December 2005/January 2006

REVIEWS

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ONE NATION UNDER THERAPY: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance
By C. H. Sommers and S. Satel
St. Martin's Press, 2005, 310 pp.,
$23.95, ISBN 0-3123-0443-9.

Reviewed by Sandy Sela-Smith

SOMETIMES DODGEBALL ISN'T JUST DODGEBALL

When we reminisce about schooldays of our childhood, some of us remember gym class and dodgeball with gratifying memories of the thrill of victory that, just in remembering them, can create an empowering adrenalin rush followed by a subtle smile known only to those who were the winners. But others of us recall PE as a cause for trepidation and dodgeball as a horrible event riddled with the agony of defeat, wrapped in painful feelings of shame and humiliation that still linger after all these years. Many of today's children will no longer feel either the agony or the thrill, according to the authors of One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance, because the game has been banned by many school districts across the country, in the name of a new worldview. And, say the authors, we will all suffer in the end because of this loss.
Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel assert that psychology has been overtaken by humanist philosophy as exemplifi ed in the writings of Abe Maslow and Carl Rogers, founders of the human potential movement and humanistic psychology, which present, as fact, they say, unsubstantiated claims about human needs. The authors contend that Americans have swallowed these dangerous ideas without question, and as a result, our nation is in danger. Sommers and Satel call for Americans to wake up and become aware of the damage that licensed psychology is doing in the erosion of our nation and our people in the wake of the widespread acceptance of Therapism.

Therapism is a word Sommers and Satel coined that refers to therapeutically imposed concepts, which they contend have brainwashed too many Americans into becoming dependent, narcissistic, and self-absorbed by interpreting any hurt as trauma and any trauma as a pathology. In therapism, personal pleasure has replaced the stoic drive to be the best, personal fulfi llment has taken the place of commitment to God and country, and dependence on a therapist has replaced self-reliance. The authors decry the fact that touchyfeely cooperation has replaced the challenge of competition and that vulnerability has replaced personal and national strength. This book is a call for the restoration of patriotism, nationalism, capitalism, Judeo-Christian morals and ethics, . . . and dodgeball.

In just four decades, according to the authors, therapism and what they call the burgeoning business of trauma have managed to take over the industry of mental health and now control most educational institutions, the media, the corporate world, the military, the legal system, and the political system in our country. Too many school boards have dropped competitive games and even eliminated failing grades, in which defeat is embedded, and instead encourage activities that are more in line with the philosophy of no one wins, no one loses.

Sommers and Satel suggest that rough-and-tumble games such as dodgeball embody much of what is good about the American culture. They see the human response to most all tragedy, whether experienced in the shame of losing a game or the profoundly shocking experience of combat, as growthpromoting, rather than evidence of traumatic pathology that requires therapy and the revamping of an entire society to overcome it.

The authors propose that American superiority, strength, and stamina were developed, in part, by games such as competitive dodgeball. These children's games, while removing the weakest links and celebrating strength, encourage competition that fuels achievement and stimulates the drive to win. This drive advances knowledge, art, and invention, and hones winners, who learn to disregard pain and move beyond hardship to become heroes and leaders.

Sommers and Satel state that humanists have convinced us that we need to feel good about ourselves, and need to feel happy in order to be mentally healthy, something that these authors deny. They suggest that psychologists believe it is the job of society to create circumstances that support these needs. This would require social institutions to accept everyone with nonjudgment and appreciation instead of evaluating and holding judgments, which make some superior and others inferior, some right and others wrong . . . and some winners and others losers.

They contend that Maslow and Rogers' ideas of cooperation and cathartic expression of touchyfeely emotional vulnerability has replaced important cornerstones of the American value system. From the perspective of One Nation Under Therapy, we need to honor selfreliant strength and recognize that vulnerability is weakness. If we are to regain what we have lost, competition needs to be reestablished, and we need to understand that the'gentle and nurturing climate of cooperation' (p. 13) destroys the best of who we are.

THE HIGH COST OF STRIVING TO COMPETE AND WIN
In light of the current headlines, I wonder if this high value placed on winning'on being fi rst and best'might explain, in part, why professional and amateur athletes of all ages have been caught up in the use of life- and health-threatening steroids. I wonder if this goal of being the best might explain why too many business practices are deceptive, vicious, environmentally destructive, and life-threatening, as they compete for control of the marketplace.

