Psychology According to David Smail - Essay Example

?Psychology According to David Smail According to David Smail, there were three constant principles in psychology: (a) … every person wishes to be popular (b) … all people lie about how they really feel on the inside and constantly experience bouts of low self confidence (c) … if the people who are viewed as the heroes and heroines of society due to their achievements in various fields were to be honest, they would admit that most of the time they struggle with society’s perception of them as champions (Smail 2005). The conservative interpretation of therapeutic psychology infers that people are capable of assisting themselves to get over any emotional problems that overwhelm them. According to Smail, this type of view is a characteristic of the make-believe that is essential for the triumph of the current version of consumer capitalism, though it does not truly reveal the way things are. The alternative type of psychotherapy that Smail proposes, which is based on his findings after many years as a clinical psychologist, suggests a different set of values that allow people to appreciate themselves as factual beings that exist in a practical world that does not operate on mere wistfulness. Most people’s experiences of their behaviour as well as themselves are absorbed in terms of the functions of interest and power. This is a framework that is created for the purpose of making sense of personal psychological distress as a result of environmental pressures. David Smail states that it is critical for people to realise that viewing themselves as social beings that operate in a real world over which they have little control is not meant to cause them despair. Instead, it is meant to stimulate compassion, empathy and the intrinsic identification of a common humanity. Smail is quite critical, in his books, of the assertions that have in the past been made in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. He observed that these claims only work in that when the therapist grows to be a friend of the client, thus offering support and encouragement. A lot of distress, he says, comes from the existing conflicts and not any past ones, which is not what psychotherapy seeks to convince patients of. Smail asserts that most concepts of psychotherapy do not address the real issues with clients because addressing the past is a futile exercise as it cannot be redone. In his writings, Smail expressed his doubts as to whether 'catharsis', the procedure whereby it is believed that comprehending past events removes some of their power to hurt, really works. The presumption that sadness, or any other type of mental pain, originates from something within an individual, is, according to Smail, a falsity because it has no foundation. Smail stressed in the relevance of power and interest when seeking the reasons for the presence of daily stresses. These are fundamental in Western societies and, he observed, considered as being subjects that are remote by most therapists, who are themselves both guarded and complicit in safeguarding their own interests. Smail also challenged the common notions of ‘relations’ and ‘happiness’ by pointing out that these are the derivatives of genuine human existence and should not be seen as for unhappy people to aim at achieving. He believed that participating in practical joint efforts is what appears to make people disregard their own troubles and develop genuine happiness. Moreover, he also commented on how the contemporary society makes it difficult for its citizens to discover what the real objective of such efforts might be. In one of his books ‘Taking Care - An Alternative to Therapy’ Smail, following many years as a dynamic psychotherapist, is doubtful of the theoretical mechanisms by which psychotherapy is claimed to be successful (Epstein 2006). While he does not out rightly state that therapy is ineffective, he gives the impression to his readers, that he suspects that it is only efficient to the extent that the psychotherapist, by getting involved in the reflective world of the client, is able to provide them with a new friend-a reality which always results in a happy state in all people. According to Smail, catharsis, the suggested process by which patients are healed of their 'mental anguish' when they benefit from 'insight' into their past issues, is misleading. Smail categorically stated that he felt that therapists are compelled to perform as magicians who participate in wishful thinking with such dynamism that their clients are convince of the authenticity of this process. In the book, ‘Taking Care - An Alternative to Therapy’, he suggested that people should be careful in their participation of life, as well as in the existences of family and friends. In his later masterpiece, ‘Power, Interest and Psychology’ Smail elaborated on the embodied character of persons in society and the level to which they have power over their existences (Epstein 2006). Power and interest, he observed, are what decide the incidents that will occur in the lives of people. He also asserted that psychology and psychotherapy do not endorse this view and elaborated that the concept of ‘willpower’ is an invention of psychotherapy. Smail asserted that psychological concepts hardly ever have the same power over people as the authority that is exerted on individuals by their families. He also believed that psychological theories do not consider the significance of other social structures. Smail defined the ‘power horizon’ as the effects of factors such as culture, social class and politics on personal relations, as well as the effect of individual principles on education and family life. Smail believed that if emotional distress can result from environmental and social factors which occur at some distance from those ultimately affected by them, then the best psychotherapy to deal with the distress should be in the form of ethical, political and ideological change. Smail felt that all psychoanalytic practice has to change from being held in the environment of therapeutic space. Smail stated that the best psychological remedies could only come from relations between psychoanalysts and psychotherapists where an atmosphere of proximal solidarity, comfort and clarification allowed the patients to desire to bring psychological as well as physical changes to their existences. Smail felt that genuine personal growth could only take place where a patient was left unencumbered by the fears of how to solve pains and hurts. His proposals were unique because it has always been believed that it is the emotional wounds of the past that keep people from moving forward in their lives. In his work on power and psychology, Smail