People grow best in relationship with others. Ideally, a Virgil, or lesser ordinary amateur virgils.
It's difficult to grow religiously without a confessor, a director, or an intimate small group. It's difficult to explore one's own neurotic hang-ups without a therapist. It's difficult to grow in strength and endurance without a trainer or a group. You can read Bertrand Russell's book, but you can learn western philosophy better with a good prof as a human guide. In business, a mentor can be essential. And so forth. Self-protective isolation, which I term insulation, is deadly but feels safe.
A post we had earlier about placebo effect (morphine administered by a gentle nurse can be twice as pain-relieving as morphine machine-administered) showed how much the umbrella of relationship can help people by providing a human umbrella, a human container, which makes it easier to push the envelope of life. All things can be done alone, but far less effectively because that's the way humans are. Alone, we are limited, self-limited. Others with whom we are in relationship can push us, confront us, challenge us, correct us, and that helps us grow.
I like doing group therapy. It doesn't cure any mental illness, but it helps people grow in life regardless of their limits or emotional problems. AA the same.
A problem I have with the modern, bureaucratic idea of the commodification of technical medical care is that it ignores, or negates, the historical and, I believe, essential component of the personal relationship. Cookbook medical care is terrible.
The human connection provides the lift. Of course, that's why we need parents and siblings when we are kids.
