Is Therapy A Force For Good?

Gentle reflections on a sensitive topic

Recently, Matt Walsh raised with Jordan Peterson the question of whether people should go to therapy.

Subsequently, there has been widespread online debate about whether therapy is a viable coping mechanism for solving one's problems, and more, whether it could be detrimental and counterproductive. The question was also raised on Chris Williamson’s podcast Dr Orion Taraban.

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It’s an interesting question.

There are benefits of therapy. Firstly, if you have grave psychological problems, therapy is a coping mechanism. Society is rarely conscious that these people exist because we don’t encounter them in everyday life. They are people with schizophrenia or borderline personality disorders, issues which can be soul-destroying. But these people do exist, and therapy presents itself as a helpful medium for many who struggle to live normal, conventional lives. 

Furthermore, finding another person willing to attend to your issues should not be scoffed at. I have come to realise that some people really don’t have many people to talk to. That’s worrying, and symptomatic of people’s growing addiction to individualism and being solitary. For some psychological problems, you may not be able to cure them, but you can cope with them. An individual looking to do so should be taken seriously, and therapy may be a good start. 

Prominent therapist Carl Rogers talked about therapy in his book On Becoming a Person. He suggested that therapy should not have a start and an end, and should be viewed as a process. He was known for sitting back and listening to his patients for long periods, claiming that they would often propose solutions to their problems just by talking about them. The therapist can be helpful in this sense if the patient has nobody to do this with..

But the main criticism of therapy is that it is futile, ineffective, and worsens your problems. How can you tell if your obsession with therapy is not just facilitating your addiction to your own problems instead? Doesn’t it just enable excessive preoccupation with oneself?

I have sympathy with these criticisms. 

Therapy could cause you to overthink normal feelings. If you don’t have a job, it would be normal for you to feel dissatisfied with this. If you’ve just had a breakup, you’ll feel sad. If you don’t have friends, it’s normal to feel isolated. A good therapist would encourage one to redress these problems rather than incentivise an over-concern with the responsive feelings. 

But much of therapy is purely psychoanalytical. This would be the Freudian approach to therapy. Just you, with a therapist, talking about your inner mental state. Why do I have such a brutal inner monologue? Why do I feel this way? There is some utility in discussing your mental health in this manner with another person. But, there is a common theme. The use of the word I. 

A good therapist, before addressing these questions, would first find out about your life and your relationship with it. You may be depressed, but are you instead just having problems with living? Do you have a job, do you have a close network of people to talk to, such as friends and family? Do you have an intimate relationship? Do you have a relationship with your local community? Some people don’t have any of these, and overthinking your mental state in this context would be unproductive. The best advice for this person would be that they need to start living, and focus on outward action instead of inner thoughts. This happens to be good advice for those with social anxiety. Thinking more about other people, and setting a goal to put other people at ease in a social setting can alleviate much of the anxiety. 

This brings me on to my next point. Sometimes, therapy is not phenomenological enough. More broadly, the conversation around mental health is not phenomenological enough. It doesn’t focus on experience enough. You cannot be mentally healthy if your experiences in life are not healthy. Neglecting to attend to the buckets of life, it’s not like you'd feel you needed therapy. You would be lost and isolated. A bad therapist would pay too much attention to your mental state and too little attention to your life experiences. 

The argument that you should be talking about your problems comes from a good place, but it is often ill-thought through. Campaigning to get more people to talk has been going on for years, yet people are as mentally unhealthy as they have ever been. People need to focus on outward action and other people, and focus less on themselves. You need a reason to get out of bed in the morning. 

And I am worried that therapy is only used as a medium to talk about problems, rather than solve them. It’s good to talk, but not if it precludes outward action.

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