Have been re-reading Irvin Yalom's "Existential Psychotherapy". Have
gotten through 400 pages of it. Slow going. I am having a slight
attack of Alexithymia trying to describe my reaction to it. He does
great stuff with death. The other parts--isolation, meaninglessness,
and responsibility--not quite so great. More like OK.
What intrigues me most is his free usage of his patients' cases for
book material, in some cases with devastating harsh judgment about the
poor blighters. I wonder how often they were forwarned their foibles
were going to end up in print. Or, if some of Yalom's patients'
relatives read something horrible in there and wondered, "hmmm; old
uncle jonah was a patient in one of Yalom's T groups. I wonder if he
was the guy who did X (ghastly behavior)?" He has all these guidelines
about (good, better, best) patient practices, like for example if two
of the people in the T group have *** relations with each other, that
is as transgressive as *****. Which if I wasn't too alexithymic to
feel guilty about it, I would feel pretty guilty about doing that.
Either nailing a T group hosebeast or a blood relation. Which are
hardly the same thing. Not even the same ballpark.
In the section on responsibility he covers Seligman, Bandura, and est!
He prescribes whistling a happy tune as therapeutic behavior, claiming
Seligman's "learned helplessness" research and Bandura's "recriprocal
determinism" research for empirical sup****t. The est guys he is not so
complimentary toward. Sophistry. He has a dialog snip where the est
leader proves to the poor participant (who I'd bet was sorry he opened
his mouth) that he was responsible for his own crime victim
experience.
Well those hurricane victims were not coerced into building their
homes and their lives in a flood hazard zone, you know.
I would tell you what I saw in my own seminar that had my blood
curdling (not an easy thing to do) but I think it would be indiscrete.
Not nearly as bad as taking patients' money for psychotherapy service
then babbling their darkest secrets for a few publisher's coins, but
apparently I have higher personal standards than Doctor Yalom.
I just saw Reverend Wright on CNN, again. The founding fathers must be
so proud. See, in the 6th grade civics class they taught that the
church and the government were two different things. It's in the
bloody constitution. If the office candidate goes to black mass and
they sacrifice goats and they defrock a one-day-legal virgin on the
altar, front pew filled wall-to-wall with registered ***
offenders . . .
It's completely irrelevant. It must garner television ratings however
so let's all watch that instead of the truly disgraceful stuff these
clowns are going on with all the time and nobody says a word.
You cannot fool ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME.
Bukvich
|
