eventually see a church with a sign outside with a hope of a treatment
for depression. Those places know little of the history and interplay of
religion and mental illness. They use the solution to unhappiness as a
tool to get people into the Church and the analogy I use is
Scientologists and stress. If you walk past a Scientology building in
London you will see a sign about stress in the window. Their foot
soldiers, i.e. the people you will be accosted by in the street, offer
stress tests. Their religion offers a solution to unhappiness and they
have their own system for interpreting mental distress and illness.
The terms and the treatments fall into the bounds of mental health even
in the mainstream sense of the word. A therapist is no different from a
priest in their provision of psychological therapy except in the dogma.
They may practice different techniques but their similiarities are more
common than their differences. A therapist is a teacher and a life guide
and a priest is no different. A confession to a therapist has the same
therapeutic value as a confession to a priest, and perhaps the same
value as "getting it off your chest" with a friend.
They have the same power too. A priest, therapist or Scientologist
offers the hope of salvation, validation or whatever else a person
needs. Anyone who can help fix a person's inner pain and salve their
soul pain, help them deal with stress and distress or answer the deep
meaningful questions in life has an extraordinary amount of power.
The reasons psychological therapists should be regulated are the same
reasons priest should be regulated.
The obvious element of what I'm trying to express is that the current
movement to regulate therapists must extend to everyone. I am not trying
to say that supportive friendships should also be considered for
regulation. That would be as ridiculous as trying to regulate wisdom.
Bugger. I seem to have misargued that point. Shit. Psychological
therapists are also the last bastion of wisdom. Psychiatry desperately
wishes it had that role but it's the real therapist, the ones who spend
their lifetimes trying to understand the deeper nature of people and
reality and life that are truly the wise. I'm not talking about the sort
of therapist that learns from a manualised system someone else has
written. I'm talking about the rare individuals who seek the deeper
truth to life, the universe and everything - people I aspire to be like.
Damn my communication skills. What I seem to be saying now is how can
you regulate what you don't understand? Religion and psychological
therapy is more complex than particle physics, as is the human mind.
Mental health itself is poorly understood by most people including the
professionals, professional campaigners and, of course, politicians.
Life is poorly understood by everyone and the handful of individuals
that have an inkling or a sliver of insight into the true meaning can
not be regulated by those who know nothing about the thing they want to
regulate.
Within the Church there are many different people. Many know the dogma
and that is enough. They are highly capable of regurgitating the dogma
on command. There are those that push the frontier of thought and who
are like the people who wrote what became the Church's dogma. These are
few and far between. These are the people who often end up insane. Their
work and their lives are far different from those who spout the dogma of
the Church. They could only be regulated by people of their level,
people who understood just what it was to be a priest.
This is turning into a ramble so I'll hurry up.
Fools shouldn't regulate the wise.
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