On the Uses & Abuses of Therapy
SA Episode #13
DISCLAIMER: This essay isn’t against therapy but rather against a hidden form of consumerism. I know quite a few people who greatly benefited from therapy. But they went for a while, solved the problem, and then stopped. In contrast, there’s likely someone in your circle who’s been going to therapy for years…and they’re simply (unknowingly) getting worse. Maybe they’ve built a façade of linguistic debris they articulate to come across as “fine”—yet, deep down, they’re trapped into cycles of stress, action paralysis, and regret that destroy their spiritual progress.
How to be More Alive
TOO MUCH psychological analysis leads to psychological destruction. Lucian Blaga wrote: “The inclination toward self-analysis, I noticed, is excessive precisely in people who have a secret leaning toward suicide.” Many ancient texts warn us against excessive retrospection, against treating therapy like a gym membership.1
In the New Testament, Jesus emphasizes forward focus: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
For Stoics, too much retrospection was seen as a distraction to one’s progress and purpose. Seneca cautioned against grieving a death for very long and, in Letter 78, he wrote about dragging up old sufferings.
Figures like Orpheus and Lot’s wife serve as cautionary examples: Orpheus, forbidden to look back as he leads Eurydice from the underworld, turns around and loses her forever.
ONE FLAW all humans share is that we constantly postpone the zest and will to go all in on the present moment. A culture of endless self-reflection and therapy distracts us from living in the sparkling present and traps us in an overhyped past. The past is indeed relevant but not critical. We feel alive only after we decide there’s nothing to be waiting for!
“We trick ourselves into believing that, until we’ve got our head in the ‘right’ place, we can’t make progress. We can’t leave that job or build that project or hang out with that person we fancy prior to ridding ourselves of the things we think are holding us back. Yet time will tick along while you wait to create the ‘perfect’ environment to finally make a move.” — Chris Williamson
A (handsome) friend of mine had recently started dating a girl. After a couple of months of being together, she told him they could no longer see each other because she has too many “issues” she has to map out and fix with the help of her therapist before getting into a “proper” relationship.2 Whether she lied to him or not is irrelevant; what’s relevant is the fact that she—and many young people—believe this is an acceptable, even noble, justification to delay and reschedule love.
“The obsessive desire to know yourself is itself a pathology. You’re not healed when you wholly understand yourself but when you don’t matter to yourself anymore. You’re healed once you internalize you must fight for something bigger than yourself: you fight for your family; you fight for love; you fight for art; you fight for meaning. Maybe you fight for political change or perhaps you’re a fanatical writer or scientist. The real goal of psychoanalysis is paradoxical; it’s precisely to liberate you from yourself—to the point where you can finally forget about yourself and work for a greater cause.” — Slavoj Žižek
Overanalysis—whether through psychoanalysis, self-help, or introspection—is a form of action paralysis, a neoliberal trap masquerading as quality control.3 The belief that you can “truly know yourself” is largely delusional since your identity is always unstable and shifting. If you’re not a robot, the chances are, you’re terribly complex, fragmented, and contradictory. This mystery provides great news: it means you’re fully human. The more you search—at some point; please don’t leverage my essay to now eschew psychological analysis altogether—for your “true self,” the more you get trapped in a never-ending narcissistic loop. This helps you do nothing but stare at the abyss of mass-produced personal troubles that have been overly marketed, packaged, repackaged, branded and rebranded. Emil Cioran believed humans are not as troubled as psychiatrists argue and that—in any case—the lack of suffering and a variety of psychological issues is a sign of spiritual mediocrity.
“You don’t need to solve your problems; you don’t need to figure out your emotional baggage; you don’t need to process your trauma; and you don’t need to confront your past. You can just go ahead and take action.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky
Life isn’t waiting for you. At all.
What are you waiting for?
Paul Skallas deserves credit here.
Therapy is essential but going to church or studying religion is not. The self is the new god. Therapists are the new priests. H/T
The Centipede’s Dilemma: Ask a centipede which one of its hundred legs moves the fastest and it forgets how to move. H/T
It's more like a labyrinth
It’s so refreshing to read straightforward people. Thanks for the shoutout!