Therapy and the Therapeutistic
Several of my blogs this year have dealt with therapy and the therapeutic culture (the TC) in one way or another. A recent e-mail from a regular reader makes it clear that my loose and inexact use of the term therapy has become a cause for concern. One defense I can make is that many people, some historians included, use the term history [i.e., a disciplined study of the past] in wildly meaningless ways. The current administration in Washington has been particularly irresponsible in making claims about something it calls the “lessons of history.” But I suppose that is no excuse for vagueness on my part.
I have no objection to therapy as a practice in the field of mental health. Many people have benefited from therapy or. When I go to therapy, I do it voluntarily and with a clear sense of what I want to gain. The therapist, or counselor, takes a particular role defined by her field of expertise and by the regulations of the therapist’s guild. The therapeutic exchange has the potential to become a search for clear thinking and deeper understanding on one’s self and one’s emotional responses. If you haven’t tried it, I recommend it.
But it isn’t actual therapy that compels me to rant about “therapy.” Rather, it is the saturation of contemporary U.S. culture with terms and metaphors drawn from therapy, and the even deeper alliance of therapeutic notions with consumer capitalism. We should not refer to the rapid proliferation of the therapeutic metaphor as therapy, but as “therapeutisitic.” So, for instance, when a local radio station plays a commercial that explains why I have a problem with my [car / love life / debt management / looks] and in 60 seconds introduces me to simple and certain means of eliminating this blight, I’ve involuntarily experienced a therapeutic moment administered by someone who has no credentials to perform therapy. In fact, it isn’t therapy. It’s therapeutistic. Or when a store manager who has taken a course in customer care soothingly responds to my complaints, and uses communication tools that signal to me that he understands my point of view, he is providing me a therapeutic environment. However, I don’t want a therapeutic environment, and it’s not really a therapeutic environment, because I haven’t sought therapy and the store manager isn’t interested in my mental health. It’s therapeutistic. But, I’m not European and don’t have a degree in post-modernism, so I’ll have to settle for real words. When I write therapy here, or anywhere else, I will leave it to you to decide if I mean therapy per se, therapy qua therapy, actual, genuine therapy, or if I really mean actions, words, or symbols that are simply therapeutistic.
I’ve written about ways that the language and metaphor of therapy have entered our lives, and undoubtedly I’ll ride this hobby horse again. At the moment, though, I just want to point to an interesting and useful article dealing with the idea of addiction. Timothy A. Hickman in the March Journal of American History writes of the growing concern about narcotic addiction in the late 19th century. The use of opium and its derivatives began much earlier than the 19th century, and addiction was known as a problem among Oriental people in their own lands and in their Diaspora. Narcotic addiction took on a far different meaning when more and more of the victims were white Americans. Medical authorities and reformers claimed grossly inflated figures for the numbers of addicts and demanded that the U.S. government respond by making certain drugs illegal. As Hickman shows, narcotic addiction became a symbol of the modern world that American elites resisted as they created it.
At the core of the narcotic issue was the loss of control. “Narcotic addiction,” Hickman writes, “signified the annulment of the bourgeois subject’s autonomy, willpower, and self-mastery.” (1274) As many historians have shown, middle class Americans looked toward the 20th century with ambivalence or even foreboding. Rather than a world of independent businessmen, farmers, and professionals—all capable of self-control in public and (less certain) private—the frightening reality of modernity offered a world of corporate work and dependence. Old verities, especially the religious kind, faded as new realities emerged. Interdependent markets, feminism, corruption scandals, reform all demanded that middle-class men change or move out of the way. No wonder that in the 1870s George Beard characterized neuralgia, a weakness of the nerves, as a distinctively American malady. Narcotic addiction joined neuralgia as a symptom of the weakening nerves, and therefore the weakening independence, of America’s middle class.
Of course, providing a historical context for an issue does not mean the issue isn’t really an issue. Physicians and other specialists dealing with narcotic use face an often vicious pathology. But Hickman’s work allows an insight into the TC at a time when it had only begun to spread through all levels of American society. A medical problem can become a stand-in for other issues in the culture. Demonizing narcotic addiction became a way of damning every new-fangled complication of the post-Civil War era, from corporate integration to paper money (one financially successful cure for narcotic addiction involved gold injections). Addiction, of course, has become one of the most widely-used metaphors of the TC. Helen Fisher believes we can become addicted to chocolate and to romantic love. Peruse the list of 12-step programs to see how many addictions plague modern American society. Again, I am not mocking the pain of those who suffer from a drug or behavioral dependence. I’m only pointing to the use of the “addiction” to stand in for other deep issues in American society, such as our sense of powerlessness and loss of control, our loss of vital relationships, and our alienation from the political process and from other important parts of our lives. In so far as the concern about a personal addiction distracts us from these other issues, it is not therapeutic. It’s therapeutistic.
