parenting, support
groups." This is a disaster for our political world, for our democracy.
Democracy depends on intensely active citizens, not children.

By emphasizing the child archetype, by making our therapeutic hours rituals
of evoking childhood and reconstructing childhood, we're blocking ourselves
from political life. Twenty or thirty years of therapy have removed the most
sensitive and the most intelligent, and some of the most affluent people in
our society into child cult worship. It's going on insidiously, all through
therapy, all through the country. So of course our politics are in disarray
and nobody's voting-we're disempowering ourselves through therapy." (p6)

David Morris sends from: http://www.utne.com/webwatch/
>
> Dissecting America's Obsession with Therapy
> by Leif Utne
>
> Has therapy eclipsed religion in the U.S. today? Not yet, says Eva
> Moskovitz. But, we're getting there. Moskovitz, author of a new book
called
> In Therapy We Trust, argues that America places an almost religious faith
in
> the psyche. "Americans turn to feeling good," she says in an interview
with
> The Johns Hopkins University Press, "as reflexively as they once turned to
> God. As a nation, we have become utterly devoted to self fulfillment. It's
> our new faith, our new religion."
>
> While Moskovitz does not deny the importance of introspection and
> self-analysis, she believes that moral responsibility takes a hit when too
> much emphasis is placed on the inner self. "The therapeutic gospel's
> morality is a limited one," she claims. "In this morality, happiness and
> self-exploration are valorized above all else. Psychological goals and
means
> are celebrated and anything that appears to diminish such goals and means
is
> rejected."
>
>
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