"Whatever, do as thou will."
I couldn't agree more and have held this opinion for many, many years. In fact, as the article says it can be counterproductive.
"That relatively new school holds that reviewing the past is not only unnecessary to healing, but can be counterproductive."
Darn it!
No wonder I'm in such a mess. I've been listening to my shrink and trying to make amends with my past.
Can I sue the nimconpoops?
I recall Michael Reagan once told Sean Hannity of his sexual abuse by a neighbor. Sean came back brazenly, "You didn't let it keep you down - that's great!"
The segment ran out of time, but Michael sort of shook his head saying "You just don't get it..."
What is this sick world where scars and grudges don't exist? It's a place where good and evil are treated equally. That's the essence of today's liberalism.
I've seen cases where someone had something admittedly horrible happen to them, but everyone went on and on about how AWFUL it was, poor dear, and you MUST talk about it, and DEAL with it, when in fact it might have been better for the victim to just get on with his or her life and not dramatize for others.
It's the parents, peers, spouses or others who sometimes seem to be demanding this kind of endless perusal of past horrors. I know this is not a popular position, but sometimes it IS better to get on with life. Kids often do not know how close they came to something tragic happening to them, and of course the perpetrator must be punished. But this isn't about that--it's about how a victim gets over being victimized, and often the answer is NOT to tell someone "You don't know how bad it was!"
I'm reminded of stories which have appeared on FR from college women who went on dates that didn't pan out, and after a few days of having their feminist pals telling them "You were date raped and didn't know it!" they suddenly press charges. I am NOT saying such things don't happen, I am saying they don't ALWAYS happen.
Similarly, a kid who's had to suffer certain instances of abuse (I have personal experience with just this kind of thing) SOMETIMES--I emphasis sometimes--is not traumatized. The criminal scum needs to be shipped off to jail, but sometimes the kid was unaware of what happened, or almost happened. Putting her or him in years of therapy often exacerbates the problem.
This isn't about hard-and-fast rules, but sometimes living in the past, particularly a frightening or painful one, is not conducive to good mental health. It depends on the situation. Too often we are in this "Get in touch with the thing you're hiding in your past" crap which leads to years of guilt and shame for the victim, when what they really need is to accept what happened but move on and live in the present, not endlessly chew over the past. Millions of lives have been spoiled by this misguided process, and it's refreshing to see that people are starting to come around and, when applicable, say "It happened, it's over, I'm fine, I'm gonna move on and not live like this thing done to me is the defining event of my life."
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
TREND IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: LESS EMPHASIS ON PAST EXPERIENCES, MORE EMPHASIS ON IDEOLOGY, AS GOAL OF TREATMENT ("FOR HEALING," as the New York Times puts it).
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To set a broken leg you have to set in back in place
and not pleasant.
Aaron Beck's thinking is, setting it would cause pain
so learn to walk a new way on the broken leg.
There are many personality disorders and developmental disorders that take various schools of psychiatry and
years of work.
Aaron Beck and the school of denial would leave us with
a far worse world than we have now.
Albert Ellis has been advocating this approach for over 50 years.
I'm a fan of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which basically involves teaching a person to challenge their negative thought patterns with realistic positive ones, and change their negative-reinforcing behavior.
However, I really don't think it is the answer for everyone or even most. Psychoanalysis definitely has its problems and maybe it should be scrapped, but ignoring the past is not always a good idea. Sometimes patterns show up in the past that can really help a person to understand why they are having problems and thus change it permanently. Also, sometimes events or people from the past have to be dealt with in some way.
Thousands? Make that millions. Psychology is almost completely baseless. Freudianism was invented out of whole cloth. Jung was an occultist. And Behaviorism tells you that people avoid things that hurt them. Psychology vies with modern art as the longest running hoax in history.
Moreover, research is demonstrating that "lay therapists" have a better success rate with their patients than psychologists. Get a good spiritual advisor or talk to a good friend. Better yet, obey the Commandments, and you'll sleep well.
That's because almost NONE of the therapists have ever done it anywhere near thoroughly enough. They've almost always kept it in the strictly-cerebral analysis mode so what do you expect? It NEVER releases the old pent-up emotions for good as deep-feeling abreactive catharsis does, but deep-feeling abreactive catharsis (really immersed in re-living the crucial past incidents AND FULLY responding verbally and EMOTIONALLY as you DIDN'T back then) is almost never even taught or tried by psychologists or professors of psychology. The few successful psychologists I've known who really help you get down to the nitty-gritty and actually get rid of past pain instead of painting it over are those whose eclectic methods combine those of Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Arthur Janov and especially, Joseph Hart, in my considered (and experienced) opinion.