writes of the necessities of capitalism and psychological outcomes much like a socialist (Smail 2005). He was critical of the way in which psychotherapy only seeks to address the inner mental issues of over the external aspects. He felt that the hidden things of the mind, on which psychotherapy is based, merely consisted of fabricated claims of power over the world. Smail felt that people would have benefitted more by concentrating on external aspects that dealt with issues such as social relations because these were the factors that were most likely to bring practical results. Moreover, Smail did not completely dismiss psychotherapy. He stated that patients benefitted from some valuable facets such as a compassionate and non judgmental atmosphere that allows patients to unburden themselves. Still, he disapproved of what he referred to as the "magical voluntarism" that is an intrinsic part of the cognitive, psychodynamic, humanistic and behavioural divisions of psychotherapy. This mystical voluntarism, to Smail, seemed to indicate to patients that to lessen their misery in their present circumstances, they had to empower themselves to alter their entire existences. According to Smail, this message is vital to the reinforcement of capitalist dealings. Capitalist associations are dependent on the consumers feeling that their internal misery or angst is a result of a personal fundamental flaw, a personal decision to be miserable, a fault that they can correct if they simply made a greater effort, or their exercising of more insight or willpower. Therapists are mainly tasked with transforming the reactions of their clients to their stressful worlds. In essence, there is no new aspect they introduce to their clients. They merely reassure them, or confirm what the clients have all along believed-that there are past issues that have to be solved if their lives are to progress. Though it is doubtful that research studies have been conducted to discover why some people with painful pasts and who are not particularly reflective still achieve astonishing success in all areas of their lives, such studies would challenge the assertions of psychotherapy. Such researches would also indicate that there is a different and possibly unknown or undiscovered aspect, other than what psychology has revealed, that contributes towards success in the human existence. There is a measure of economic interest in their offering of such services because therapy is a certified service. Smail observed that therapists had a duty to concentrate more on helping their clients to appreciate their social natures instead of encouraging their beliefs in the importance of reactions to uncomfortable changes. Smail also observed that clinical psychologists usually emphasise on the importance of therapeutic assistance, individual psychopathology and susceptibility (Toynbee 2006). This merely caters to the ideological requirements of capitalism that encourage people to assume an atomised notion of their citizenship to the human race. Atoms only care about the welfare of themselves and their immediate families. They are hostile to other atoms, viewing them as competitors for favours in the marketplace (Bentall, 2010). Smail decried the loss of human comprehension of the material reality that people everywhere occupy, which has been replaced in clinical psychology by the fabrication of the overstated powers of individual human beings. The majority of people believe this even though most of the powers they exert over their family members are dependent on the distant powers of businesses and states that determine the nature of their realities as working citizens (Breggin 2010). The reason why this takes place is because people are susceptible to particular illusions because of the character of their "embodied" existence. People experience themselves as minds that relate, within bodies, with a world that is totally different from them. They are therefore likely to take more seriously the ideas they come up with and not the external realities that may be obvious. Even if they are shown evidence to the contrary, people always believe that what they are experiencing in the periphery of their minds is what is real. The self is the centre of all that takes place and will take place in future; so that the idea of clearing the mental space seems to be more significant and beneficial than any external improvements. Abilities, feelings, perceptions, dispositions, reflexes, memories and impulses all come together to reinforce the notion of therapeutic psychoanalysis. In addition, people also internalise from their respective cultures certain ideals and belief systems that develop along with the acquisition of language. Owing to the fact that people are constantly engaged in internal self-talk about their embodied experience, which Smail identified as a commentary, it is not hard to believe that the commentary affects people’s sentiments or psychological reactions. Thus, it is not hard for people to presume a personal agency that they do not possess. Smail supposed that the most controlling influences that affect the lives of people are those that are furthest from them. This might include political, economic and cultural factors that contribute towards determining the mental as well as physical nature of the real world. Smail also argued people’s cognitive as well as biological limitations of humans can be easily used by society’s ruling classes to generate the type of fantasy-world people dwell in more and more. These fantasies have a stronghold on the allegiances and beliefs of people who accept them. Smail claimed that the means of acquiring advantage or security in society is the basic precept of social structure (Epstein 2006). He further elaborated that people’s embodied existences definitely offer some fundamental powers that some individuals may wield over others, like muscular strength or physical beauty. However powers like legal, economic and ideological aspects which control people’s existences the most, are usually distant influences, which have power over people’s lives even though those people have no individual control over them. Smail extended this further to include the consideration of workers. He stated that workers are particularly vulnerable to such deceptions, not just because the ruling classes was vested in keeping them in such deception, but because workers also have emotional interests in ensuring that they are not exposed to the painful and naked truth. Therefore, the workers acknowledge the artificial dream world of religion, endless products, celebrities, entertainment and psychotherapy, which assists individuals to perceive their troubles in exclusively individual terms. These individuals