Monday,
April 25 2005
THERAPY
IS THE BEST WAY - PART I: Christina Hoff Sommers and
Sally Satel are co-authors of a new book titled One
Nation Under Therapy which explores how the burgeoning trauma
and therapy industry is eroding the ethic of self-reliance in
America. I'm sure being the subject of George
Will's column last Sunday was nice, but Sommers and Satel
couldn't have asked for a better piece of publicity than this
comical profile of a new support group for burnt-out left-wing
activists in Los Angeles:
Championing
a particular cause or course of action often can be a lonely
crusade, but these are particularly tough times for liberal
activists.
Red-state
dominance in the last election, the war in Iraq, changes in
environmental policy and the possibility of a more conservative
Supreme Court have left many local activists feeling as blue
as the state they live in.
What
they need, one longtime activist recently decided, is some therapy
— a good old-fashioned support group tailored for the
liberal activist in need of emotional rejuvenation.
Jerry Rubin,
the "L.A. peacenik" who founded the group, said it was
needed to help liberals "develop healthy coping skills."
This is eerily
reminiscent of stories of Democrats who were "emotionally
paralyzed, shocked and devastated” by George W. Bush's win
in November. The condition was dubbed post-election
selection trauma (PEST) by "trauma specialist" Douglas
Schooler and treated with - if you can believe this - "intense
hypnotherapy."
Days later,
after Rush Limbaugh had mockingly offered to provide despondent
Democrats with free therapy on his radio show, Schooler
responded by displaying the exact mentality Sommers and Satel
indict in their book:
“He
[Rush Limbaugh] is not only minimizing PEST, but he’s
bastardizing the entire psychological field and our clinical
expertise.
Many
people have serious emotional pain over this election and it’s
unhealthy to stuff it down inside of you. Therapy is the best
way.”
Needless
to say, many people disagree with the notion that "therapy
is the best way." Many people also don't believe we should
be creating new subcategories of trauma to deal with emotions
created by something as banal as an election. Neal
Boortz explained this view with characteristic bluntness:
These
people are weak. They're emotional cripples. They can't cope
with life without the help and support of their grand caretaker
government. They can't even cope with an election loss. They
sit there with blank expressions, mouths hanging open like a
brook trout, staring off into the distance. These are not the
people that you could depend on when the chips are down. They're
a pathetic indication of things to come, of the "grief
counseling" culture that permeates our society today. There's
a fight at the local government school? Rush in the grief counselors.
Someone accidentally sets off a fire alarm? Grief counselors.
Too many red lights on the way to your canasta game? Grief Counselors.
Talk to other
libertarians and conservatives and you'll find the same visceral
reaction to the ever-expanding, touchy-feely world of therapy:
they will have none of it. There are plenty of explanations for
why this is, but I'm only interested in the subject as it relates
to politics.
I'm out
of time for today, so further discussion will have to wait until
tomorrow. In the meantime, however, if you have observations on
the subject you can send them to through to me here.
- T. Bevan 9:45 am Link
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