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Psychotherapy uses words to change things. This is quite a remarkable proposition,
when stated bluntly. So, why words?
In many ways, we readily admit that words change emotions. For instance a Hollywood
movie can leave the audience in tears, or a politician's speech can inflame a
crowd to the madness of genocide. A man can say 'I love you' and the woman can
realise that he is the one.
But we have to be careful. While we cherish the third, we know that the tears
at a movie are a little fake, and that the politician's words can be a danger.
So then, it seems that if words are to be used to change human suffering the kind
of language employed needs to be considered. |
The first systematic development of words to change things can be found in
the rhetorical schools of Ancient Greece in the 5th Century BC. The idea was that
by speaking well, the rhetoritician could change the opinion of the crowd. Psychotherapy
is also about speaking well.
You also have in those Greek writings an early theory of 'what is human suffering'.
For Plato, the people of Athens were depressed because they had lost sight of
what was good for them and were alienated by the pointless life that they were
leading. For Plato the answer was to develop philosophers who would be people
who did know what was good for the people.
The project would then involve the injection of those good ideas
into the citizen by means of words-rhetoric. The effect would
be that the citizen would stop being depressed as he energetically
pursued the good-life. Anxiety is when you don't know what you
are doing, and depression is when you are doing the wrong thing. |
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The modern equivalent is the Self-Help book, the talk-show and some
therapeutic programmes that focus on the development of ones control of
things. These are all projects where someone knows what is good, not just
for themselves but for everybody, and seeks by words to persuade the other
person to give up an opinion that is what is causing all the suffering in
their life, and to adopt as their own the more helpful opinion being peddled
to them.
Fortunately, this is not the only rhetorical game in town.
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