believe that their troubles can be corrected by being adequately inspired to transform their ideas. Basically, the dreams that workers dwell in are mainly created by the capitalist class. They cater to the real psychological interests of such as anxiety and loneliness. Smail observed that most people get preoccupied with issues that are closer to home than those that take place in the real world (Turpin 2006). For example, people are concerned with their financial affairs, their acceptance into social groups of their class and their personal desires and ambitions. Such concerns take up a lot of time and space, both in their maintenance and consideration. These personal interests may function as blinders that prevent them from seeing the wider picture. Moreover, Smail also attributed this inability to see the real state of things to the distant character of the real centres of power. In the same way that it is easy not to feel affected by the hungry masses in distant nations because of the fact that they are continents away, people never think about the corporate boardrooms where serious decisions about their lifestyles are made because this reality is removed from their day to day existence (Moloney 2006). In debating the psychology of repression, Smail wrote that the methods of subjectivity are certainly raw and their importance is irrelevant without a public world that can arrange them and give them expression. For a person’s private experience to have any meaning, its importance to be realised and it has to be contained in a public space that identifies it as a serious function. Smail also claimed that an existence is given value and meaning, not by being enjoyed privately, but by being a part of a public celebration. The public realm of common ownership realises not just individual material needs, but also the emotional requirements such as validation, participation, freedom and creativity. Smail’s political suggestions are a moral recommendation that a reorganisation of the ways in which people act towards each other could create a considerable lessening in the extent of anguish and emotional pain. Smail also condemned Marx for idealistically presuming that capitalism holds the seeds of its own collapse and for not predicting its ability to create "movable goalposts." Moreover, it was because Marx comprehended that psychological life stems from the present material conditions that he estimated that radical ideas would constantly be coming out of them (Roth and Stirling 2005). Smail is if the view that the true power is at marginal distance that cannot be easily accessed (Szasz 2010). The reality is that when the means of manufacture are in possession of a minority, that marginal group needs a coercive, ideological and legal enterprise to safeguard its property. Should a time come when the means of production is common owned, then the legal as well as ideological apparatus will be unnecessary. In the same way money will be unnecessary, because wealth will be created and consumed by the same worldwide population that has possession of it. Together with such general ownership, all people will have equivalent rights to participate in the decision-making procedures. The disciplines of psychiatry and psychology have been distinguished by competing paradigms. Conceptual pluralism is a reality in both of these fields and sometimes there are even incompatible models within each of these two topics. Smail sought to prove that psychotherapy models people’s reflections; thus permitting them to mesh into the social environment that generates pathology in people through the functions of social capital. This is a way of chaining people into personal individual guilt and answerability. Through such suggestions, Smail recognised that psychotherapy may be able to come up with ways through which people can express their frustrations at the existence of angst within them. However, he warned that such processes then made it easy for the patient to avoid looking into facts that just did not blend or make sense. For example, patients would be reluctant to investigate the painful reality of the societal injustices that are causing the real harm in the first place. In essence, Smail’s position on the importance of revealing the fallacies of psychology and psychotherapy would also compel people to have to dig deeper for individual truths. This is an uncomfortable realisation that is not likely to be accepted by many. The reality is that Smail’s ideas, though accurate, call on people to leave their dependence on therapists and analysts in order to create new paths for them that relate to their individual lives. This, in itself, may relegate his amazing discoveries about what is the real truth to oblivion. It is likely that his ideas will gain wide acceptance in societies where personal reflection and a yearning for real truth are accepted concepts among the majority of the members of the society. The main functions of psychology and psychotherapy hinge on helping people to experience more happiness and fulfilment through self discovery, which, according to the beliefs of individualism, will bring about improved self confidence. However, mentally healthy and happy people also deserve to have more happiness added into their lives. Everyone, both happy and unhappy people, should be given the chance to engage in self improvement. Psychology, though, tends to apply its models the individuals who suffer from mental disorders. Psychologists have, for the most part, dedicated their skills to using their skills to increase the well being and resilience of unhappy people. In order to be relevant, psychology should not limit its application to only the mentally unhealthy individuals. References Bentall, R. (2010) Doctoring the mind: why psychiatric treatments fail, Penguin, London. Breggin, P. (2010) Toxic psychiatry: why therapy, empathy and love must replace the drugs, electroshock and biochemical theories of the new psychiatry, Flamingo, New York. Epstein, W. (2006) Psychotherapy as religion: the civil divine in America, University of Nevada Press, Nevada. Moloney, P. (2006) ‘The trouble with psychotherapy’, Clinical Psychology Forum, no. 162, pp 29-33. Roth, T. & Stirling, P. (2005) ‘Expanding the availability of psychological therapy’, Clinical Psychology Forum, no.155, pp. 47-50. Smail, D. (2005) Power, interest and psychology- elements of a social materialist understanding of distress, PCCS Books, New York. Szasz, T. (2010) The myth of mental illness, HarperCollins, New York. Toynbee, P. (2006) It is not fanciful to make the pursuit of happiness a political imperative, The Guardian, 16th June. Turpin, G. (2006) ‘Responding to lord layard’, The Psychologist, vol. 19, no. 1. Read More