Private Realities, Therapy, and the God of Strangers

I have often thought - and I have known others who have confessed to me that they have had similar thoughts - that of all of the world's problems there is one that is fundamental, basic to all the others, and that if it could be solved the others would be well on their way towards solution, and since it is not solved the world rumbles on blindly in error and in needless suffering; and that problem is that people do not pay enough attention to my opinions. However, this thought of mine, this pretentious but not uncommon fragment of one person's private reality, leads directly to a question: What are my opinions ? If I could just state them, concisely and convincingly, then perhaps I myself would believe them, and that would be a start.

Keeping the faith. Several times a day it is confirmed to me that what people really care about is money. After all the bla bla bla, everything seems to depend on dollars in wallets, on numbers recorded electronically in the ledgers of banks, on adding subtracting multiplying and dividing quantities of legal tender. And for a very good reason: money is what people need to survive and be happy, and people either get money, in any way they can; or else they die young or live miserably, or both. It is therefore hard to keep the faith; my faith becomes a private reality, an aberration, scorned by the norms we live by, scorned by the reigning historically constructed reality, which is social reality, and therefore the public, recognized, and operative, reality. I need to keep reminding myself that my faith is true, in spite of daily evidence to the contrary.

My true faith: E = MCsquared

The true bottom line: energy.

The true message: Cooperate to survive.

The true method: Mobilize resource to meet needs.

The therapists are the lieutenants of the system. Their job is to fix us without fixing it. Therapy is limited by two boundaries, and therapists and their clients try to find solutions that will work within the limits fixed by them. One of the boundaries is the principle that nobody can make anybody do anything. A person will change when that person has decided that she or he wants to change, and not before. The other boundary is that money is scarce. The economy does not offer enough good paying jobs. Consequently a large proportion of the people who live in this world, probably the majority, can never be normal. They can never properly carry out the duties of good parents; they cannot pay their bills, have the things normal people are supposed to have, or do the things normal people are supposed to do.

"...silence may be the only, even if ineffective, form of protest, for to be understood would already be to be co-opted."

Honi Fern Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics. NY & London: Routledge, 1994. p. 37.

p. 52 cites Rorty, "the shaper of new languages, is the vanguard of the species."

Jerome Frank and Emile Durkheim noticed a paradox. Frank argued in Persuasion and Healing that therapy plays the same role in our modern societies that ritual cure plays in traditional society. In both cases the treatment re-integrates the patient into the group, so that the patient can again participate normally in relationships in the ways the culture prescribes. The paradox is that normality for our society happens to be individualism; hence we become normally socialized when we deny that our being is defined by relationships. We affirm when we speak in a way that is regarded as "appropriate" and "mature" in our particular culture, such pieces of conventional wisdom as "I must take responsibility for my own life." Thus the conventional wisdom is that our being is not defined by conventions, but rather by the individual's own decisions. What is defined as appropriate in our culture follows the norms of an ethic of autonomy; it is this liberal, modern ethic which defines freedom, respect, self-respect, and the dignity of the individual, and it also - to a considerable extent - defines mental health.

Emile Durkheim believed that every society has a conscience collective. What he meant by this is much debated; but let us say, to start, that a conscience collective is the collective mind of the group, and then, to continue, that this preliminary notion must be considerably refined and amended in order to make it plausible and in order to do Durkheim justice. In any event, the idea of a group mind, more or less refined and improved, leads Durkheim to note a paradox similar to the one noticed by Frank. Our particular, modern conscience collective socializes people to believe that there is no group mind, that each person's mind is individual and her or his own. Hence we have the paradox that the person who believes that thought is a function of culture is deviant with respect to his own culture, because what the culture teaches is that thought is a function of the individual.

Any schoolteacher who has led class discussions in the United States has observed this: in a certain respect all the students have the same opinion. The common opinion they all have is this: "This is my own personal opinion. It is not anybody else's. I think for myself."

Anyone who dares to dream that therapy might have a social context different from the existing one, is living in a private reality, because the existing social context is the public reality.

For us dreamers, then, the question whether a private reality is possible is an insistent one because if we want to change the public reality we should demonstrate that it is possible to be the change we want to see. The new public reality must start as something which is not yet a public reality, but which is nonetheless sufficiently real to be a credible alternative to the public reality.

Anyone who dares to dream that therapy might have a social context different from the existing one, is living in a private reality, because the existing social context is the public reality.

For us dreamers, then, the question whether a private reality is possible is an insistent one because if we want to change the public reality we should demonstrate that it is possible to be the change we want to see. The new public reality must start as something which is not yet a public reality, but which is nonetheless sufficiently real to be a credible alternative to the public reality.

Revolution by reinterpretation: Let us say that capitalism is intended to implement a love ethic, although it does so imperfectly. By perfecting it so that it will really do what we say it intends to do, we will arrive at democratic socialism.

Live in spiritual reality. Deal with economic reality.

The epidemic of drug addiction will not cease. The lust for thrills (a biological imperative) is countered by strong social bonds. Many people today do not have strong social bonds, and many of those who do find them in their companions with whom they take drugs. The counterweight to lust is displaced, so that the two weigh in on the same side of the scale. Gang violence will not cease for the same reason, and for another reason too: it is a means of livelihood. Ellos viven de eso.

I rely on the God of strangers because I am a stranger.

Foucault, Madness & Civilization p. 182 environ. Not Descartes but the growth of the responsible subject as key to disciplinary institutions (& presumably the economy as well) made the mind/body dualism entrenched and self-evident, and made psychology possible.

Boyden's evodeviation thesis.

Why do I have this unnatural passion? The passion for the welfare of strangers is not natural. Nevertheless, I have it. I have a bad case of it. I cannot stand the thought that somebody I do not know is rejected, humiliated, starved.

The pain of being an American. Immigrants are often quite frank: "The reason why I came to this country was to enrich myself." This country is known the world over as the land of opportunity, the Mecca of those whose ambitions are economic; it is the land where people who arrive poor can by hard work and luck raise their material standard of living. "If I had believed in family, in tradition, in culture, in solidarity... I would have stayed home."