The Guardian on therapy

November 19, 2003 4:57 AM

Anger management therapy in prison.Does it work? Is it ethical? Prisoners who state "If I had had a better education, I would have a good job, and wouldn't need to commit crime" have "distorted thinking"; and one prisoner claims therapy helped him premeditate an attack on an informer. Should prison therapy be effectively compulsory? Meanwhile, the positive psychology movement aims to find out what makes people happy.
posted by TheophileEscargot (18 comments total)

Hmmm... this might have been better in yesterday's therapy thread, but I thought it was interesting in its own right. Oh well, if people object I'm sure they'll let me know. That anecdote in more detail:

The worst one was when they sorted out a grass - basically, this guy was a grass, so they'd knocked him out and poured boiling water on his face and all over his neck. And then, when he'd woken up, he'd started screaming, but there was nobody around him to get in trouble for it. And the guy who did it later said he was actually really pleased he'd done ETS, because otherwise he'd have tried to do him in front of everybody, and he'd never have been able to do so much damage.

Overall, the article is quite positive about the therapy though.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:03 AM on November 19, 2003

this pisses me off.
posted by quonsar at 5:21 AM on November 19, 2003

Tell me more about how this makes you feel....
posted by docjohn at 6:05 AM on November 19, 2003

What makes people happy? That's easy: having a life worth living.

This is so simple, folks. Just like with the recent fad for "self-esteem" training/workshops for adults (and self-esteem as an educational priority, somehow, which is hopefully a dead fish): What makes people have high self-esteem? Having meaningful accomplishments. You can't (and shouldn't try to) make kids feel good about being poorly educated, or make adults feel good about poor choices.

Now, as to mandatory therapy for prisoners? Hell no. If therapy has any value whatsoever, which is debatable [Eyesenck did studies years ago showing that no psychological treatment method had a better success rate than doing nothing], then any such value is eroded when participation is coerced. The needs and goals of a prisoner might not coincide with those of the coercers.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly in our current politicocriminal climate - having mandatory therapy as an accepted practice in our penal system borders on Orwellian. Sure, it may be used now for "anger management" with murderers and other violent criminals - but it wouldn't take much of a stretch for it to be used for "reconditioning" political prisoners.

And, if you think that's too far-fetched, consider this: if a person is only in prison for victimless drug crimes, and he's coerced into participating in therapy programs, including Narcotics Anonymous, that is essentially ideological reconditioning.

All therapists, and most therapy strategies, run the risk of riding roughshod over legitimate ideological opposition to their inherent ontology, epistemology, or politics.
posted by yesster at 6:11 AM on November 19, 2003

What makes people happy? That's easy: having a life worth living.
This is so simple, folks. Just like with the recent fad for
"self-esteem" training/workshops for adults (and self-esteem as an
educational priority, somehow, which is hopefully a dead fish): What
makes people have high self-esteem? Having meaningful accomplishments.
Not convinced it's quite that simple, considering how many
people I know with families, successful careers and
massive depression. Or the people I've met with chronic disabilities who still seem to be happy.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:19 AM on November 19, 2003

Never mind mandatory therapy in prison, what of the current trend to compel it in sentencing in lieu of prison or other punishments? Or in the schools, when students display such anti-social behaviors as mentioning the events in Columbine or wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt?
posted by rushmc at 6:28 AM on November 19, 2003

Then those families and successful careers aren't worthwhile and meaningful for your acquaintances.

Sure, most people think -- and our pharmacology and psychology industries support this belief -- that if they're unhappy with their lives, then they need to "fix" something in themselves. I'm just pointing out that there's an alternative; namely, to "fix" the life instead.

If your current life leaves you "depressed" and empty of meaning, maybe it really is because that kind of life just sucks. Maybe, for some folks, "depression" is an innate sense that their way of living is empty and meaningless.

Maybe.

Probably not.

