The powerful play goes on

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman

An old professor of mine use to like to espouse the idea that he had touched millions of lives in his life working as a psychologist. His reasoning was that when he touched one life, than that person what go on to touch other lives, and on and on it went. This is the “power of one” idea and it’s a lovely thought such as it is, but it never really sat right with me.

Why????? In reasoning this out, it’s important to examine what it is we’re helping people get back to. The credo “first do no harm” applies in Mental Health, and is an important idea to remember. The field is full of people who have sexual relations with clients, exploit them for financial gain, and use them to confirm their own high opinions of themselves, all of these people violate this first cardinal rule.

So the goal broadly speaking is then to ease people’s pain. This is where the truly difficult, soul-draining, incredibly gratifying work takes place. Within the realm of this one powerful idea.

On the other hand, many people come to psychologists and other Mental Health professionals because they have been deemed by society to be “unwell”. They don’t conform to the standards of society and they are sent to Mental Health professionals who are the high priests of wellness to make them better and send them back into the world ready to be productive.

But what if it is the society itself that is maladaptive? Certainly there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that this is the case. How did it come to pass that people such as psychologists and psychiatrists, who are a group of people that are statistically very unwell, get to make these judgments?

The anti-psychiatry movement was concerned with this and other important questions. The fact is that psychology has been wrong about almost everything at one time or another. For instance, consider this word that was once a part of psychology’s lexicon- Drapetomania. Drapetomania refers to a supposed mental illness that caused black people to run away from their white masters in the 1800’s. This was an accepted medical diagnosis. Seriously.

How about homosexuality? This was considered a mental illness until 1973, just one short generation ago. But even in 1973 they weren’t quite finished. They changed the definition to ego-dystonic homosexuality. This basically said homosexuality was a disease when there was a, (1) a persistent lack of heterosexual arousal, which the patient experienced as interfering with initiation or maintenance of wanted heterosexual relationships, and (2) persistent distress from a sustained pattern of unwanted homosexual arousal. This despite the fact that homosexuality occurs in roughly the same percentages everywhere around the world, and there are hundreds of species in the animal kingdom who engage in this practice.

But I digress. The point is that who the hell are we to pass judgment on who is well and who is not? Especially when we ourselves are so unwell?

I rail like this because I already know the answer to my own question. Beyond the pretentions, the titles, the licenses, and all the other trappings, the only thing we really know definitively about psychology is that it is the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client that is ultimately predictive of its success.

Which brings us back full circle to the wounded healer idea. Perhaps only those that have known deep suffering can truly assist others with it. As Elie Wiesel said “I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

So there it is, the curse of other people. We want so much to be close to others, yet we hurt each other so much. We are desperately lonely but on the other hand also unbearably cruel. This is the paradox of coexistence.

So meanwhile as therapists we can, for one hour a week, build a relationship based on trust, warmth can compassion with people who have to this point not found these things from others. On our best days we also get some of this in return. On our worst days we become overwhelmed by the cruelty of others. I never know on any give day which way the coin will land. But I will continue because it is meaningful and it is important, and perhaps, as my professor suggested, it does set a chain of goodwill in motion. I’d like to believe that.