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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Narcissism, Power, Fear of Death, and Liberalism |
| 2010-04-16 |
| Dr. Helen (otherwise known as "Insta-Wife"), Pajamas Media I often get books on psychology sent to me by publishers, and the other day I received Jeffrey Kottler's On Being a Therapist. The book is now in its fourth edition, and this latest edition “puts the spotlight on the therapist's role and responsibility to promote issues of diversity, social justice, human rights, and systemic changes within the community and the world at large.' Whoa: I thought the therapist's role was to increase the client's well-being and treat mental illness.... ...For whatever reason, Jeffrey Kottler is not alone. I've noticed that psychology programs around the country have shifted from an emphasis on individual mental health to an emphasis on “promoting social justice.' In practice, this always means liberal politics. And maybe there's a connection there. Could it be that for liberals and certain therapists endowed with self-importance but without religion, influencing others is all they have? Forcing others to do as they wish fends off their fear of insignificance, which is why it is so urgent that others go along. It keeps their legacy alive. Notice how many times people bring up “Ted Kennedy's legacy' of health care. Is this more about keeping Kennedy's name immortal and his image alive than about real solutions to real-world problems? Could it be that many liberals, (including, perhaps, the occasional teleprompter-dependent ex-legislator in his first executive position, IYKWIMAITYD) like narcissistic therapists, are so insistent that others go along with them because they fear being obscure and crave feeling powerful more than they care about whether their solutions actually work? I realize this is a theory, but it's one I have pondered for quite some time. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 Funny how the class enemy of these types doesn't seem to change: That's certainly an amusing thought when coupled with the claim I heard on NPR this morning that as a group the Tea Partiers are more highly educated and better paid than the general population. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-16 22:29 |
| #4 This is an old phenom that goes back to the late 1800s/turn of the century and the original progressive movement's "social gospel." Educated, religious protestants fearing the loss of their faith and transferring their piety and good works instincts into political-social reform campaigns of one kind or another. Funny how the class enemy of these types doesn't seem to change: rising numbers of politically assertive, less-educated urban Catholics in the early 1900s, and large numbers of conservative, politically powerful evangelicals today. This is as much about class as about ideas or ideology. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-04-16 15:23 |
| #3 this latest edition "puts the spotlight on the therapist's role and responsibility to promote issues of diversity, social justice... 'Social Justice' has become a code-phrase for a virulent system of command-equality that does not blush at the most outrageous tyrannies. |
| Posted by: Free Radical 2010-04-16 15:20 |
| #2 It's not the helping, it's the BEING SEEN helping. As anyone with a basic knowledge of economics knows government is a transfer agency so when it helps one it generally harms another. The more the state helps one group, the more it harms another. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2010-04-16 11:57 |
| #1 I always thought many far-lefty's have a weird case of acute co-dependency issues - the need to be needed - hence their obsessions w/helping as many zero-liability voters as possible through gov't largesse and fiscal malfeasance. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2010-04-16 11:53 |