Shyster, what have you come to?

This will make no sense to you unless you also happen to be able to read Swedish.

I stumbled upon this article this morning. Briefly, a young, and for all intents and purposes very able, young psychology student is interviewed on his outlook on the current state of psychology. The article is the latest in a series intent on enlightening the general public on the subject. Fair enough.

The interviewee scores high points for refusing to align his career along the come-all, save-all fad of cognitive behavioural therapy – but I do wonder if it really was him or the journalist who ran the piece into the proverbial gutter by claiming that the public would be better served by therapy than by a new pair of jeans – and not mentioning this once, but enough times to clear it of any evidence of circumstance.

The problem with making such statements and at the same time trying to elevate therapy into a viable option for self-improvement puts it right beside the line of the thing that same statement tries to debase. It’s clearly saying: “Don’t buy new jeans, buy this instead”. Sound like an ad to you? Well, it is. Everyone’s selling you things. Except that in therapy, you’re not in charge anymore (go ahead, prove to me that you know me better than I know myself). You’re handing the reigns over to someone else. The reverse isn’t valid for buying a new pair of jeans.

Furthermore, it makes the rather lofty and uncalculated claim that whenever you purchase a consumer good, you’re actually compensating for something. While it may be true in some cases, it certainly isn’t valid as any real recruitment into a therapy session. Not a serious one, at least. If you’re not willing to actively think about your own progress, development and whatever issues you wish to improve – there’s little chance that someone else will fix this for you, either. Certainly, it helps to have close friends and family that will listen – but this is in no way crucial. Therapy can be a help here, if for nothing else than at least for having someone to pose questions that you’re unwilling to pose yourself – but to claim that you should do this rather than purchasing a product is simply ridiculous and naive advertising. And well on that road, we can claim that therapy is nothing more than packaging a relationship into something you can market. A way of branding human relations and selling them at a profit (say, does any other form of this interaction spring to mind…?)

It may be nothing but an unfortunate angle played well past its point in the article, but the bottom line is that if you are going to sell something, adopt a better strategy for this than knocking the other products you’re competing with. All brands of jeans know that much already…

And while we’re at it: Playing the devils advocate, it may also be claimed that a new pair of jeans will help you attract a member of the opposite sex (ugly truth being is that; so will a new car – if you’re willing to look past the inherent quality of that relationship), spark a conversation at work that will land you a new friend or just a few admiring looks about town. And perhaps, just perhaps, that admiration will do a heck of a lot more for you than an talking head, acting your conscience, asking the question: “And just why do you think that is?”