Like, I’ve had several therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/counselors throughout my life who either seemed disinterested or flat out unfit to deal with people like me, and I don’t even think I’m the worst case scenario (who knows, maybe I am?).
What’s their main demographic, who do they even help? Yuppies, professionals, people in manager positions who already have had successful professional, social, and dating lives?
They’re already too expensive for most of the population, they seem to be absolutely oblivious to the problems of most men of color or trans folks or most gay folks, they can’t help early career young people, definitely not working class people, like what the fuck are they good for? And can people just shut the fuck about ‘just go to therapy, honey’, ‘men will do anything but go to therapy’ like fuck off. I went to therapy, and holy shit yeap, the world still sucks and society is still extremely hostile to me.
Oh I can change my reaction to things? to live in delusion is almost what they seem to be prescribing and nah, I’d rather just save the 100 dollars per session and spend it on 2 months supply of fucking OxyContin.
And motherfucker, if you’re a psychiatrist, and I’m here for adderall or anxiolitics or fucking laxatives, you had better fucking give it to me. I didn’t fucking pay 150 to prescribe me children’s medication or to be lectured about the importance of therapy.
In my experience, talk therapy is pretty useless for dealing problems that arise from societal issues. It's for people that have interpersonal and relationship issues that are otherwise totally fine with the world. When I was doing therapy I made progress on those two things but the therapist had nothing to offer for my depression stemming from class war, genocide, climate change, etc.
Also, in regards to living in delusion, therapy (and all medicine under capitalism) exists to "fix" workers so they can keep making money for the capitalists. Oh, you're sad because a loved one died? Take this pill and get back to work.
's wife Harriet Fraad has a podcast about the intersection of economics and mental health
Do you have any particular episodes of that podcast that you would recommend?
whoa this looks great. thanks for sharing
A sick society casts its own pathologies as individualized mental illness.
I haven’t read it, but I remember from a Jonas Čeika video that Erich Fromm analyzes this concept from a Marxist perspective in The Sane Society