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April 8,
2003
The Politics of Therapy
Dr. Phil in
the Trenches
By RICHARD LICHTMAN
It is a well established thesis that contemporary
American "culture" melds together the spectacles of
advertising, war, sport, and the electoral process. It is often
overlooked, however, that the therapeutic mentality is a constant
ingredient in the mix. On April 4 one had the opportunity to
view a particularly distilled instance of this phenomenon as
"Dr. Phil" hosted two anti-war guests, (the better
known being Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange) for a discussion
of the validity of the anti-war movement and the manner of its
protest. You all know "Dr. Phil" of course; he was
Oprah's guru and now plays a therapist on his own television
show.
The program was so corrupt and portentous
that I was moved to send "Dr. Phil" the following letter.
But first a warning message from our sponsor, the commitment
to truth: Therapy likes to present itself as a neutral, objective
practice serving only the client's best interests. Of course
this claim is designed to wrap itself in the mantle of science,
thereby enhancing its status and hiding its own agenda. But the
truth is that every therapy is inherently normative and political,
not because of some defect in the therapist, but because therapy
is a practice, and as such, is directed toward some end and away
from others. So it chooses values to guide it. And in the process
of its realization it assigns causal agency to the individual,
a social group such as the family, a social structure such as
gender identity or class, or the society at large. This is its
politics. Now, with this proviso in mind, we can proceed to the
letter:
Dear Dr. Phil,
I recently watched one of the most manipulative
programs I have ever seen. (April, 4, 2003.) I don't know how
self conscious or ignorant you are of the techniques you used
to pressure the two visitors and appeal to the worst inclinations
of the audience. Here is some of what I observed in the last
half hour of the program that I witnessed.
First, you dishonestly, or quite ignorantly,
vacillated back and forth between claiming ignorance of the really
important issues that are essential to this debate, such as whether
the war is right or wrong, on the one hand, and extraordinary
knowledge of matters nobody really has any particular right to
claim knowledge of, such as the view that the protests will be
used by the Iraqis to strengthen their own morale and weaken
the moral of American soldiers, on the other.
You took the standard line of liberal
manipulation by continually staking out the high ground, claiming
that you agreed with the protesters' right to free speech, only
to immediately denigrate their right to free speech. You told
them that they could write letters to congress, as though they
weren't already aware of this possibility, and when they responded
that congress did not speak on their behalf, you glibly noted
that perhaps the congress did not represent their position. But
we know that at least 30% of the population is against the war,
so how do you account for the fact that 30% of congress is not
representing them? Shouldn't you perhaps consider the possibility
that the primary factor motivating the congress is fear, craven
fear of being considered unpatriotic, of going against the regressive
sentiments of the population that feels it needs to come together
in support of authority, one of the most reactionary sentiments
that a people can experience, and one that has fueled every great
political disaster from the rise of Hitler to tribal genocide
in Africa. And let us not overlook that this "tribal,"
regressive patriotism is precisely the sentiment that your program
was designed to encourage.
Furthermore, by your own logic, why would
you think that strongly protesting the war to Congress could
not also be used against the troops? So, given the fact that
any kind of protest could be used by Iraq to bolster its morale
and weaken the resolve of American soldiers, the only reasonable
thing to do is not exercise the right of free speech at all,
a policy in contradiction to the lofty idealism you originally
claimed to support, but that now has been revealed as hollow.
One wonders if free speech is really of any importance to you
at all.
In your defense of the right of democratic
protest you never once referred to the fact that Americans such
as Lincoln, Thoreau and Mark Twain severely criticized their
government for what they believed were unjust wars. Nor, of course,
did you ever refer to the right of civil disobedience, the strategy
of Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, a practice that probably
produced distress for large numbers of people, but that in hindsight
can only be regarded as politically progressive, having constituted
a great advance for civilization. Do you not realize that the
strikes and boycotts called for by Gandhi had unhappy consequences
for British laborers, who lost work and income in the process?
Should he have desisted then in consideration of their grievances?
You referred to the fact that Saddam
is an evil man, another standard ploy in the liberal arsenal,
not because he isn't evil, (whatever that term is supposed to
mean) but because you completely overlooked, by willful design
or ignorance, that we originally brought him to power and provided
him with chemical and biological materials that he used to produce
the arsenal that we not cite as one of our excuses for invading
his country. You have absolutely no knowledge of our imperialist
position in the world, or if you do, chose to say nothing about
it on your program. It has probably never entered your mind that
this country can be "evil," as witness Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua and a long
list of other American imperialist ventures in recent years.
We killed hundreds of thousands of people during these "exercises."
