how much of therapy is simply treating alienation that results from living under capitalism? is therapy being used to pacify the proletariat, telling them to look inwards instead of challenging society?
I'm not talking about people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia who actually need medication. I'm talking the vast majority of people who seek counseling.
I'm genuinely curious so if there any articles or readings you can recommend on this subject I'd really appreciate it.
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No because they inevitably 'challenge society' anyway. They challenge society in the corpses they scatter. The medications only make them more prone, not less prone, to this.
Zizek's point on how capitalism forces enjoyment could lean into this, but im hesitant to write off depression, anxiety and other common issues people face as a sympton of capitalism.
You could, of course, draw links, but saying ridding ourselves of capitalism will cure it? eh
Therapy, much like idpol, is a tool for survival in capitalism.Its not pacification cus often enough, without it people dont explode in an outburst of anti-establishment rage but in self destruction.
Drawing links between melancholia and capitalism implies that Hippocrates lived under capitalism.
Now, melancholia and hierarchy, on the other foot…
Agreed!
Back to Ops point, if you look at the happiest countries (Scandinavia etc) they practise Capitalism and yet its social policy that helps their peoples prosper
Some of it is. There are psychologist who understand that there problems outside of people's locus of control, though.
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The answer is certainly some of it. What do want a percentage?
i would agree that there's some truth to your claims, but i have no real proof. i'm just not sure how much to say any grandiose claim like 'psych is BS' or something, because obviously there is a number of people out there with problems that were only mitigated with some kind of intervention.
also slightly unrelated but i think the "social justice warrior" doesn't help all this in finding a real answer to your question.
i've noticed a subset of these types are hypochondriacs and attempt to get as diagnosed for as many "illnesses" as they can and get put on as many fucking drugs as possible so they can rant about how 'oppressed' they are or some shit.
on the same note, i blame this behavior on capitalism itself. i think there's people that listen to the media and then go to a psychiatrist when really they just need to exercise, start a proper diet, and just generally put some basic fucking effort into their lives.
i've met a lot of people that go to psych's, get put on drugs, then continue eating like shit, not exercising, and drinking and doing all the same drugs, like the pill and the psych session is supposed to "fix" everything.
meanwhile, their own dumbass habits allow them to live up this weird "kurt cobain" style character where they get to tell all their peers how they'r ea "tortured soul" and nobody will ever know what they are going through.
i have a hard time feeling sorry for htese types of people.
for the ones that are really fucked up, though, and don't do this shit for attention and actually put in the effort to change their lives, yeah, i think it's good we have people and drugs to hlep them out.
anyone have any good books on therapy?
the people who can help themselves clearly only do this for attention. only those who cant improve their lives on their own deserve our sympathy, you dumb fuck
Pretty much all of it is due to capitalism
Depression wasn't normal in the 70s.
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Typical behavioral therapy claptrap.
There will always be mental illness, but (late) capitalism amplifies it. I can imagine the need for therapy plummet post-capitalism.
Do you have a single fact to back that up?
Yes, therapy and psychology have long been criticised on the left for exactly that reason.
Jordan Peterson talks about it all the time. It's used to maintain social order.
Holy fuck, is that actually what psychology teaches? That everything comes down to perception and there is nothing innately wrong with the status quo, but it's all in your head?
Depends on what the therapy is for. High functioning 'tists ought to receive mandatory therapy so they don't end up fucked in the head for the rest of their lives.
Do you think capitalists therapists that push medication at every turn actually work though?
You're making a claim about psychology whilst using a non-psychologist as evidence that psychology enforces capitalism?
They must work for certain conditions. Not sure which medication would work to keep an autists mind from rotting though.
Depends on what the patient is suffering from and why. Depressive disorders, for instance, can be onset from anything. Not everything is due to capitalism after all. Also, therapists are not there to 'help you cope', but have an interest in understanding the problem and solving it to the best of their ability. They consider external factors such as the situation, people and relationships involved just as much as internal factors (cognition, behaviour and emotions). Just because a patient becomes better at controlling their thoughts, emotions and behaviour, doesn't necessarily mean that therapy is creating barriers in challenging capitalism. Obviously, a therapist is not an economist, so they won't be able to identify how capitalism produces alienation. However, they can identify cognitive errors, problematic relationships and maladaptive behaviours. The goal of therapy isn't to 'toughen you up' or to 'deal with it', but rather to address the roots of the problem, whether it be confronting yourself, or confronting your boss/coworker who has been harming you. I hope that helps.
No. the evidence suggests that CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) alone works best. Medication (with CBT) is less effective in that almost half the patients relapse within six months. I can't find the source for this, but it's something I was taught during my degree. I apologise. Long-term use of medication damages the target receptors which leads to the patient seeking higher dosages. This leads to addiction. Psychiatrists essentially profit off of this.
Avoid psychiatrists, go to a clinical psychologist.
Basically, yes. Sometimes there is an acknowledgement that life could be better if some external factor changed, but everyone agrees that most times you can't really change them, so the change has to come from within.
It's been my experience with all that therapy bullshit man. I got depression and had to go to therapy after a botched suicide and it all boiled down to "It's your perception that makes you feel bad, things and people don't have power over you, you let them get to you, no one did anything wrong to you and even if they did you can't do anything about it so you better get over it"
I feel psychologists as a whole fail to understand that depression, anxiety, etc. Are natural responses to traumatic life events and not just distorted perception or bilogical imbalances to be fixed with
OK it sounds as if you spoke with some shitty hack fraud therapists my man, please don't despair, they aren't all like that.
That sounds really shit man. I have a degree in psychology, and, whilst I did not go down the clinical path, what you described the psychologists of doing definitely contradicts what I was taught in uni. You're absolutely right in saying that life events cause people to feel like shit, not necessarily their perception. This is absolutely healthy.
Psychologists take an integrative approach. They must consider biological, social, and cognitive aspects of the problem. If you told them about the bad shit that happened to you, they had no right to tell you it was solely internal. That isn't to say it is always external events that bring about misery - life is more complicated than that. I'm sorry you had to have some dick tell you that your feelings caused everything.
But yeah, I guess what I'm saying is that just because some people don't do their jobs properly, doesn't mean we should disregard an entire field of study or a profession.
yes but it isnt just capitalism. humans are still animals that evolved to survive in a certain natural habitat. outside of that habitat, like any other animal, humans suffer emotional and psychological disorders.
Despite beterson being 90% trash I respect his honesty on psychiatrists basically being shills for the status quo
By the time medical specialists graudate, a large portion of the material they learned is out of date.
do you think the vast majority of 1st world people who undergo therapy do so because they are not earning the full measure of their labor? Really? So the lawyer or engineer making 6 figures would be less depressed and less anxious if they could appropriate the surplus labor value they are leaking to their boss? really think so? huh?
The ones who go to therapy to talk about anxiety/depression and existential stuff can already afford the best standard of living and tons of frivolous gadgets and luxury goods relative to the rest of the world.
therapy is used to show people how they cause themselves problems, regardless of the system they find themselves in.
*gasp*