Comments
Thanks for the helpful clarification! It's interesting that the distinction between genuine therapy and the "therapeutistic" has a great deal to do with the intent of the communicator--not necessarily the techniques or tools of communication themselves. There's nothing but self-awareness and conscience to prevent someone from using active listening, for example, as a means of manipulation for personal gain.
Another example of the metaphors of therapy being taken into Christianity is Patrick McCormick's theological understanding of sin as addiction. I find this one helpful as it tries to connect the complexity of human experience to a Judeo-Christian insight that has often been made irrelevant by being defined in abstractions.
Posted by: alison | March 20, 2004 9:35 PM
A useful clarification... I Googled for "therapeutistic" and besides your blog, there's only one other reference to it on the Internet, and that page seems to be dead...
http://www.google.com/search?q=therapeutistic
Are you familiar with ELIZA? It's a classic computer program intended as a parody of the active-listening strategy for therapy.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/canon/eliza.htm
BTW, I don't consider myself a Eurpoean or a postmodernist, though I suppose I'm glad I didn't have time to go into deconstructionism when you were visiting my class...
I thought I heard a guffaw from your part of the classroom when the student asked about whether writing a whole book on literary criticism would get boring!
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz | March 21, 2004 12:13 AM
Therapeutistic is a pretty gruesome word. Let's hope it doesn't catch on.
I did laugh out loud, though I thought that the student had asked if it would get boring to read an entire book on criticism. The epigraph from Elliott Gorn on my last blog applies to almost all academic writing.
Posted by: John | March 21, 2004 12:24 PM
I agree with you, therapy language and concepts have been
appropriated by the Capitalist Machine and industry has co-opted the
lingo
and commodified it for economic gain. There is something sick about
this,
but in a sense, these activities are anti-therapeutic and are akin to
trying to
profit from people's pain. I struggle a lot because I also see the
therapy community
as lacking in integrity---we have colluded with the capitalists and
have taken something
that has the potential to offer genuine solace and healing (therapy)
and instead
we've manipulated and twisted it into something that exploits human
suffering for $.
Actually, more than ever I am seeing the parallels between religon
(Christianity in particular)
and therapy. I am thinking of things like the DSM (Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual),
the overreliance on psychtropic medications, managed care, the "therapy
sessions" that consist of
15 minutes with a legaized drug dealer (that would be a psychiatrist)
who dispenses the dosage
and signs off on the insurance claims that will render $125 for the
"therapy." Yes, the therapy
industry is just another form of social control and it is anti-healing
in every meaningful way, in
much the same way that I find myself be reactive to organized religion
(specifically Christianity)
which also is selling "hope and healing" and ultimately profiting from
people's pain and desperation.
Posted by: Tracey | March 22, 2004 9:12 PM
I enjoyed what you had to say in your latest entry. I agree with you that the (mis)use of "addiction" as well as other therapeutic terms and diagnoses can be a distraction from more important issues in our lives.
I conduct therapy with many different types of people...some with recent problems and some with problems that have plagued them for years. Some of them are able to make cognitive changes and some of them never will. I have one client who has been in therapy for 20 years, he has a tremendous amount of insight (as he should) but he is still repeating the same patterns that have been a part of his life for the last 20 years. Is he using therapy as an excuse for his behavior? If he is in therapy then is he absolved of any responsibility for his behavior because he is "working on himself"? Are the therapists the problem (I am, of course, referring to his previous therapists)? Is this therapeutic culture holding people back from making real progress because they have become so hypersensitive to and "in touch" with everything that we wallow in our feelings and are paralyzed from taking action?
I have noticed that dating has become more of a therapy session--forget intellectual discussions and humorous exchanges--now men (and women) spend the first date explaining their relationship history (read psychopathology) as well as their "needs" (they are no longer "wants" because that implies that they are optional). This makes for many first dates and very few second dates.
Anyway, enough of my rambling.
Michelle
Posted by: Michelle | March 23, 2004 12:11 AM
Since all spoken terms are human constructs, their reality or lack there of it depends upon the individual's perspective. As Einstien probably never said "It's all relative, dude." While I consider most modern therapy B-l-s-i-; things which I hold to be dear and true, others may discard.
Posted by: Gaetano | March 23, 2004 6:56 PM