I saw a meme that summed it up nicely:

“You’re not a gladiator or a spartan warrior who needs war, you’re a middle manager who needs therapy”

Society is one abstraction, reproduction is another, and they don’t always mesh nicely.

Maybe the perfect society for reproduction is one of polyamorous warlord harems or something (this is a hypothetical)

Men optimizing for that status quo would be absolutely lethal in our peaceful monogamous society.

On the male side, prisoners' dilemma. On the female side, tragedy of the commons.

Let me expand on that: “you’re a middle manager who needs therapy” – because we’ve built a society where you can’t fulfill your innate desires.

I for one am tired of the therapy meme. If everyone needs therapy, it’s society that’s wrong.

You can’t just take a monkey out of the savannah, put it in a cubicle, then say “you need therapy” when it misbehaves.

PS: I’m not saying therapy doesn’t work, just that it feels like we’re using it as a bandaid on a deeper issue. Like, hey, maybe people should lead fulfilling lives instead of using therapy to fit themselves into the box society drew for them.

Not like I’ll ever access it (too masc, heh) but I definitely see therapy as a much more positive way to address your emotions than self destructive or violent behaviour.

Sports and stuff helps too, maybe martial arts are the masculine equivalent to talk therapy.

I don't think that the majority of people need therapy. But I've also never met a manager who acted like they were a Spartan going to war. This may well be one of those social bubble sorting issues, where something that is common in one person's experience is very rare in another person's experience.

It’s that there are a small amount of men in the modern world who need a warrior ethos and the ‘tempering fires of warfare’ and other such cringe imagery employed by those pushing hypermasculine ideology.

The majority of men don’t need to be ‘redeemed through violence’ and, like the proverbial middle manager, probably just need someone to tell them they aren’t alone and things will be OK in due course, or whatever a therapist does.

And yet the manufactured adversity industry is booming. Look at all the marathons and triathlons and iron mans and spartan races and ninja warriors and all the other nonsense we’ve invented just to scratch this itch for men and women alike.

Humans _need_ something to fight against. If there’s nothing, they’ll make something up.

I'm curious why you think it's nonsense though. Those activities can be fun, safe and encourage discipline.

I haven't met anyone who was actually competitive about it in terms of wanting to be the fastest or whatever. I suspect it is a minority of the group, who in turn are also a minority of society.

If we are making generalizations about what humans need, I wouldn't consider "fighting against something". Perhaps "being right on the internet" would fit more people.

No one is pushing that, other than those that push that as a strawman.

> The majority of men don’t need to be ‘redeemed through violence’

You are so far off the mark that you're crossing over into speculative fiction at this point.

Ever heard of testosterone? Do you know what the effects are?

Okay, sure, it doesn't result in a bloodlust, but it is largely responsible for active aggression. As a society we channel this aggression into sports where it can be safely bled with limited violence.

What's wrong with therapy? You go to the doctor from time to time to take care of your physical health, why shouldn't you go to a therapist from time to time to take care of your mental health?

Nothing is wrong with therapy. I’m just saying that if your entire diet consists of ice cream and you’re feeling poorly, maybe try eating some veggies. You don’t need a doctor for that.

I think the crucial difference to me is whether people say “You need therapy [to change your life]” (good imo) or “You need therapy [to fit into your life]” (bad imo). And it feels like too many people mean the latter.

I don't know about the US, but here in Australia, GPs are supposed to take care of both your physical health and your mental health.

Feel the need to see a psychologist? You go see your GP, and they create a GP mental health care plan, which entitles you to a certain number of government-subsidised psychologist sessions per a year. At a certain point through those sessions, you need to go back to the GP to get the plan reviewed. The psychologist needs to send your GP status reports on your progress.

Feel the need to see a psychiatrist? You need to go to your GP and get a psychiatry referral, before the psychiatrist will see you. You have to go back to the GP once every 12 months to get the referral renewed. The psychiatrist is supposed to send regular reports back to the GP on your progress.