The philosophy that cherishes competition might be valuable for winners or potential winners, but it does not provide hope or answers to the losers, especially when the system has been organized to create a playing fi eld designed to thwart losers from ever winning. Winners could defend their designs by reasoning that if the losers would just tap into their own stoic resolve, and be fueled by their natural drive to be first, they would be able to use the adversities'even unequal playing fi elds'as a challenge to bring the best out of themselves and fi nally win. One wonders if the losers might easily decide that they have nothing to gain by following the rules set down by the winners, and create new games where they have the advantage. In today's world, computer hackers sending out viruses or stealing millions of identities, Columbine-style killers, snipers, terrorists, and suicide bombers might easily fi t this description.

The authors suggest that we need to return to the ethics of the past, which include the perspective held in World War II when'We saw ourselves as the good guys who were united against the bad' (p. 53). This perspective holds that our nation and its democratic and capitalist principles are superior to other nations, something we should be teaching our children to appreciate with patriotic pride.

GOING BACK IS NONSENSE
The 1940s campaign that caused Americans to unite against the bad guys does not make sense at the beginning of this 21st century. All too often, when we look at the enemy that we meet, as cartoonist Walt Kelly reminded us in 1971 through Pogo Possum, we now see that at least at times, the enemy is us. This call to look within suggests that we need to be more honest about ourselves, to notice when what we do could put us into the'bad-guy' camp, but we cannot notice if we are unwilling to look deeper inside our actions and our motivations, as individuals and as a nation.

It is becoming more difficult to see ourselves as the'good guys' when pictures of Abu Ghraibs fl ash across our television screens, when presidents lie or cover up lies, and when leaders in all arenas of life are not living up to the ethics and morals that we believed were the foundations of our nation. It is also diffi cult to see ourselves as the good guys when we study our own national history that includes stories of how some of us treated others, who now make up the sometimes not-so-melted melting pot.

Perhaps it is more accurate to acknowledge that we are people who have made some amazing contributions to ourselves and to the world and who have committed some significantly damaging atrocities against both the world and ourselves, too.

According to the authors, therapism has turned Freud on his head by suggesting that society must change to accommodate the needs of the individual. Like Freud, they suggest,'It is better to suppress, to repress the dark impulses, and to accept that to be civilized is to be discontented' (p. 56).

In our current world, where so many have been suppressed or repressed and where the adult equivalent to dodgeballs has become sniper bullets, dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, and nuclear devices, it might be useful to reconsider how we go about achieving our goals. We may have come into an age where old ways of fi nding our place in the world no longer work; where there is no safety in being number one, despite the good intentions of homeland security.

For millennia, cultures, civilizations, and nations have grown through a blend of cooperation and competition, and as long as there was space to grow and groups who could be winners without hurting themselves, then elevating competition above cooperation for the potential winners was a thinkable goal, and the one most emphasized as our own national policy. For those who know the basics of American history, it is clear that our own nation came into being and grew in this manner.

We have downplayed cooperation and continued to teach the values of competition, of rugged self-reliance, and of stoicism, because for 200 years our society has wanted to prepare American children to defend the title that our forefathers fought and died to give to their progeny. Only now, in this 21st century, the weapons of war destroy not just the losers but the winners, too. Now, because playing the game might be deadly for all players, the blend of competition and cooperation is far more critical and has become a challenge to the traditional system, which holds competition above cooperation.

The philosophy that is presented in One Nation Under Therapy seems to support the idea that if we turn to the past, we can see what worked and make it work again. Perhaps, by doing that, we can prevent the transition into a new game from having to happen. In what appears to be a call to return to a time when Americans were securely on the winning team, Sommers and Satel paraphrase a quote from a 1941 presentation made by George Counts to the Education Policies Commission in Washington, D.C., in support of this view:

Students must be made fully familiar with the long struggle to liberate the human mind and civilize the human heart. To that end, public schools should fashion an education frankly and systematically designed to give the rising generation the loyalties, the knowledge, the discipline of free men. (p. 45)

What might be lost in the call to return to the principles of the past, some if not many of which are admirable and worthy of being incorporated into our personal and national value systems, is the subtle message that to liberate the mind, we must suppress a signifi cant part of what makes us human. Apparently Counts, as well as Sommers and Satel, did not notice the contradiction of valuing a liberated mind while controlling that mind by training it to become disciplined in seeing the world the way the elders want it to be seen . . . with the heart in bondage to the mind. The subtle message embedded in Counts' declaration, supported, but unacknowledged by Sommers and Satel, is that in the sociopolitical system that they espouse, neither the mind nor the heart is free.

It would make sense that a nation following the human mind model and dedicated to the principles of competition with determination to win, whatever the personal cost'or in today's vernacular, with the acceptance of collateral damage' could endorse slavery, because at the time, this form of labor provided economic advantage for the winners. The idea of taking land that was the home of indigenous populations was acceptable because Anglo-Americans were on the winning team and could make better use of the land (with better use determined by the most powerful because they were the winners.)

