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Old Sep 09, 2015, 03:15 AM
Ididitmyway's Avatar
Ididitmyway Ididitmyway is offline
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Member Since: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,071
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lauliza View Post
People here are very supportive when posters write about their negative therapy experiences. I think things get contentious when other posters make generalizations about therapy as a profession or of therapists in general. Posts claiming all therapists gossip behind clients backs, aren't as intelligent as other people, or that clients are cultish just isn't very nice, in my opinion. It's the same with the medication debate. It's true that medications have adverse events and some people shouldn't take them. Still, there are other people who are helped immensely. Debate is great, but when the tone becomes judgemental then it's no longer a discussion and becomes an attack.
The perception of a judgement or an attack is often subjective, and, I am afraid, we will not come to a consensus of what constitutes a judgement or an attack. To me generalizations, as a concept, are not necessarily a destructive thing depending on how one defines them. If we think of generalizations as noticing tendencies or patterns, not only there is nothing wrong in pointing them out but it is the major thing that pushes progress. Establishing patterns is what science is based on. Therefore, saying that the system is flawed and pointing out specific flaws is a very constructive thing to do because it pushes positive changes. This should not be confused with the assumption that every element of the system is flawed. Saying that therapists have certain tendencies of attitude is not the same as saying every therapist has those tendencies or saying that those tendencies are the only ones therapists have and that they don't have anything good to offer. I am sure, we all have certain groups of people we tend to either like or dislike, maybe certain political parties or movements. We like or don't like some general attitudes they share. That doesn't necessarily mean we believe that every member of those groups is the same as everybody else. I mean, c'mon, we all generalize all sorts of people all the time in the sense that we observe some patterns in those groups. That, in and of itself, doesn't make a person judgmental and doesn't make their realistic observation an attack. Not every generalization is a bigotry or an attack. It becomes an attack when it assumes that every group member behaves in the same manner and that the whole group is one uniform mass with no diversity within it. On the other hand, implying that the person is judgmental, or worse, a bigot, only because they observe some very real patterns is one of the ways to suppress the dissenting views.
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