Self Is Empty: Toward a Essay

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An empty self wishes for nothing more than to e guided and taken care of, easy prey for an abuse therapist, or even one who is not intentionally abusive but is not trained to recognize and understand the underlying issues. Wide and varied research supports Cushman's theory on this point, proving that decontextualization of the individual, the devaluation of the patience, a belief in the universality of a therapeutic technology and the encouragement of idealization can all lead to therapeutic abuse (608). Cushman compares patients who are exploited by life-style therapy to people who are victimized by cults. Their empty selves make them susceptible to feeling "transformed" because they cannot see themselves within a larger communal matrix. Cushman argues that a main component of preventing this kind of abuse is part of what he is after in writing this article -- straightforward talk about life-style solutions and their possible dangers.
Cushman anchors this hypothesis in his idea that the historical moment must be considered. There is a reason that life-style solutions are prominent in our modern age -- they provide "some aid and comfort to a beleaguered people in one of the few ways the present power structure tolerates" (608). The life-style solution isn't inherently unethical, Cushman argues, but it cooperates in constructing the empty self and reinforcing the underlying broken historical moment that produces the empty self in the first place. Cushman acknowledges that the point of his argument is not to devise the "correct" form of therapy. Rather, he advocates interpreting the collective mentality and the formation of self unique to this socio-historical moment, with the possibility of developing therapeutic solutions that are historically situated specifically to our time.

REFERENCES

Cushman, P. (1990). "Why the Self is….....

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