Hello Family - sorry I have been away.
There are a lot of reasons for my absence, mostly it has to do with the nature of my walk with God right now - in that I find it to be a generally private time, where I've been called to really struggle somethings out without making it public.Perhaps the insights gained will make their way into a future post.
But I did want to post about something that has really been pressing on my heart over the past few weeks. Actually, I guess it's been thematically present since my return to Vegas. It's this this pressure I feel between my professional and personal selves.Specifically, I've been reflecting on a trend in psychology where we normalize and validate to help folks feel better, instead of helping them actually be better. I think this conflict arises from the fact that in order to help someone be better - you imply that there is some objective standard for determining what is "good" (or if your really PC you say "healthy") for someone and what is "bad" ("unhealthy") for someone. In psychology, we are really touchy about this stuff because we've imposed a lot of our Caucasian, educated, affluent cultural standards as the bar for "good" or "healthy" behavior, when in fact it was just our cultural biases.
For example, living with your parents until you are 30 is not OK in Caucasian culture - you are supposed to grow up and get out - that is "healthy." However, this is not "healthy" in many other cultures where living with your extended family is quite "healthy" throughout the lifetime. So for decades, Caucasian psychologists would tell minority folks they need to grow up and get out in order to be healthy, when this actually quite atypical and costly in the persons culture.
I think these mistakes have pressed psychologists into a place of believing in relativism - which is "Who am I to say what is healthy or unhealthy? What is good or bad is relative to the person in a given context, isn't it? And my job is really to help them identify their own good/bad, right?" This sounds all fine and dandy, accept that: (1) it isn't true and (2) it isn't helpful.
"What do you mean?" you ask. I mean that I don't believe for one second that what is truly good or bad, healthy or unhealthy varies based on the context. For example, in no context is manipulating, lying and conniving other people in order to meet your needs "healthy" or "good." It may be understandable, it may be normal, it may very well be the best you could do that that given moment; but it is not, nor was it ever, "healthy" or "good."
The problem arises in therapy, when we confuse normal, understandable, and best effort with healthy, good and wise. Those things are not the same thing and convincing our clients that they are is not helpful to them.
So now we come back to the original problem, and that is choosing our standard of measure. If you are going to have an idea of what a "good," "healthy," "wise" choice looks like; or contrarily "bad," "unhealthy," "unwise" choice looks like, where are you getting that idea? Prevailing dominant cultural norms? Clearly a bad point of reference. So where then?
You must all know now what my answer is - it's in the person and message of Jesus Christ. It's in who He was and how He lived. It's in what He taught and what He did. This is quite a controversial admission, as a psychologist; because basically, I am saying that health is looking more like Jesus, that making wise choices is making choices like Jesus, that being good is acting like Jesus.
And I guess I am just trying to work this thing out; conflicted about the fact that a great number of my colleagues would attack this very idea - worried that I might shame a woman whose had an abortion, or ridicule a man for being gay (I realize this represents a very limited and inaccurate reflection of what it means to act like Christ - but that's a point for a later post).I am also angry, because what they offer as replacement to me is BS (i.e., that everything is relative). And I am disappointed. Because there is so much fear here. Fear of being honest about who we really are and what we really believe; all hidden behind the mask of relativism. I got news, relativism is a curtain... there is a Wizard of Oz back there whose just a little person, with values and morals and ideas about what is good and bad. Come on out! Let's really expose the Wizard.
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