“As if it weren’t ludicrous enough for every child to be ‘gifted’, now they have to be ill as well: a touch of Asperger’s, a little autism; dyslexia stalks the playground; the poor little gifted things have been ‘bullied’ at school; if they can’t confess to being abused, they must confess to being abusive.” — Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
A nation of hothouse flowers
October 22nd, 2012 · 4 Comments
Tags: Edward St. Aubyn · Lit & Crit
4 responses so far ↓
1 Averil Dean // Oct 22, 2012 at 7:29 am
God, yes. What the hell is it with this country. If I hear one more person tell me that therapy is the end all and be all for a complete and balanced life, I may come unglued enough to truly need it. Where do people get the money, anyway?
2 Tetman Callis // Oct 22, 2012 at 8:29 am
Therapy is a means of social control. Power flows along networks of discourse. If you can be diagnosed with a recognized disorder, you can receive attention, sometimes even subsidized attention. That the price to pay for this attention is an at-least partial loss of self–through being demeaned, infantilized, categorized within the power structure of the state’s medical bureaucracy, and even sedated–is a price many people are willing to pay through misplaced desire to be loved. They’re not loved. They’re a means to someone else’s ends, and that someone else is in return a means to their own, even if they lack sufficient self-awareness to know what those ends may be.
As for where they get the money, some have insurance that will pay for it. Those who don’t have insurance will have insurance if medical reform holds; in that case, we shall all be entitled to some amount of science-based soul-saving. Such is the lot of a people whose god has died–whether or not they know their god has died.
3 Averil Dean // Oct 22, 2012 at 5:15 pm
I’ve been thinking about your comment all day. I’m not sure I’ve gone as far in my thinking as to agree that therapy is a form of social control, but you may have something there. My naivety inhibits my natural pessimism in this case.
(You’re so fucking smart.)
4 Tetman Callis // Oct 22, 2012 at 8:01 pm
It’s Foucault’s idea. He was all cynical and dark and Marxist and French. Kinky, too, from what I’ve read.
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