Thursday, April 05, 2007

And Now For Something Completely Different.

In 1993 a post Jungian psychiatrist named James Hillman and a writer named Michael Ventura published a book entitiled "We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse".

Library Journal as quoted at Amazon. "Although traditional therapy assumes that healthy individuals make for a healthy world, Hillman ( Blue Fire , LJ 10/1/89) and Ventura ( Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A. , LJ 10/1/85) contend that therapy encourages self-preoccupation, leaving no attention or energy for the woes of the outside world...Political apathy, a dying environment, and an inability to form real relationships are among the ills resulting from this solipsism."

Some interesting quotes and some equally interesting commentary can be found here.

I think they make their case.

Except I'm not sure they couldn't have cast a wider net.

Because we've also had a hundred (or more) years of the pursuit of higher education as a self-evident good and the world has gotten worse.

Discuss.

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