Inquisition 21
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A danger to the nation's children
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Frank Furedi attacks the NSPCC's 'Someone To Turn To' campaign.
Therapy: The Ideology For An Anxious Century
Frank Furedi
Therapy Culture caught me completely unaware. Back in the winter of 1999, I was meeting a friend in the lobby of the University of London Union. Whilst killing time my attention was drawn towards a large poster that was prominently displayed on the wall. The poster was advertising one of the innumerable help-lines that cater for university students. In bold black letters it proclaimed ‘THE STIFF UPPER LIP WENT OUT IN THE FORTIES’. Almost immediately I understood that this self-conscious indictment of the stiff upper lip contained an important statement about our times. The stiff upper lip was out and a new culture of help-lines, support groups, counselling services, mentors, facilitators and emotional conformism was in. People are no longer expected to sort out their affairs. We are expected to seek professional advice rather than take decisions for ourselves.
The past 15 years has seen a phenomenal expansion of psychological labels and therapeutic terms. According to one study the term syndrome was entirely absent from the pages of American law journals during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Yet by 1985, the word syndrome appeared in 86 articles, in 1988 in 114 articles and by 1990 in 146 articles. In one month alone in 1993, more than one thousand articles in periodicals and newspapers used the term. In Britain, the growth of a therapeutic vocabulary is equally striking. Words that were virtually unknown and unheard by the public in the 1970s would be recognised by most people by the early nineties. Even in the eighties, people had never heard of terms like Generalised Anxiety Disorder (being worried), Social Anxiety Disorder (being shy), Social Phobia (being really shy) or Free-Floating Anxiety (not knowing what you are worried about).
Take the word self-esteem. Today, a low level of self-esteem is associated with a variety of emotional difficulties that are said to cause a range of social problems from crime to teenage pregnancy. Most people have become exposed to discussions of self-esteem through the media, school, health service or place of work. Yet until recently, not only was a lack of self-esteem not perceived as a problem, the term itself had no therapeutic connotations. A search of 300 UK newspapers in 1980 did not find a single reference to the term self-esteem. It found, 3 citations in 1986. By 1990, this figure rose to 103. A decade later, in 2000, there were a staggering 3328 references to self-esteem.
The transformation of self-esteem into a widely used figure of speech reflects a wider pattern, whereby psychological terms become part of the language of everyday life. So today trauma means little more than people’s response to an unpleasant situation. A Reuter’s search of British newspapers shows a phenomenal increase in the usage of this word in articles. In 1994 it was cited 388 times. Six years later in 2000 it had increased to 5128 mentions. Similar phenomenal increases can be found in the citation of stress (up from 744 in 1993 to 23294 in 2000), syndrome ( 368 in 1993 and 6576 in 2000) and counselling (479 in 1993 and 7144 in 2000). The expanding usage of the idiom of psychology is not simply of linguistic interest. The new language communicates the idea that we are so much at risk of being ill that we simply can not cope with everyday life.
Diseasing the nation
British society is in the process of drawing up a radically new definition of what constitutes the human condition. Many experiences that have hitherto been interpreted as a normal part of life have been redefined as damaging to people’s emotions. People, particularly children are said to be prone to a bewildering variety of conditions and psychological illnesses such as depression or stress related diseases.
Every month a new report is published that claims that teachers, school principals and pupils are in a constant state of anxiety and stress. As the Australian educationalist Dr Catherine Scott argues, her country’s system of education appears to be so gripped by an atmosphere of fear that school principals were ‘stressed’ by the behaviour of their students. In the UK, it is claimed that university academics face an epidemic of stress related illness and that their students are increasingly suffering mental health problems. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) argues that one in ten student seeking university counselling is ‘already suicidal’. School exams have been criticised on the grounds that they create stress and other illnesses among children. According to one survey, more than half of all seven-year-old children ‘suffer from exam stress’. In some schools, children as young as ten are being offered hypnosis to help boost their exam performance’. It seems as if the school has become a threat to public health.
The transformation of the experience of school into a regime of high risk has as its premise the belief that virtually any challenging encounter represents a potential threat to a child’s emotional well being. The complex emotional tensions that are integral to the process of growing up are now often defined as stressful events with which children cannot be expected to cope. Concern with children’s stress has led some schools to train young students in ‘anger management’ skills. A project in inner city Birmingham has been mounted to help secondary school pupils learn to deal with their emotions. This project offers an anger management course taught by a psychotherapist, who encourages secondary school pupils to release their aggression through role-play and exercises such as punching pillows. And, it seems, it is never too early to start. Pupils as young as four are offered counselling as part of a pilot project to tackle childhood trauma at 10 primary schools in Peterless, Easington. One organisation, Befrienders International, offers lessons to pupils, as young as six, on how to cope with the stresses of modern life. In September 2000, it was announced that telephone help-lines were being set up for children stressed by starting secondary school. These help-lines were complemented by numerous counselling schemes designed to help pupils to make the transition from primary to secondary education.
