In the fifth century
BC there was a conference held to decide whether Helen of Troy
was guilty, or whether love can excuse the abandoning of ones
husband for a lover-prince in Troy. Every Sunday, the popular
press carries on this investigation.
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Gorgias (Encomium of
Helen) had a novel proposition. His text is also the founding
text for Psychotherapy. Helen was innocent!! The words of her
suitor, Paris, had had effects upon the goodness of Helen's soul
in the same way that poisons introduced into the body have toxic
effects upon the neurological system. So, he has a theory of
language that if one person uses words upon another in order to
persuade them, then this is intoxication and a poisoning. We are
back at the idea that words can change emotions, induce love in
this case, and that in the case of the Trojan War then words can
literally bring chaos to the whole world.
Against Plato and his philosopher Kings, the Socratic school had
a different version of what is depression. The people of Athens
were depressed not because they lacked the good idea, but
instead precisely because they had been poisoned by swallowing
someone else's idea of what was good for them. What was called
for, then, was a rhetorical programme that would not merely
substitute one opinion for another (better) one. What was
proposed was to identify and demonstrate where a bad opinion or
idea was having harmful effects so that the person could think
about giving it up and trying something new. Anxiety is when
good ideas set up massive contradictions, and depression is the
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of the dominance of
those masterful ideas against which we do not measure up.
The implications for psychotherapy of this proposal are
enormous. For starters, while the psychotherapist might know a
thing or two about language and about love, he is no philosopher
king and cannot know what is good for another person-let alone
inject that good idea into another's psyche using words. It is
up to each person to know what is good for themselves!
A psychotherapist, unlike a
friend, doesn't give 'good advice'.
Secondly, what price human suffering? If you have written a
self-help book or if you are promoting a therapy of managing
things better rather than changing things, then you do not
actually need to hear the particular way that a person is
suffering, nor the particular history of how that suffering has
happened.
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