May 29, 2007...12:01 pm
Are therapists killing our instincts?
When we were kids we had no mobile phones so there was no way our parents could know our where about and still there were less concerns about our safety.
The children were punished or gently explained when they were wrong and there was no need for psychoanalysts to tell them that they were wrong.
The good students passed and the not so good ones flunked and they also passed the following year; the schools did not need phycotherapists to handle this.
Parental instincts were the guiding factor in handling difficult situations and mostly that was enough to solve our day-to-day situations. Sometimes grandparents and close family came to the rescue on serious issues. You could trust your nears and dears because you knew that no of visits doesn’t mean more money for them like it does in the case of professional therapists.
Very few people had heard of depression
People were healthy without consulting dieticians.
Marriages survived without consulting marriage councilors. My grandparents were married for 70 years and I don’t think they knew what a marriage councilor is. They complained about each other to us sometimes, as we grew up but that was more to be the favorite grandparent and not because they had problems.
Spontaneity has gone out of our lives, we don’t trust our instincts and I guess, this the reason why so many people are consulting a specialist these days. You need a phycoanalyst to know what your children want to do in life and a marriage councilor to understand what is upsetting their partner.
7 Comments
May 29, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I think the problem is society has fragmented to the point where people have lost confidence. The State and professionals have begun to politicise commonsense, as if we can’t work out things ourselves. The problem is, commonsense has to be applied to a situation as it arises, and not something cast in stone by professionals. So we lose more confidence … don’t know what to do …
May 29, 2007 at 7:13 pm
You are absolutely right @anthony north.
// Commonsense has to be applied to a situation as it arises, and not something cast in stone by professionals.// We can’t raise our children or maintain our relationships by consulting professionals.
May 31, 2007 at 7:23 am
One of the reasons I think is that in those days life was simpler. Today there is a lot of stress in our lives, pressure on both men and women. And fewer family members and friends to share our troubles with!
June 1, 2007 at 11:10 am
People had less to worry about back then, they did what their parents did, and grew up as they were told. People also had more children and many died, so the child to parent relationship was very different. People were not healthier back then, they died at 60 when they were (very) lucky.
As for marriage counselling and psychiatrists, I really would never go see one, because the best that person can do is make me thikn about my own problems, which i can do by myself. Yet, if it helps some couples stand in a world with more “temptation”, I’m not against it.
June 1, 2007 at 11:22 am
Thanks for your candid views Rajiv. You are always very honest with your opinion and that is why I value your opinion so much. Life expectancy hasn’t increased because of physcologists and therapists it is due to the advancement in medical science in all it’s forms. There was no cure for available for many diseases. Many women died during childbirth and there many proffesional hazards.
There is nothing wrong with phcological treatments but that should be after you have explored other options at home. Psycologists cannot be substitutes for family.
Thanks Nita for your views.
June 2, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I feel that the reason that psychiatrists and counsellors have become more important is because the idea of the ‘individual’, his needs, wants, feelings has become a prominent feature in our lives. In earlier times, individuality was severely restricted. Everyone had certain roles given to them by society; if they fulfilled them all was good and there were no problems, if they didn’t they were outcastes. In marriages, the husband earned, women stayed at home and looked after the family. It didn’t matter if she wanted something more, something different, that was her job and there could be no discussion about it. Similarly if they realized they were having problems with each other, they may talk to family members but ultimately you knew what the man said was supreme, and so they had to resign themselves to their fate. Children were meant ‘to be seen and not heard’ and so the question of any discussion about their wants or needs was ridiculous. They were meant to be children-play, study, and obey their parents. If they did anything other than this, they was something wrong with them, perhaps a spirit possessed them, perhaps they were in bad company. Whatever it was, a good beating would put it right.
Society today focuses much more on the needs of the individual. We recognize that every man, woman, child is different and has different feelings and emotions, and these have to be sorted and dealt with. I agree that very often people can handle these thyemselves, or within the family, but society today has become so complex that often they require the help of someone outside their family, someone more objective to help them make sense of it all.
However, I agree with you Pr3rna that we have come to depend on them. Since we have their support available to us, we shrink(no pun intended:D) to explore our issues ourselves, and instead prefer that they sort it out for us. I suppose the more facilities we have available to us, the more we come to depend on them. I think what we really need to recognize is the limit to which we can seek help from these artificial support systems, and the point where only we can help ourselves.
June 2, 2007 at 1:07 pm
//I think what we really need to recognize is the limit to which we can seek help from these artificial support systems, and the point where only we can help ourselves.// This one sentence sums it all.
Thanks @Tatia
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