Never mind. Here's your prozac. The group therapy schedule is posted by the exit. Smile!
posted by yesster at 6:37 AM on November 19, 2003

considering how many people I know with families, successful careers and massive depression

Perhaps you are confusing 'families' and 'successful careers' with 'meaningful accomplishments'. They aren't necessarily so for everyone. Don't we all know people who end up doing some career to pay off debts (for eg), make a decent fist of it and progress, then realise they need to get the hell out before they cut their own wrists?
posted by biffa at 6:38 AM on November 19, 2003

So... to be happy you need to have "meaningful accomplishments", and you know that they're meaningful because they make your life happy. Well, that is pretty simple.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:51 AM on November 19, 2003

Simple, yes. It worked for Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics). It is life, not logic, so the apparent tautology isn't what it seems.
posted by yesster at 7:04 AM on November 19, 2003

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) argues that happiness comes from spending large amounts of time in "flow." "Flow" being a mentally focused state with clear goals, prompt feedback, and an optimal balance between difficulty of the task and skills of the doer. There's very little correlation between financial success and happiness.
posted by kewms at 7:14 AM on November 19, 2003

Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky
posted by rushmc at 7:28 AM on November 19, 2003

Sometimes people really do have a chemical problem in the noggin. They will be depressed, accomplishments be damned. I don't like the idea of compulsive anything, much less thereapy, but if some people feel like it has helped them, let them feel good about it. May as well let them encourage others to feel good about it too.
posted by jmgorman at 7:57 AM on November 19, 2003

an OK article (certainly not great)
posted by yesster at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2003

Vipassana Meditation Courses In Prisons
posted by homunculus at 10:38 AM on November 19, 2003

Hmmm... I'll have to remember "It is life, not logic". That could come in very handy in a number of situations...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:15 PM on November 19, 2003

In my understanding and experience, the goal of therapy and cognitive therapy in particular is to soup up the ego so that it can consciously reach a compromise with the id and superego. In the case of aggression, you've got an overassertive id and in the case of depression, you've probably got an overassertive superego.

I have had a habit of using the word "irrational" to desribe intrusive depressing thoughts and my therapist would sometimes correct me. A thought can be perfectly rational, perfectly self-consistent and yet be perfectly useless. Since the world is not black and white, I can always reframe a perfectly rational idea into another idea that is just as rational but more beneficial to my conscious goals. "The world is unfair, therefore I might as well not get out of bed in the morning," is possibly true but it doesn't do me a lick of good. "The world is imperfect, but I can work to make it better," is just as true and furthers my both my goals of social justice and personal fulfillment. I have a feeling that Chomsky would also prefer the latter statement.

If a thought is useless to me, I have the power to ignore it, but if it's useful to my conscious goals, I don't have to. Sometimes it's useful for me to feel sad or angry and now I can express these emotions and still know that it's not the end of the world and that I'm still in control and I don't have to fear falling into an endless depression anymore.

If I had had a better education, I would have a good job, and wouldn't need to commit crime

The reason this statement is distorted has absolutely nothing to do with social justice. This statement denies the existence of free will. No one "needs" to do anything. No one is compelled to do anything. If you are punished under the worst torture and told to commit a crime, you can still choose to not act. If you are starving, you can choose to continue to starve instead of stealing food. We are, at all times, captains of our own souls. I think this realization is what cognitive therapy's about. I would argue, however, that there might be a moral prerogative to steal food when some are hungry and some have too much food. The point is that the moral choice is always in front of us and we are free to choose to go either way, despite coercion. Therefore, it's not really a surprise that evil sometimes exists so deeply in a person's soul that they choose to do evil even after the coercion is removed. That's just the nature of free will.
posted by Skwirl at 2:27 PM on November 19, 2003

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) argues that happiness comes from spending large amounts of time in "flow." "Flow" being a mentally focused state with clear goals, prompt feedback, and an optimal balance between difficulty of the task and skills of the doer. There's very little correlation between financial success and happiness.


Indeed, Mihalyi Chick-sent-me-high was in search of the roots of happiness long before this so-called "figurehead of positive psychology" (from the Guardian article). Seems to me someone conveniently forgot their study of humanistic psychology . . .
posted by somethingotherthan at 9:01 PM on November 20, 2003