Part 2, A Moral Choice

The way we deal with our need for power is key, says William Glasser, another one of my personal favorite elders. The question of whether power is treatable is an interesting one. Continuing with Ventura’s article, he describes elder Thomas Szasz as “the longtime gadfly of traditional psychiatry.” An annoyance. Szasz sees pharmacology plus managed care as a deadly combination.

Yet another elder, Cloe Madanes, sees our violent behavior toward one another as the culprit. Because of this, “relationships are the battlefield of treatment.” Interestingly, in her expansion of the idea, she actually – maybe inadvertently, or not – advocates something that would ultimately lead all potential clients away from psychological services. “We have to organize people to help themselves, and organize them to change their relationships and determine their own future,” she says.

The gadfly took it further. Since the government controls managed care, Szasz says, therapists would in essence be colluding with “the government-instigated idea of who fits in and who doesn't.” Standing against that would mean risking their livelihoods in pursuit of mental health for all.

At this point, nobody cheered and nobody booed. Seems the audience was being asked to make “a moral choice that they were unprepared to face.” But a “collective national strike” is what another elder suggested was needed. James Hillman has made numerous appearances in my blog. While the topic of power as a treatable problem had already been raised, here was Hillman suggesting audience members use their power as essential workers to strike. The demand of the mental health care workers would not be monetary. It would be “for justice and compassion toward their patients – strike against bureaucracies, strike against managed care, strike against pharmacological quick fixes that often don't work.”

Political engagement is reactionary, though. People trained in anger management are by that very training cut off from staging a strike. Hamstrung by professional ethics, therapists typically don’t concern themselves with their clients’ political lives.

I invite you, dear reader, to engage with what I’ve written here. It’s an attempt at summarizing pages 3 and 4 of Ventura’s article. My intention is to write two more posts, covering the remaining four pages.

Dialogue: The Myth of Psychotherapy
James Hillman, PhD and Sue Johnson, PhD

December 2009, Evolution of Psychotherapy

(I snapped this photo from the audience)