There is something to this article, but calling for “A psychiatrist and therapist on every corner” not only pours more oil on the fire, but reveals the limitations of the writer.

There are good critical questions in the article, but inadequate and even dangerous responses.

Indeed, a “society-scale mental health New Deal” has been attempted many times in modern days, not only in the eugenics of the Mental Hygiene movement in the U.S., but in its exported version in the Nazi concentration camps. Both movements called for psychiatrists and psychotherapists on every corner. And by the looks of it today, their ‘New Deal’ succeeded since in places like North America and most major European cities the ‘psy-society’ is already in place.

In the end, the real trauma occurs, not when someone brutalizes and kicks you, that is easy to analyze. No, what is more crucial and difficult to analyze is the trauma of someone who is abused, perhaps with ‘no touch’ and non-violent methods’, by someone who claims to care and love you: not only by the psychiatrists and the psychotherapists, but in the first instance by your parents. At this place of love, all it takes is the touch of a word to be extremely cruel and traumatic.

In the end, if these little ‘details’ are not worked out, the letter is left unaddressed and returns to sender…

S