Philip Cushman Famous Quotes
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He accepted without question the notion that there is such a thing as 'normal,' that most people have attained it, and that it could be achieved by his patients if only they would have a successful therapy.
Notice that I am treating psychotherapy as a cultural artifact that can be interpreted, rather than as a universal healing technology that has already brought a transcendent "cure" to earthlings. As a matter of fact, nothing has cured the human race, and nothing is about to. Mental ills don't work that way; they are not universal, they are local. Every era has a particular configuration of self, illness, healer, technology; they are a kind of cultural package. They are interrelated, intertwined, interpenetrating. So when we study a particular illness, we are also studying the conditions that shape and define that illness, and the sociopolitical impact of those who are responsible for healing it.
The self is configured in ways that both reflect and influence the very foundations of social life and everyday living. Without the guidance set by a particular set of ideas about what it means to be human, political conflict would be impossible. The shape of the self in a particular era indicates which goals individuals are supposed to strive toward, and how individuals are to comport themselves while striving; it indicates what is worthwhile, who is worthwhile, and which institutions determine worthwhileness. In other words, the self emerges out of a moral dialogue that sets the stage for all other political struggles. Once the self is set, the rest of the struggles begin to appear in the clearing: they materialize.
The self embodies what the culture believes is humankind's place in the cosmos-- its limits, talents, expectations and prohibitions... There is no universal, trans-historical self, only local selves; there is no universal theory about the self, only local theories.
The message is constantly displayed on television commercials, where the motive of keeping up with (rather than cooperating with) the Jonses is treated as an unquestioned value.
This taken-for-granted understanding about what it means to be human-- that one must be fixed, adjusted, remade, or healed-- seems to be so central an aspect of the postwar clearing that it is never really noticed, let alone challenged...Consumers 'know' without being told or convinced, that they are not adequate as they are. They appear to be fully aware that they are inadequate, unattractive, incomplete or inconsequential and must be transformed into different people in order to be happy, loved, and fulfilled.
We in the West are accustomed to thinking that humans are all basically the same underneath our different cultural clothing, that the concerns the middle class struggles with in contemporary society are at bottom the same concerns with which all other classes societies and cultures struggle. To glimpse the possibility that that is not so comes as an unwelcome surprise.
