A diatribe on YouSick

 

Today’s complaint is about psychology for the video genera­tion. I’ve glanced around youtube and noticed that there are sixteen million videos on Narcissistic Person­ality Disorder, twenty-three million on trauma, ninety-one trillion on Border­line Personality Disorder, forty-four million on Asperger’s (“autism spectrum”). Plenty on Deperson­alization / Dereali­zation Disorder, Schizoid Person­ality, eating disorders, phobias. Dr. Grande produces a shallow “scientifically-based” video every six minutes on any neurotic who’s made the head­lines. And let’s not forget the nine-hundred-thirty-one quad­rillion lectures on depres­sion. There are many TED Talks on anxiety, each of which solves that problem in a unique, cool way. So many people, amateurs and profes­sionals, who know a lot about these exciting, simple-to-understand, -identify and -treat psycho­log­ical dysfunc­tions! Bessel van der Kolk: Heal trauma with yoga!

The mental landscape of America would be a better place if all of these psycho­mercials were burned, with their mildly toxic ashes drifting into the Prevailing Westerlies. How many sub­species of Narcissists are there, Sam Vaknin? Dozens more than last week?

Why have we dumbed down and popularized psychology, turned it into a lemming march of Baby Hueys loosed on the world? Why has what should be major surgery become “self-help”? Why do the most abstruse quiddities of human life and psyche turn into memes, bill­board disorders, brain candy, hit-worthy tiktoks?

I have seen one benefit recently. This was a unique situation. A young man came to the first session because of his observation, over time, that people were offended by him. His girl­friend was acutely bothered. He went to youtube and watched videos – “a hundred of them” – on Narcis­sistic Person­ality Disorder. Did he really have it? he wondered. I listened to his poig­nant description of his feelings and behaviors and found it to be true. He cried.

Generally, though, I would like people to avoid these videos that turn them into containers of disorders, into labels. There are only the rare few that look at the origins, the seat of psycho­logical problems, and none that give a feeling of a person’s complex­ity, her richness. A short interview on anxiety by Gabor Maté did approach this. Maté pointed out, validly, that anxiety’s roots are in child­hood, but then directed people to heal their anxiety by looking back at, respecting their inner child. No. Address it by becom­ing your child, regressing, reliving, getting those old, very young, killing splinters out of you. You can’t heal the past by sitting on your adult perch and thinking about it with compassion.