One day, my psychologist told me, “Those who need therapy don’t come. Their victims do.”
That day I understood everything.
Today I received this WhatsApp text in a chat group for chess players. It portrays what we have been calling the “trauma model,” the antithesis of mainstream psychiatry.
2 replies on “Shrink quote”
Unfortunately, it’s even worse in my experience, in that the people who did need it came with me, and yet the psychologist listening – someone in a position to, for once, observe all – was still so blind as to be clinically unable to discern who was who, so ended up beasting me while letting them blithely participate in more of their usual.
Given this ineptness on psychologists’ parts (I’ve haven’t met many; those I have have all been useless or disengaged), I wouldn’t trust them to provide therapy to anyone, even perpetrators (who are, in their own buried and repressed sense, victims also, hence the sad, intergenerational nature of trauma). But I agree with the sentiment. In a future world they – and they alone – should be addressed properly, by someone who can do this job, and as soon as possible, so as to nip it in the bud.
I’ve still got that wretched psychotherapy course booked for myself courtesy of probation and the NHS, although 10 more months down the line the waiting list doesn’t seem to be clearing. I know she’ll – I imagine it will indeed be that sort of ultra-progressive woman – say to me when I go in: ‘sorry about the wait. So, how have you prepared for this in the interim?’
And I’ll just respond: ‘well, I had enough time, so I wrote an autobiographical book to get to know myself again, thus providing myself with the real service you can never offer, and rendering these appointments superfluous… I can discuss it if you like, but it’s not up for revision…’
I think my motives for attending, much as it’s as good as obligatory by now anyway, are going to have to be cynical. I realise it’s a space where much re-victimisation can occur. I think the fairest I can do is to remain firmly on my guard, and, since there’s no way out by now, see if I can impart any sense to them. Hopefully the worst that will happen, if anything, is that I get removed from her client list. Alternatively, I could just weather it, and, as with all narcissists (psychiatrists alike), just tell her what she wants to hear.
Indeed, the quote above assumes that clinical psychologists have insight, something they don’t have in real life.
I only know of one therapist in New York who told abusive parents that they were the cause of their children’s problems, which terrified them. His name is Daniel Mackler, a reader of Alice Miller, although I later distanced myself from him for other reasons (as a typical liberal, he rejected Lloyd deMause’s psychohistory, who also lived in NY).