This silence on your part is either the manifestation of a terrible
lack of awareness of things that matter and that you should know
something about, or a sign of corruption. In either case you
are deeply culpable.
You concluded in a most terrible fashion,
basically repeating again that you do not know enough to evaluate
the war but urging people to support it. If you do not know that
nature of this war, how can you possibly support it? Your position
is nothing finally but craven submissiveness. That is what your
"my country right or wrong" appeal comes to. We have
to support the troops. Why; did you ever ask yourself why we
have to support the troops. Did the "good Germans"
support their troops? Should they have? Is this war just? But
you claim not to know. Then it is possible, as many thoughtful
people maintain, including the Pope and Nelson Mandella, that
the war is unjust, that it is a violation of the United Nations
Charter, that it is a war crime, that it is immoral. Why did
you not raise any of these issues. All you could do is wallow
in the most despicable jingoism. To those Germans who opposed
Nazism would you have argued that they were hurting their country?
But that is exactly what their country needed, to be damaged
in its war and stopped in its inhuman march to barbarism and
catastrophe. And that is what the United States needs now, because
its imperial venture is immoral and profoundly destructive.
You are probably suffering from the enormous
adulation that comes with television "stardom," and
that may well have led you to believe that because you assume
you know something about therapy, you must know something about
morality and political justice. What you displayed on your April
4th program is a most terrible unwillingness to exercise your
moral responsibility by studying the nature of American oppression
in the world. It was far easier for you to harass the guests
with the standard admonition that rights demand responsibility.
But they are exercising their responsibility by thinking through
their position, while you limped along on the crutch of ignorance.
And by the way, though you kept demanding that they answer your
questions, and despite the fact that they attempted to ask you
questions, you never gave them the opportunity. (Watch the program
again and note how you refused them the opportunity.) Of course.
the final touch was bringing in military personnel, mothers with
exposed children, and a largely pro-war audience to fuel a regressive
sentimentality. You rally ought to feel thoroughly disgraced
by your corrupt and disingenuous performance. Someone who exercises
great influence with the public, shares a commensurate responsibility,
and not merely the opportunity to chide others on their supposed
lack of responsibility. "My country right or wrong"
reverberates to childhood and the equally pathetic "my parents
right or wrong," which is its origin. But at least in childhood
one is incapable of critical reflection and so must be excused
for the identification with power and the threat of punishment.
As an adult one has the responsibility to examine the slogans
that a massive propaganda machine has employed to permeate consciousness.
Finally, and perhaps most obscenely,
your reference to various family members of yours who served
in the military should certainly have raised questions for you
about your own tendency to identify with those who played crucial
roles in your childhood development. Had you done so, you might
have taught the audience a small lesson in the practice of self-critical
reflection, one of the ingredients in any genuine therapeutic
procedure. You might have examined your own tendency toward reflexive
"patriotism," and in the process revealed something
of its irrational roots in your own life. That would have been
difficult, no doubt, but a wonderful opportunity to explore the
vagaries of authoritarian sentiment. Instead, you avoided confronting
yourself and your audience, and went for the "cheap tear,"
a device which, like any mawkish presentation, leaves the audience
with a momentary feeling of comfort and a deeper immersion in
a world of tragedy and needless suffering.
Yours,
Richard Lichtman
Such was the letter I wrote to "Dr.
Phil."
It is a useful practice to criticize
the "information" media; its newscasts, interviews
with military and policy "specialists," designers of
war stratagems, and all varieties of presentation of supposedly
factual material, as the left community has been doing. It is
also crucial to keep a constant critical eye on programs of mass,
popular appeal. For embedded in the typical sitcom or talk show
is the same appeal to collective apathy and chauvinism, the same
subordination to authority, the same willingness to sacrifice
for the sake of accumulation. But most of all, beware of savants,
religious or therapeutic. They are particularly dangerous in
an age in which a large alienated population wishes nothing more
than to subordinate its critical intelligence to cosmic powers
beyond and psychological process within. Nothing flourishes so
much as the appeal of an "escape from freedom," and
no freedom so much as the freedom to inquire, criticize and confront
and destroy established authority.
Dr. Richard Lichtman is a philosopher who specializes in the relationship
between the social and psychological dimensions of human life.
His books also indicate the range of his interests: Essays
in Critical Social Theory covers a broad range of topics
in economic, social, and political theory, while The
Production of Desire is a detailed analysis of the works
of Marx and Freud.
He can be reached at The Wright Institute,
2728 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA. 94704 or via email at: rlichtman@counterpunch.org.
Yesterday's
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Anthony
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Tom
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