THE MISSING HEART
This mindset proposed by the authors believes that the heart, too often, complicates what makes logical sense to the mind. Heart, with its nurturing embrace of everyone, would have a hard time separating out winners and losers and nurturing only winners. Heart would have a hard time living in luxury gained through the labor of slaves forced to live in squalor. Heart could not easily invade another's home or homeland, taking what mind believes it has a right to take because it is stronger. Heart believes in the gentle and nurturing climate of cooperation because it embraces wholeness rather than separation. It sees everyone as being on the same team. Unless it is suppressed'or civilized'heart believes in happiness and joyfulness, and when suffering exists, it looks for ways to alleviate suffering, in itself and in others'because after all, from the perspective of wholeness, we are all one, and what hurts one has a way of coming back and hurting the rest. This does not compute for the logical mind that experiences the world in categories of winners and losers.

It is understandable for supporters of the old system'trained to focus on the mind and not on the heart'to ridicule the expression of the heart and those who encourage it. Sommers and Satel suggest that therapism focuses on feelings of helplessness and disorientation, but not on feelings of moral indignation and condemnation of the badness of people and other nations . . . something that will leave our'children defenseless, clueless, and unprepared to meet real and grave threats to their own and the nation's future' (p. 53). What they do not mention is that the work of most therapeutic methodologies including humanistic-oriented therapy is to help clients who present with feelings of helplessness, usually created as a result of feeling defeated, to overcome those thoughts and feelings and to embrace their true personal power, worth, and value as human beings. Effective therapies encourage clients to learn how to live in the world and contribute to it, through both cooperation and competition.

The authors provide a litany of accusations against the mental health profession for breaking the rules and for creating the circumstances that will lead to a new, and presumed unacceptable, game of competition. And some of the accusations are worthy of attention. When practitioners focus only on the heart, and disregard the mind, there can be as many dangers as when one focuses only on the mind and represses the heart.

Psychologists can receive value from what is offered in One Nation Under Therapy, if they can look at the message without needing to grab the dodgeball and throw it back with as much or more force than they felt when they received it. The 218 pages of text are filled with gifts disguised as attacks that can be used as valuable self-examining tools. The therapist can refl ect, looking for any tendencies toward rescuing, downplaying client responsibility in the name of unconditional love, or encouraging dependency upon the therapist instead of self-reliance.

It is possible that in reaction to decades, if not centuries, of liberating the mind at the expense of the heart, therapists who work with hearts wanted to liberate the heart and civilize the mind. Perhaps the new frame for the future will be formed when we find ways to liberate both the heart and the mind, and embrace the highest and best values of both. We can work and play together . . . in the amazing game of life that helps us experience and discover the depth and breadth of who we truly are as separate and yet connected individuals, all a part of a magnifi cent and mysterious whole. And we could do this even in the event that we decide to play a game of dodgeball.

SANDY SELA-SMITH, Ph.D., is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice in Clearwater, Florida, a faculty member at Saybrook Graduate School, and a research faculty member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Her book E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many . . . One was reviewed in the Aug./Sept. 2005 AHP Perspective.

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MODERN PSYCHOLOGY AND ANCIENT WISDOM: Psychological Healing Practices from the World's Religious Traditions
Edited by Sharon G. Mijares
Haworth Integrative Healing,
Press, 2003, 269 pp., $29.95, ISBN
0789017520.

Reviewed by Howard Gontovnik

Religious wisdom and practices are part of the popular therapeutic discourse within the mental health community. It is too early to measure the extent that this situation has changed or infl uenced psychotherapy. However, it's quite clear that the current state of affairs has had some bearing on the concerns that are addressed within a therapeutic context. Many therapists are confronted with issues that seem to require a direction that explores and responds to the spiritual frontier.'Many professionals feel the spiritual element has been missing and that we will never be content until we know our inherent unity with the divine presence from which all life manifests' (p. 1).

Exploring the many integrative techniques emanating from the wisdom and practices of some of the world's oldest religious traditions is addressed in this book. As a'self-relations' psychotherapist and educator, Mijares has creatively assembled an impressive group of practitioners and educators who provide a series of comprehensive presentations clarifying how religious wisdom and its practical elements can be applied within a therapeutic context. As result, this publication can be considered both a reference manual and an opportunity to consider augmenting one's knowledge and therapeutic skills.

Primarily intended as a book for psychotherapists, counselors, and students, this creatively arranged selection of religious teachings is infused with possible therapeutic options that originate from some prominent religious traditions in North America. Each chapter begins with an introductory review of the basic religious tents and associated ethical dimensions and provides the backbone and the origins of the particular religion's wisdom. Intertwined with this knowledge are a series of practical applications and relevant therapeutic features. Each chapter goes beyond normative explanation and becomes a journey through the thoughts and experiences of practitioners who have applied this knowledge. The reader is left with a resonating sense of possibility and implications for practical solutions.

