NUMB SOCIETY

I had the pleasure to meet with Jack Walters and Fred Strugartz at the IAM Counseling Retreat Center in New Albany, PA. Jack Walters made a striking comment to me about how people today desire to be 'numb'. I began to reflect on this further. In the past, individuals were more willing to delve into the core issues that impacted their emotional well being. Today, we frequently have a generation of apathy. There is no longer this desire to address pain and distress, to go through the process (which can often be painful), to go through the catharsis that may lead to transformation. Instead, society looks for escape and to be numb. The psychiatric establishment greatly profits and enjoys this new societal development and are able to prescribe the very things to create this 'numbness'. Managed care companies are accomplices, not beng concerned about psychotherapy which would produce long lasting results and address a person as a human being, but are rather concerned with the less costly avenue of inducing the numbness.