GPs also commonly prescribe antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, antipsychotics, etc. Individuals with more serious mental health needs are referred to psychiatry/psychology (sometimes paediatrics for children/adolescents), also those who need prescriptions GPs can't legally write (mostly psycho-stimulants for ADHD).

All this talk of "you need therapy" is very American. One thing the Australian government is actually concerned about, is people with only mild (or even non-existent) mental health issues consuming mental health resources, causing strain on the availability of those resources for those with more severe mental health issues who really need them, and adding to the burden on the taxpayer – especially when those who seek out professional mental health services for minor issues tend to skew very middle-to-upper class, while many lower class people with serious mental health issues aren't getting enough support.

You don't "go to the doctor from time to time", unless you're in some dysfunctional medical system where doctors can make more money by doing unnecessary work. You go to the doctor when you have a problem. You don't see a doctor regularly unless you've got something wrong with you (including old age, but old age life is not exactly healthy - it just beats the alternative), and if a lot of people in a certain environment are going to the doctor regularly then there's something wrong with that environment.

On the contrary, you should go for regular checkups. Even late-stage capitalist health insurance covers these, because it help detect some problems early, before they become a bigger problem. Generally, this is once a year or so.

Nah. They're popular in America because of the corrupt healthcare-industrial complex, there's no health benefit on average.

(OTOH, if and when you notice something unusual, go to the doctor post-haste, don't wait around hoping it'll clear up or put off mentioning it until your scheduled annual medical).

There's a big difference, though.

Doctors, by and large, diagnose using a body of knowledge acquired from scientific fact backed by intensive peer-reviewed and reproducible studies. They prescribe using a similarly evidence-based foundation of facts.

Therapists (psychologists, not psychiatrists) have no such foundations in science. Much of what they "know" is from non-reproducible studies.

If you need mental health maintenance, there's literally no evidence that going to an actual therapist is any more or less helpful than meditating, religious involvement, sports clubs, homeopathic remedies, diet modification, acupuncture, etc.

I'm not arguing that taking care of one's mental health isn't a good thing, I'm arguing that there's no evidence that therapy with a psychologist is better than the placebo.

You presumably think there's a) an objective thing called "mental health" that can b) be effectively treated by talking to someone called a "therapist". But if either a or b is not correct, then there may be something wrong with going to therapy.

This. Pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, father of character analysis made a similar claim. He was pilloried for suggesting that we should focus on prevention of mental illness over treatment. To do this he said that we should radically reorient our societies so that they meet people's organismic needs. He died in US prison.

The psych establishment now is a tool to rehabilitate workers who have become unproductive, not a way to help humans fulfill their potential. Therapy has been helpful to me, but woefully inadequate. That is by design. It's not about my needs, it's about my employer's needs.

For those curious, the miracle cure was sitting inside a special magic box he claimed would do something with your "orgone energy", which was like that orgasm/organism joke but posited as a real thing his device could help you with.

They burned his books, including "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" and his seminal "Character Analysis" in what has been called one of the worst instances of book burning in US history at the time. Looks like the burning times are back, eh?

He was jailed for refusing not to proselytize the Orgone box, but that was really a pretext. Orgone boxes aren't in any way dangerous. He was jailed because his theories and practice were a threat to the status quo.

To be perfectly clear, I'm familiar with multiple political prisoners in the USA and am well aware that the US does imprison people for political reasons. I'm just not convinced that this guy is one of them.

Sometime I wish we had a real, secular, replacement for the church that existed off of donations (with basically everyone donating for cultural reasons) and took care of education, medicine, community building and psychiatric support. One that wasn’t the government, obviously, since that has the monopoly on violence as well.

Is therapy any more effective than that? Or do they just repeat you into submission until you sing the right tune even if you don't believe in it?

I'll say it: it was completely useless, a total waste of time. I wouldn't consider speaking to a therapist about anything ever again.

However -- I did have some breakthroughs with a life coach I found watching youtube vids. It was really helpful for me to go into a therapeutic relationship when I already know I can connect with the coach on a personal level.