Maggie's Farm

Stuart Schniederman's suggestion that the psychology industry promotes victimhood to lure patients into therapy is idiotic. The talk show world and certain books promote a victim centric-view of life, but this is not fundamentally how psychologists see the world.

Certainly there are cases of victimhood that damage people psychologically--chronic sexual abuse and some traumatic experiences. But there are many other life difficulties that have nothing to do with victimhood. Most of the work we do falls into the latter category.

Problems arising from victimhood is only a small part of the training of psychologists. As you point out, psychoanalytic theory suggests that most problems are of our own making, part and parcel to the human condition. Beyond psychoanalysis, positive psychology doesn't focus on victimhood at all. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is neutral on the subject of victimization. Family systems has identified patients, meaning the "problem person" isn't really the problem and that problems arise from efforts to keep the system in equilibrium--nothing to do with victimhood.

I can't help but wonder if it's Stuart Scheiderman who is actually the self-promoter in this in this scenario, denigrating psychotherapy to persuade his readers that coaches can provide everything they need. Schneiderman also plays to the denial that is intrinsic to the human condition. That denial drives an anti-therapeutic, anti-introspection cultural undercurrent based upon universal anxiety about the darker recesses of the human psyche.

I don't have time to fisk the whole thing, but let's just consider the central contention that "a culture and dynamic of victimhood" is in the therapist's long-term interest.

That's nonsense. People don't seek therapy because they think of themselves as victims. In the simplest terms, they seek therapy because they are suffering, often quite intensely. Therapy is, for many, a last resort, and not something they take up because the culture makes them feel like a victim. The segments of American society that carry the victimhood label (eg. African-Americans, latinos) are not big seekers of psychotherapy, even when therapy is free in a setting such as a college campus. Persons with strong victim identities are often quite averse to therapy because they don't want to give up their victim identity.

The persons who do show up for therapy may be severely depressed, suffering from crippling anxiety or botching up every relationship in their lives. They are there because they are suffering and because they are, in many cases, screwing up their lives and they want to do something about it.

Now certainly some people who have been victimized seek therapy, but they seek therapy because they are suffering terribly, not because they carry the status of victim. As I noted earlier, the segments of our society that carry the label of victim are not motivated to seek therapy because of that label. Quite the opposite, in many cases. They don't want to look inside themselves. They don't want to know.

There are two sides to every human being and two sides to our culture. A part of us wants to know more deeply and more honestly and a part of us doesn't want to know. Paralleling individual ambivalence, parts of the broader culture encourage interior investigation and psychological insight, and parts of the culture are actively averse to it. To speak of the culture as a therapeutic culture is to deny the anti-therapeutic undercurrents of the culture. These anti-therapeutic currents are as strong as the therapeutic currents. There's a yin and yang, a constant tension between wanting to look and wanting to close our eyes.

The mundane insight is to label the culture therapeutic or anti-therapeutic, but taking either position alone is to deny what is essentially true about all of us, that we have mixed feelings about looking at disturbing aspects of our experience. The deeper wisdom entails a recognition that we are more complex, that we have dynamic interior lives, ambivalence and interior conflicts. And so does the culture.

"I am not the only consumer who has encountered psychologists whose advice was worthless - or outright harmful - due to their own limited view and emotional game-playing."

That sounds like you're claiming superiority of perspective because you've been victimized. This is what is so interesting about us human beings. It can be helpful for us to understand that we might argue one thing without realizing that the opposite expresses itself as well.

Good depth therapy is helpful to examining the undercurrent tensions and contradictions that lead us to defensive positions that can be destructive both to ourselves and to others. Depth therapy is a collaborative self-investigation. We all have major blind spots that we would do well to explore. That isn't easy. Not everyone is up to the challenge. That goes for patients and therapists. But there are riches to be discovered when we are able to see that we are much more than the surface of our thoughts.