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Monday, 11 August 2008
Psychotherapy breeds mediocrity
Love mixed up with achievement
With the olympics at hand now it seems timely to have such a post as this, and a follow on from the post “For love or money”.
Working as a psychotherapist in private practice one spends most of his time working with people to become less conforming. Most people in western society are too psychologically conforming. They need to reduce their Conforming Child and increase their Free Child.
After doing that for 20 years I ended up in a prison where I was working with people who have either too much Free Child or Rebellious Child. All of a sudden I was working with people who were needing to become more conforming. That took a bit of time to get my head around and to get the feel of doing that sort of psychotherapy.
So on the normal curve above the psychotherapy was to make the prisoners more normal and more mediocre.
Then we have the other end of the curve. Those who are not the norm but for the right reasons (at least according to society’s values). Why would someone get up at 4 am almost each and every day for years on end to swim up and down a swimming pool for a number of hours each morning. To do so one would have to be driven and if that is the case what is the drive. As in the previous post I talk about the game, “Higher, faster, longer”. The individual will have some other psychological motive. “If I can jump higher, swim faster or run longer then mum will love me”. “If I can win the gold medal then dad will finally notice me”.
Of course if one goes to counselling the approach would to be less driven. The ‘drive’ is the neurosis so to speak, because of course winning olympic gold will never make anyone feel more loved by mother. If the person is less driven then they will never win the gold and they move more back to the norm part of the curve. In this way they become more mediocre but more emotionally healthy. Psychotherapy breeds mediocrity.
Interestingly enough the field of sports psychology is supposed to make the person a better athlete and achieve more. This is seen a bit disparagingly in the psychology profession as it is a very superficial approach to psychology. It basically uses things like meditation and visualisations to help the athlete and in no way delves into any ‘serious’ psychology.
Being happy and content feels good but you are less driven to achieve. Neurosis breeds achievement.
Finally one sometimes hears the comment that anyone who has achieved highly in commerce and politics must have at least to some degree features of the anti social personality. To get to the top of those fields you have to trample over others somewhere along the line and sometimes on many occasions. So one has to be conscienceless to some degree. One has to be a bit psychopathic. Bill Gates is reportedly like this due to his ruthlessness in business and desire to crush the competition.
If he came to counselling my first question would be, “Bill, you have 4 billion what difference is 1 or 2 more billion going to make”. Hence I am inviting him to become aware of his psychological motives and what drives him in this neurotic way. Obviously its not about the money, but about something else. If he responded to treatment and became less driven he thus moves more back to the norm and becomes more mediocre.
Graffiti
19:55 Permalink | Comments (12) | Email this
Comments
I guess it depends on what your definition of mediocre is. I am mediocre. I will never be an Olympic gold (or bronze or silver), I will never write a prize winning novel (well probably won't) and will probably never be world famous. Does that make me mediocre?
Posted by: gezunda | Monday, 11 August 2008
Hello Gezunda,
In a world that idolizes super sporting achievement as we are currently doing then the answer would be, yes, it does make you and an awful lot of other people, mediocre.
Graffiti
Posted by: Tony | Monday, 11 August 2008
Tony,
I hear you saying that to strive for and achieve excellence then you make sacrifices and to be the best you most likely are doing it because you have a hunger for a particular psychological need to be satiated.
I would agree (ha!) with you that psychotherapy makes you mediocre.
Are you mediocre?
I guess I am. Is mediocrum compatable with happy and content. Yes.
I bet those olympic champions are happy.
What is interesting for me is do psychotherapists encourage clients to fix neuroses even if their client is happy with them?
If that is the case then what does that say about therapy?
Posted by: kahless | Monday, 11 August 2008
Yeagh psychotherapy sucks in a way. Perhaps one's personality can becomes cliniscized or is that just another form of adaption.
Is there anything wrong with being ones self? Being a being is ok and without the pathological like tenedencies too.
