The mind is complicated, and we don't yet have a complete enough understanding of it to reduce every feeling to physio-chemical reactions. However, the conscious mind has an influence on the unconscious. Problems of the human condition are properly the domain of philosophy, and reading philosophy helps. Thinking and talking about one's problems also helps.
But this brings me to therapy.
First, one shouldn't ascribe all of one's problems to physio-chemical imbalances. While I can buy that there are people with pathological deficiencies of certain neurotransmitters, this is probably the minority of people who feel depressed or anxious or otherwise bad. I used to be much more hard-line about this, but I think pharmaceutical drugs probably have a place to play in treatment for some people. However, this should probably be a last resort, and we shouldn't be getting a whole generation of kids addicted to amphetamines.
The question, then, is what are you doing in therapy? What should you be talking about? I think there's good reason to be suspicious of the therapy-industrial complex. If therapy fixed everyone's problems, it would stop existing. Like the pharmaceutical industry, it is more profitable for therapy to provide long-term treatment than it is to provide cures. It seems naïve to think that everyone should go to therapy or that everyone will benefit from therapy. Therapy is a uniquely modern, Western invention, and plenty of cultures are happy without it.
But I go to therapy and I think I like it. When I started seeing my therapist, I asked her why she got into this line of work. "Therapy saved my life," she said. On the one hand, good to have some experience on the couch so one knows what it's like to be a client. I guess it worked well enough for her, she seems like she's got her shit together. Maybe being a therapist is like being a zen master who teaches her disciples after going through the same apprenticeship herself.
On the other hand, what if this is all just the blind leading the blind? What if the therapist is not a zen master, but a drug dealer––join me in my addiction, and we'll both drift slowly out of the world and into oblivion. Therapists never seem to tell you which one they are––in fact, they tell you almost nothing at all about themselves, you work off the smallest of clues.
The only means of distinction, then, seems to be your own results. Lots of the biggest partisans on the side of therapy are also some of the most fucked up people. Need to not do what they're doing. I haven't found a hard rule for this, but I'll try to lay out some guiding principles:
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Have goals. Track your progress towards those goals. Assess whether therapy is helping you reach those goals. Like New Years resolutions, these goals should be actionable and concrete, and you should be able to fail or succeed. That's how you'll know if it's working.
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Ask yourself if you're enjoying seeing your therapist. I once heard a story about a guy who saw a therapist for decades and all they ever did was make small talk––the weather, sports, etc. If therapy's not directly contributing to your goals, it's alright to do it just because you enjoy it. I have many friends who I talk to about my feelings, but I still like seeing my therapist because it's nice to have a place to talk about myself without having to worry about an interpersonal relationship or without seeking any kind of reciprocity.
This dynamic seems potentially problematic. Shouldn't we want some kind of reciprocity in all of our relationships? Is there not something perverse and unnatural about the transactional, commodified client-therapist relationship? Is this not a potentially dangerous mode of relating to practice?
My sense is that most therapists like being therapists. I have a friend who is becoming a therapist despite having never seen a therapist herself. She is simply interested in understanding how people think, it's a curiosity for her, in the same way one might be curious about the process of cloud formation and become a climatologist.
This is another reason why I'm somewhat suspicious of the "therapy saved my life" crowd. I don't want you to do therapy because you see some moral good in it, because you think you might save me, and you put up with my rambling because you think this outlet may be the last line of defense between me and the rope. I want you to do it because you just enjoy the practice of it, the thing in itself. Most doctors become doctors (I think) out of some kind of altruistic urge, and they are often completely insane (although maybe med school just makes you insane). (The pay is also an incentive, but there are easier ways to make that amount of money). As a therapist, you should disabuse yourself of any notion that you are changing the world. Likewise, as a client a therapist is not going to save you (and I think many therapists would say as much). Only you can save you.
Nonetheless, be watchful that you don't start treating your friends like therapists.
- So, try to get somewhere with therapy and try to enjoy it. At the same time, don't mistake your therapist for a friend. As I've mentioned, I think the relationship is valuable patently because it is not a friendship. If you want friends, talk to your therapist about how to get them. It is a dangerous game to start blurring the lines between therapist and friend, and therapists have strict codes of ethics for exactly this reason.