Show the Similarities Term Paper

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Thomas Szasz's the Myth of Psychotherapy and Bilingual Education in Richard Rodriguez's Hunger for Memory

How can psychotherapy be a myth? How can the internal speculation in regards to the soul be wrong? However, both Richard Rodriguez's Hunger for Memory and Thomas Szasz's The Myth of Psychotherapy say that the current cultural obsession with self-reflection and the idea that reconstituting, reliving, and recapturing memory, at least in an idealized and primal 'perfect' form is impossible, a lie, and would be dangerous to the psyche and soul's self-development and sense of efficacy in the world, if this were possible. Szasz critiques modern psychotherapy as an attempt to make morality a mental and medical issue. Rodriguez critiques modern moral educators within the educational establishment whom would excuse poor performance by minority students, and students from non-English speaking homes. Both suggest objective, external standards to live up to, rather than internal reflection is the answer to the sense of depression and disenfranchisement so endemic to modern life.

Hunger for Memory chronicles the autobiography of a young, once-Spanish speaking, now primarily English-speaking young man, of the journey of a Mexican-American named Richard Rodriguez who 'made good' and lived the American dream. Yet although Rodriguez states that he has reaped the benefits of material and academic success, he feels alienated from his culture and of the political emphasis of reconstituting one's roots in modern America. This is particularly in terms of language, the author states. Rodriguez, after all, began his schooling in a primarily English-speaking school in Sacramento, California. He knew only a few words of English but Spanish was the primary language of his home.

Likewise, The Myth of Psychotherapy discusses the modern alienation of truth from language. Rather than truly articulating one's desires, however, Thomas Szasz suggests psychoanalysis encourages obfuscation, to look beyond language for real meaning, when real meaning is to be found in language itself.

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This is not simply true of theoretical constructs however. Even from a personal perspective, to become the man of the later part of his autobiographical text, Richard Rodriguez's early life and language had to be shorn, the author states that he feels in no uncertain terms. To succeed he had to become the embodiment "of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer to discover the bewildering silence, facing his parents. This is my story. An American story," Rodriguez writes.

Morality and the need to meet societal and linguistic standards are thus viewed as crucial to education by Richard Rodriguez, and crucial to his current success. Rodriquez measures his success by external terms, the fact that today he can be found in the reading room of the British Library, rather than in the barrio or worse, in jail. Szasz does not argue from a personal perspective, but he reminds the reader that until recently, with the popularization of psychoanalytic lingo in the media and in the court system, "bad" and "immoral" were terms used to describe people who are now referred to as "sick" and "in need of treatment."

The moral and religious perspective of the past has been clearly replaced by medical and therapeutic rhetoric of the present, encouraging excuses rather than the hard work embodied by the scholastic efforts of individuals such as Rodriguez, says Szasz. Thus, it is of little wonder that the world is plagued by those who use the langue of excuses and addictions and mental sickness, rather than attempt to ameliorate their own morality, because there is no incentive in society for them to do so, and every incentive provided to make excuses for their lack of success through modern psychotherapeutic claims that these moral deficits….....

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