11 Comments

Great read. Too damned true. Loved the Heinlein quote, he's a personal favourite.

Expand full comment

As a retired (thank the stars!) psychotherapist, I saw what I termed "treatment du jour" coming along. Not so much by charlatans, but offered, initially, as focus on one type of disorder, soon to morph to a bullshit panacea. There is no damned panacea! (although whisky helps when I'm watching the spouting dipshits enough to turn the tv off and pour something!). Thanks for the reality check, although I believe you're preaching to this choir. Too bad more won't listen.

Expand full comment

And Oz is becoming more and more full of shit. Let’s hope enough people in PA see through it.

Expand full comment

I'm adding the word "quacktacular" to my vocabulary!

Expand full comment
Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022

Ah yes - people who "don’t wish to look like fools by coming to their senses". If that doesn't encapsulate the fucked-up, shitsucking, cerebroanal inversion that is the human condition, I don't know what does.

Expand full comment

Alternative practitioners, however, and not beholden to such ethical codes of conduct.

Should be "are"?

Expand full comment

Absolutely excellent analysis.

Expand full comment

I'm reminded of sociologist Leon Fessinger who developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. I think it is the exact definition of what goes on visa vi the dunk cost argument. Always enjoy your posts and as a fellow Canadian now living in the US I'm both proud and envious of you.

Expand full comment

I’m not entirely sure I want to admit this to you...I got sucked into NLP. I did a 9 day course in London, I bought the books and the CDs. Yeah.

It was incredibly useful to me, just not in the way that perhaps they intended.

I was on the Personal Development trail, trying to figure out how to be a Functional Responsible Adult. Hindsight is a wonderful thing: I’m ADHD. Life was harder than I figured it ought to be, they said they had answers.

Tony Robbins though...made my skin crawl, the stories...ugh.

Expand full comment