| Living
in the Psychosphere
A number of forces are combining to increase
the emphasis (resources, attention and dollars)
that society is placing on psychological disorder
and well-being. Clearly, in the wake of 9/11,
there has been a burgeoning of concern about terrorism,
with a corresponding increase in the use of surveillance,
but accompanying all of this, “the individual
soul has been caught up in living in fear and
suspicion”. Also in the wake of the attacks,
there has been a deep sense of loneliness felt
by single women, more mid-life crises with people
examining their work for meaning, and a great
amount of attention paid to employees who exhibit
post-traumatic stress disorder. Along with these
assaults on the collective and individual psyche
will come the technologies that stalk us [e.g.,
using “brain fingerprinting” to determine
guilt or innocence and “presence technology”
on the Internet that can detect what others are
doing or where we are located, creating the “unnerving
feeling of being watched”.]
The trend toward emphasizing psychological
discomfort has been gaining ground for decades.
There was certainly a great deal made
of drug addiction and abuse, and it is clear that
for all the dollars and enforcement thrown at
the problem, it is still an overriding concern
for society. And new avenues of research are being
spawned, such as those indicating links in the
brain between substance addiction and other compulsions.
V.S. Naipul said of the United States that it
embodied “the beauty of the idea of the
pursuit of happiness”. So it is no surprise
that modern medical science has been moving from
making “imperfect men comfortable”
to “perfecting imperfect men”. To
that end, since World War II, psychology-focused
living has been expanding exponentially. Once
predominantly a field encompassing serious behavioral/mental
disorder, or discretionary self-indulgence by
the affluent, it is now a mainstream cocoon engulfing
the greater part of society in a total sphere.
• To push pharmaceuticals, little-known
conditions like “social anxiety disorder”
are positioned to attract widescale attention.
• The military no longer minimizes the emotional
suffering of soldiers with labels such as “battle
fatigue” and “shell shock.”
Today’s rigorous training includes the realm
of emotions, and maintaining the mental health
of the 1.4 million troops on active duty has become
an official priority.
• The increasing use of psychotherapy (up
50% in the past few years) at colleges is forcing
mental health services to reevaluate their mission
and expand. Issues they deal with include students
leaving home for the first time, conforming, forming
relationships, doing well, finding the right career,
lifestyle choices, technological alienation, floods
of information, economic downturns, increasingly
greater academic pressure and split families.
• Grade inflation is rampant, even at the
best schools, because positive feedback leads
to happier students and happier
alumni.
• There is a growing focus on domestic
violence.
• Causes of Muslim extremism and the decline
of that religious culture are seen as including
a “downward spiral of hate and spite, rage
and self-pity” along with the traditional
assessments of poverty and oppression.
• Studying new religious movements (NRMs)
is a growth industry, where once these were merely
ridiculed as cults for the disaffected.
• And finally, even interior decorating
is seen now as reflected psychological needs as
opposed to expressions of taste. The trend toward
formal styles of interior decorating is seen as
a manifestation of the need for relief and security.
|