I am sure that psychotherapy is about being the best kind of being rather than the Therapist believing that "cure" is in part, about mediocrity. Perhaps Grafitti has found a very good way of "being". Being controversial and and a good bloke to boot. That is the creative being!
kenoath
Posted by: kenoath | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Tony, I passed my Stat subject (the pre uni one). I really messed up some things but i passed and i'm happy about that.
I'm not mediocre. Nothing i do, think, nothing i am is mediocre. I don't know if i've ever met anyone who i would consider 'normal' or 'mediocre'. Mostly people leave me gob smacked. That's the fun of being human among other humans i guess. The unpredictability of it all.
Like Forest Gump's mum's analogy of the box of chocolates - you never (and i mean NEVER) know what you're going to get! Rough ride usually - but so fun.
I hope you are well and there's an embarracingly large rye grin all over your face - it's ok to look a tad stupid some of the time. Go on... be a devil *giggles*
Posted by: roses | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
I liked your comment on people in high-power positions being somewhat anti-social. There was a post on another site linking to the tiny study showing anti-social personalities in people who were tattooed and in a psych ward, as if having tattoos makes you anti-social or vice versa...well, anti-social has so many facets. I know at least one guy high up in Microsoft who has two full sleeves (tattoos), so my point is you can't say anti-social is necessarily a bad thing.
What was my point? I don't know---it sounded so much more coherent in my head.
Posted by: April | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
anti social and narcissistic flavours make for very creative and successful individuals indeed. The trick is to find temperance for others and still get what you want within the system by doing things your own way. When there is a will there is a way the person might say.
kenoath
Posted by: kenoath | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Yes Kahless,
I am saying that some, many, most high achievers are driven by some psychological angst. If they did not have the angst then they would not have achieved what they did. So in some cases society benefits tremendously from them.
Tony
Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Hello Roses,
Well done on becoming a statistic and passing your stats course.
You may well be mediocre Roses. in the way I am using the words here. I can see I need to write more on this to clarify what I am meaning in the same way as I said to KazzaB
Tony
Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Hello April,
thanks for your comment and yes it was a tad cryptic
Tony
Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Yes i'm mediocre. I obey because i've learned to obey. They can touch me here in society. Yes - i've never been hit by a car for not looking right then left then right again before crossing the street. Yes - i've never been in gaol (basically because i've never been caught and when i was i paid the fines). Yes - i pay my taxes. Yes - i don't mean to hurt people (most of the time). Yes - I am a good citizen (mostly).
Is that what you mean? I do the well mannered thing when i'm out with the ladies. But i still sip the soup from the bowl no matter who i'm with. And yes - out with the ladies i eat with my fingers. And yes - i laugh out loud in quiet places when i see something that tickles my fancy. Though i do have a decent dose of mediocre because i've been trained by society to behave so, i am in lots of ways an anti-socialite. Yes - i'm a social antisocialite... an oxymoron. But i'm very good at it. I practice daily.
Are you mediocre? or do you fight the psychotherapy-breeding-mediocrity of it all?
Warm thoughts to you from way over here and in the middle of winter and all! Hope you get to giggle a bit on the morrow. It's nice when that happens.
roses
Posted by: roses | Tuesday, 12 August 2008
I'm not sure I agree that psychotherapy breeds mediocrity. As I've become more comfortable with my own quirks and uniqueness, I think I'm much more able to be idiosyncratic and nonconforming than I was. I'm able to say 'yes I like this' and 'no I don't like that', and choose whether to act in accordance with my urges, or not. As I've become less 'neurotic' I am much more inclined to play, laugh, explore, be inquisitive, cheeky, giggle and LIVE. At the same time I haven't lost my seriousness, my sensitivity, or my desire to DO things. I don't believe a desire to achieve is necessarily neurotic or a sign of some psychopathology. It seems much more to me like a sign of psychological health to be inquisitive, to find out, to learn...to achieve our potential.
Posted by: Bronnie | Friday, 29 August 2008
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