what about change
I just experienced having some dearly held conceptions and convictions challenged by the following books:
The Shrinking of America: Myths of Psychological Change, by Bernie Zilbergeld, Ph.D. Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1983.
And this one, written by a British chap, which overlaps and echoes many of the points in Bernie’s book:
Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, by Frank Furedi, Routlage, New York, 2004.
I love when someone challenges things we have taken for granted. Assumptions and presuppositions of which we may not even be aware. The things we hold dear and even base our lives on. Like therapy and what it’s about. What if we took it as a given fact that people are not likely to change much at all? Then what? We all intuitively sense that a person who has been depressed all his life is not likely to switch into someone happy go lucky, right? Maybe. And anything is possible. But maybe there’s something to be said about temperament. That includes mood. And anxiety. And what about behaviors in general? And how those carry into relationships? What about all that unlimited personal growth that we thought was promised to us? And the expectations, the idea of having “fulfilling” relationships, with open communication, harmonious parenting, and satisfying sex lives? Where do you think all that came from? Therapists. So what happens now to our hopes? What if everything in life was no longer turned into some psychological experience, some syndrome, some diagnosis, some problem to fix or treat? But was just a part of life. From what I read, that’s how it used to be in the good old days. A challenge, a difficulty for sure. But something people lived with and worked with. Maybe life already is good? Maybe it actually could be good if people stopped trying to make it better? Maybe you don’t need to change? Maybe there’s another path, of coming to terms without the pall of resignation. And maybe if people stopped going to therapy, perhaps they would then have the time and energy to actually enjoy life and each other?
David Levingston
Like everyone, I have different sides. Counselor, photographer, writer, cooker of food – both spicy and plain, and seeker of truth and happiness. I have always taken an interest in the unassuming things that pass us by – both heard and seen, both ordinary and not so ordinary. They are all sacred and beautiful in some way.