Dear Pat,
Thanks for your posting. I don't know what Psi Chi is so I don't understand
that comment. However, I can respond to your remark about the Arab children.
Yes, it will be dreadful if they, or any other children, get killed as
result of this coming conflict. The fact that the WTC terrorists also
deliberately and knowingly slaughtered children is no defence but it is
partly an explanation of the death and destruction to come. There will be a
difference and it's this. Those responding to the WTC attack will not be
glorying in the effects of their actions except of course for the ones that
hurt the terrorist groups. Of course I don't want to attack Arabs generally
nor do I believe that we will do so. However, I do want to attack the
fundamentalists and the fundamentalist views in any society that try to
destroy my way of life, or indeed the very lives, of anyone who is not in
agreement with their tunnel vision.
The reason that I have raised my two questions about therapy and therapists,
(what fundamental changes will be occurring to therapeutic modelling and why
do so many therapist seem to be attitudinally different to their host
populations), is that I believe that a basic clash of cultures is happening.
I see no reason to respect those who want to force the world to live in the
middle ages. Nor do I see any reason to maintain a moral code that compels
me to give such people freedoms and rights that they certainly wouldn't give
me. If I am right about the basic clash, and if I am accurately predicting a
change in the moral imperative of society, then therapists have got a lot of
re-thinking and self re-evaluation to do.
Therefore, I feel that it is time for us all to move away from futile
discussions about the rights and wrongs about the struggle that is about to
erupt. Whether we want it to or not, the world has undergone and will be
undergoing a radical change. It is not a change that can only be measured in
social structures, but one that will be seen permeating our views on
personality, personality development and our interpersonal and intrapersonal
interactions. As theorists, academics, researchers and practitioners in the
psychotherapeutic community we cannot pretend that all is well and that
somehow love alone will be the answer.
I ask again, for us as therapists, what next?
Norman
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