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Dec. 3, 2008
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Andrea Simantov:
Shades of life
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By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto
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by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality
Elliot B. Gertel:
'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?
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Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason
Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?
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Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason
Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?
Nov, 14, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia
Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead
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Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic
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by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla
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by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers
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Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate
Nov, 10, 2008
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Nov, 3, 2008
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March 22, 2007
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Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
April 15, 2005
/ 6 Nisan, 5765
Go ahead, be repressed
By
Rich Lowry
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
No sooner had the Indian reservation of Red Lake, Minn., suffered a horrific school shooting than the grief-related clichés began rolling in. The school's principal described a meeting as a chance to "share our feelings." One of the many counseling experts on the scene advised teachers to "encourage students to talk about their emotions."
The bereaved, it turns out, weren't so eager to "share." The Washington Post reported that some grief counselors were sitting alone at the makeshift grief centers, because tribal members wanted only to talk in private, with loved ones. The counselors have the best of intentions, but whenever such a tragedy strikes, it brings to mind an old New Yorker cartoon. Two cowboys look at something in the distance. "Hard to tell from here," one of them comments. "Could be buzzards, could be grief counselors."
The descent of the counselors on Red Lake is in keeping with an article of contemporary American faith: The talking cure cures all. Expressing or dwelling on your emotions eases grief, cures cancer, lifts your spirits and enhances self-understanding. Yes, many people benefit from therapy, and the depressed and mentally ill should seek help. But our belief in the miraculous power of talk is as unjustified as it is pervasive, according to Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel in their new book, "One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance." (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
"The universal prescription for trauma [is to] talk about it with any trusted person who will listen," writes one psychologist, capturing the therapeutic conventional wisdom.
But it's not so. Studies of earthquake victims and Gulf War veterans show that talking about their experiences didn't have any effect on their trauma-related anxiety one way or the other.
Such is our faith in talk that it has become widely accepted that if cancer patients attend group-therapy sessions they are likely to survive longer. If only it were true. An extensive 2001 study by Pamela Goodwin an oncologist worried that patients felt obliged to participate in group therapy found that "expressive group therapy does not prolong survival in women with metastatic breast cancer."
Those disinclined to share their emotions might actually be harmed if forced to participate in therapy. In a Montreal study, heart-attack victims with a repressive coping style i.e., they just don't want to talk about it who received monthly phone calls to monitor their "psychological distress" became more psychologically distressed. They were more likely to visit the emergency room or be prescribed tranquilizers than repressors who were left (blessedly) alone.
In a passage that will lift the spirits (although they won't tell you about it) of repressives everywhere, Sommers and Satel summarize the research thusly: Repressors "report less internal conflict, test better at solving problems, exhibit better social skills and have higher education performance. Repressors report less depression, are more popular with peers, are given higher teacher ratings and report better self-image." In other words, they sound pretty "well adjusted."
Dwelling on your feelings can be a problem, especially if you're feeling down. A researcher who compared depressed individuals told to ruminate on their feelings with those not so instructed found that over-thinking tends to "impose a lens that shows a distorted, narrow view of our world." Indeed, it can "take you down paths to hopelessness, self-hate and immobility."
All of this means that there is a risk in forcing therapy on the bereaved, which might be perfectly capable of handling their loss on their own (some people, of course, will not).
A 2000 study by University of Memphis researchers found that nearly 40 percent of those "receiving grief therapy actually faired worse than a matched group not receiving treatment." A 2003 report by the Center for the Advancement of Health found that grief counseling and therapy "may not always be effective, and in some cases may be harmful."
It is enough to make many of us want to join Sommers and Satel in saying, "Thank you for not sharing."
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Rich Lowry Archives
© 2005 King Features Syndicate
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