In their descriptions and explanations of the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Goddess Spirituality, Kabbalah, Native American Psycho-spirituality, Sufism, Taoism, or Yoga and Hinduism, Sharon Mijares and friends will help you consider their wider applications to a more spiritually enhanced form of engagement in the therapeutic environment.

A week or so after finishing this book, I was able to apply some of the ideas that I read in the section on Christianity. At that time, I was meeting with someone who was severely distressed and looking for answers to several spiritual questions. In the course of our session, we explored her deeper religious convictions and how it was possible to fi nd strength within oneself and one's religious beliefs. Incorporating an exercise of visualizing a supportive Jesus worked extremely well, and was helpful for the person on several levels. As I have found frequently in the past, the knowledge and use of religious teachings (whether they were Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, etc.) have often been a source of comfort and guidance especially in situations where the individual was raised in a culture that had strong religious values.

Each contributor to this book provides the reader with the essential structure and applicability of their respective area of expertise. Illustrating how wisdom and/or practical exercises can be applied in a supportive context, there is a sense that it is possible to touch that which is deeper and move beyond mundane and surface issues. I like to think that this book offers a series of opportunities that can stimulate the creative nature within a therapeutic setting so as to elevate a situation above the usual predetermined parameters and classical models of therapy. For example, consider the traditional Buddhist story (mentioned in the book) of a person who stands on the side of a river and attempts to describe the fl owing water as a constant and a static situation. In this scenario, the person assumes that the river is always the same and unchanging' a reference to the way one may perceive life and their troublesome circumstances. The story then goes on to convey a Buddhist message that it is not realistic to think of any life condition as permanent or inevitable. Life, the message goes on to say, is like a fl owing river, constantly moving, and changing from day to day. This implication promotes the metaphoric message that life is in a constant fl ux and what may be true at one moment is temporary. This story highlights the notion of impermanence. It is a message that attempts to convey the logic that'there is nothing in us that remains unchanged over time' (p. 23). Sometimes that which appears on the surface does adequately convey the entire picture of the way things are or can be.

In the rationality of this story, there is an appreciation of a constantly changing reality and of the impracticality of clinging to something that will only lead to further suffering or discomfort. Therefore, the use of such wisdom is meant to be a helpful'refl ection' (to use a Buddhist expression) to see things the way they really are. In other words, it may be necessary to let go of'something' that may be blocking, delaying, or confusing the choices or options a person has at hand. From a therapist's perspective, this kind of logic can be a helpful way to touch that which is deeper and confront the kind of thinking that looks for evidence that things never work out. In hindsight, how different is the use of this idea compared with the classical therapeutic phrase:'It is time that you look at life a little differently and take more responsibility for things.' Instead, this religious wisdom teaching can be a form of reframing a situation so as to improve one's understanding of the way things are.

Each section of the book successfully offers a variety of techniques and approaches that consider the importance of spirituality as the basis for bringing about the healing process. In some cases, the use and mixture of religious icons with absorptive meditative exercises or stories can be a helpful diversion from the usual non-engaging psychotherapeutic adventures. I believe the ideas and techniques offered in the book will challenge the reader to consider the wider implications and maybe provide insight into re-evaluating one's methodology. Whether it is through the visualization of a helpful Jesus or a special meditation based on specific Kabbalistic teachings of the ten sefi rot (divine emanations), these examples unfold the extensive'spectrum of inner psychological, physical, and spiritual themes . . .' that open new doors of revitalized perception. These are techniques that become valuable ways to acknowledge how'spiritual practices begin to awaken the practitioner's finer sensibilities and true realization begins. When people are authentically in touch with their deepest and truest nature and experience spiritual realization, their lives are forever changed' (p. 229).

In today's fast-paced world of the Internet, satellite television, and the everexpanding world of wireless communications, an individual's spiritual nature is often sacrifi ced to a destructive work ethic that overemphasizes achievement and status rather than mystical nourishment and social interest. As a result, many people are out of touch and'suffering because of a lack of connection with themselves, others, and life.' Now more than ever before,'we are ready for change' and new ideas. As Sharon Mijares and her co-contributors imply, today's world is in need of a greater spiritual focus. It's a good time to move away from the contagious thinking about dysfunctions, illnesses, pills, and pot, and to discover challenging novel ways that radically alter our direction of personal growth, leading to a profound deep desire for a major transformation in what we are and what we can eventually become.

HOWARD GONTOVNIK is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is a practicing psychotherapist.