The Gulf Oil Spill Meets the Newspeak Dictionary
The authors are keen on building. They want to build coping skills, as I built model cranes with engineering sets when I was a little boy. Another thing they want to build is community resilience. One might have supposed that resilience isn’t the kind of thing that is built. I think it is time a sense of humor, or at least of the ridiculous, was built.
Then there is our old friend cultural sensitivity. It seems that the Vietnamese refugees on the Gulf Coast do not have any counselors. They didn’t have many in Vietnam either, where they suffered things a thousand times worse than the oil disaster, but nevertheless seem to have thrived wherever they have been allowed to build a new life for themselves (to use for a moment the authors’ intellectual framework — or is it their technical requirement?).
Here I could not help but be reminded of a patient of mine who said he suffered terrible whiplash and a severe loss of confidence after a car went into his rear at about five miles an hour. He was too frightened now, and in too great pain, ever to leave the house.
As it happens he was Syrian by origin. “What did you do there in Syria?” I asked. “I was in the army,” he replied. “Any particular branch?” I asked.
In short he was a torturer. Unfortunately he fell foul of his senior officers and ended up at the receiving end of his former activities. But it was the impact of the car behind him at five miles an hour that really ruined his life and turned him into a living wreck.
Oh compensation, what crimes are committed in thy name!
I think this solution is way cheaper for the average person–take a weekend off and go to the country, not Central Park, but up along the Hudson or the Catskills for example. Get out of the air con and away from the artificial world and see some of the real world first hand. Beats the hell out of a shrinks office. oh, and leave the electronics behind!
Greetings:
New tentacles of the Post Traumatic Stress industry octopus.
What these Doctors are really building are piles of pink slips for themselves
and their bureaucratic buddies. Because, brother, we are NOT going to pay for
these scumbags anymore. Let them coordinate, compassionate, network, rework, and rebuild all they want, they are not going to get anything but a boot
up the ass on the way out the door.
Will Obamacare pay for treatment of any of those maladies? You betcha!
Psychology is an art not a science. It helps few, and only after a long time and much
expense. Psychiatry has moved closer to science since all the medications available.
Psychologists are constantly on the prowl to find a reason for being and charging great
sums. Road rage from steroid rage is just one example.
I think I saw similar nonsense in a link to the latest issue of Time magazine. It was about dealing with “The Psychic Toll” of the Oil Spill. The concrete solution seemed to be offering finger-painting exercises to youths for therapy, with counselors standing by to counsel how to finger-paint.
A Rose by Any Other Name…..
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If Dr. Dalrymple was as good a medical practitioner as is his wizardy with words, he must have cured every patient he ever treated.
If all therapists modeled themselves after R. Lee Ermey in the GEICO commercial, mental health would universally improve. Or at least the demand for therapy would dry up, which must be the same thing.
Stop!! I’m at work and it’s hard to keep my laughter from blurting out!
As a licensed therapist with over 4 decades of experience (sadly, too much of it spent in “state” service) I can tell you right off that these two “authors” are looking to build an empire. Someone in government says what a great idea, it gets funded and they look to the folk that came up with the idea in the first place to “brain storm” the initial project.
I’ve seen it happen a number of times in a variety of situations. Good therapy isn’t based on by gosh or by golly, but on solid evidence of what works. What we really need is a psychology of “Life Happens – Deal with it.”
Resiliency is built in to the human psyche by overcoming obstacles, not by a pat on the head and a “There there you poor thing.”
Can I get an “Amen?”
Reading your article was like music to my eyes! Thank you so much!
Abnormally well written writing!!