The perception that individuals are too vulnerable to cope with the pressures of life is not confined to the world of school children. Even occupations that demand physical resilience and fortitude have been plagued by the growth of illness. In August 2002, it was revealed that more than one in 10 of Britain’s soldiers were unfit to go into battle. More than 750 sailors attached to the Royal Navy were reported to be suffering from maladies such as sea-sickness in small boats. It was also noted that 2,500 air force personnel were unfit to take to the air. Even the SAS, Britain’s elite military unit appears be afflicted by the plight of emotional injury. In August 2001, it was reported that SAS soldiers were campaigning for resources to set up their own counselling centre in order to reduce the number of suicides and jail sentences involving distressed former troopers. The stress of secret operations was blamed for an escalation of suicides and outbursts of violent rage by former members of this regiment. 'CopShock' is the term used by the US author, Allen Kates to describe the experience of trauma suffered by police personnel. He claims that as many as ‘one in three cops’ may suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. Proponents of the condition of 'emergency service stress' claim that emergency personnel face a significant risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress through witnessing the pain of others. In the very act of helping victims of an emergency, people risk becoming traumatised by the pain of others. So police officers who rescued injured fans during the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster have won a battle for compensation for being mentally traumatised whilst carrying out their duties. Not so long people joined the military, the police or the emergency services because they sought a high pressure adventurous experience. Whereas previously they sought to defend and protect victims, today they are portrayed as the ones in most need of professional help.
The Growth of an industry
There are times when we may need help and turning to therapy may be a sensible course of action. Unfortunately, therapy culture assumes that we almost always need professional support. Therapeutic intervention and counselling is continually offered to individuals facing unexpected or difficult or challenging or unpleasant encounters. Virtually every human experience from shyness (social phobia) to the desire to succeed (perfectionist complex) comes with a diagnosis. And if you refuse to accept a diagnosis, you may be castigated as someone in denial.
Therapists have succeeded in establishing a demand for their services in virtually every institutional setting. In the 1960s, around 14 per cent of the American public had received some form of psychological counselling at least once in their lives. By 1995, nearly half the population had experienced some form of therapeutic intervention. And it is estimated that by this figure had edged up to encompass nearly 80 per cent of the American public. It is claimed that during any given week, 15 million Americans will attend one of about 500,000 support group meetings. The 1999 Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health stated that fifty million Americans develop mental health disorders each year. Therapy is sometime depicted as an American eccentricity. However, the impact of therapeutic intervention on British society is no less significant.
Since the eighties – when counselling became one of Britain’s little growth industry – the number of people practising talking cures has grown steadily. Exact figures are hard to compile. The available evidence suggests that there are over 140,000 individuals working as full time and part-time counsellor. There are also a far larger number of individuals working in the public sector – teachers, university lecturers, social workers, probation officers, law enforcement personnel – who practice their counselling skills as part of their job.
Evidently, the counselling professions have proved successful in creating a thriving market for its services. It is now assumed that people facing an unusual event are likely to need or at least likely to benefit from counselling. Take the case of the disbanding of Cleveland county council in 1995. Although none of the employees faced redundancy -they were to be reassigned to a reorganised local authority – bereavement counselling was offered to council workers to help them overcome any sense of loss they might experience. The employees were warned that the experience could be like the death of a ‘friend or a loved one’ Staff were told to expect symptoms, such as loss of libido, mood swings, eating disorders and panic attacks. The Council employed 18 counsellors to help employees identify signs of stress and to ‘tap into heir inner strengths’.
It is worth noting that when the National Lottery handed out money for health projects, 25 per cent went to advice and counselling schemes, compared to five or six per cent for research charities. The pervasive influence of counselling is shown by research carried out by Counselling, Advice, Mediation, Psychotherapy, Advocacy Guidance (CAMP). It mapped the number of counselling encounters taking place in Britain in February 1999 and concluded that 1,231,000 such events took place that month.
So does it all matter? Some suggest that therapy culture provides a harmless past time for people who are obsessed with themselves. However therapy culture is not a pastime – it is a way of life. And increasingly it seeks to force everyone to conform to its dogma. Already, children in primary school are being educated in ‘emotional literacy’ and encouraged to internalise therapeutic values. Worse still, therapy culture promotes the idea that we are far too vulnerable to deal with pressures of life. It continually cultivates a sense of vulnerability, powerlessness and dependence. It promotes the belief that we are always at risk of being ill. As a result, it fosters a climate where people really do feel ill, insecure and emotionally damaged. The more we are lectured that stress makes us ill the more likely we are to feel sick. Therapy culture is a threat to the nation’s public health.
And there is another problem. Increasingly, people are discouraged from dealing with problems on their own. We live in the age of mentors, facilitators, life trainers, parenting coaches and counsellors. But this professionalisation of daily life disempowers people and turns adults into children. The future success of therapy culture depends on its ability to distract people from taking control over their lives. If it succeeds it may come to define life in Britain in the 21st century.
Frank Furedi is a professor of sociology at the University of Kent. His Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability In An Anxious Age is published by Routledge Press.
A danger to the nation's children
Therapy: The Ideology For An Anxious Century
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