Quote:
Originally Posted by Ididitmyway
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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I agree with much of what you're saying and respect where you and many other posters are coming from. I know that a lot of people have been hurt by therapy and many of the accounts I've read on PC are horrific. My own experience as a consumer has not been particularly good either. With the exception of the T I saw up until the last year, I've never had any I've liked. There are a lot of therapists out there and I would guess that there more there are of anything, the harder it is to find one that's actually good.
We all make generalizations, I understand that. But this is a psychotherapy forum with many posters who have been helped. When you are in a dark place and someone helps you out of it, you tend to see that person as pretty important part of your life. It might even look a little like blind devotion and maybe it is - who knows? So long as the client feelstheir life is better, isn't really up for someone here to judge. So it bothers me when posters on the other end of the spectrum who've had pretty awful experiences, invalidate these positive ones. Similar to the way some believe mental health professionals label or invalidate them, there is an implication in some posts that satisfied clients must be delusional or brainwashed. Everyone experiences therapy differently and while I'll agree that there are a lot of people on this forum who've had horrific experiences, that is not the norm.
And like I've said before, with the advent of the Internet it is now possible for any hack to write an article or an ebook. I would take much of what is read in blogs or on websites with a grain of salt and not view them as representative of the general T population.