I think that you are assuming that the only way to “check up” on the progress of therapy is via goals (narrowly or broadly defined). If such a reductive system is needed to talk about the progress of the therapy, then maybe the fit with the therapist isn’t ideal. I am not of course arguing for endless therapy, that…

I see — you wanted symptoms alleviated (i.e. relationship to be healthy, less day to day anxiety). Throughout my life I’ve had an a number of changing and growing symptoms. Depression, insomnia, panic, generalized anxiety, mild agoraphobia, a stutter, sexual problems, relationship problems. Throughout my life, I’ve…

I still fundamentally agree, which is fine. Having an end goal at the beginning only shuts down therapeutic possibilities. The goal of the therapist is to make herself unnecessary to the patient. That’s assumed. To put artificial pressure on the patient or the therapy to produce results in a certain manner is…

I guess we are talking about something different. I was treated for anxiety and depression, but I never confused those symptoms for the problem. The goal was not to make symptoms like anxiety and depression go away. They were mere symptoms. The goals ended up being coming to an understanding of myself that elucidated…

I entirely disagree. To go into therapy with “goals” assumes that you know what the problem is. You don’t. You might have symptoms (depression, anxiety, panic) but those are mere symptoms. The work of therapy isn’t just putting a bandaid over symptoms (because psychological symptoms have a way of manifesting…

While the tone of the piece is bizarre, there is nothing unethical about it. For more than a century, doctors and therapists have had leave to write about their patients. There is a strict and coherent code of ethics for this and this article doesn’t violate it.

The anger seems a little misdirected. The therapist didn’t really care if she was good looking. That much is clear. The therapist only knew what she claimed she wanted (a romantic relationship) and that she wasn’t achieving that. Would it be bowing to cultural demands to change your external image for strangers? Yes.…

Standards of beauty are shitty. They suggest that women should present themselves in ways that are not organic or authentic in order to signal something to others (largely to strangers) in society. Similarly, on a a job interview, one might speak with an unnatural formality and politeness, or when speaking to a young…

That story seems very apt.

The only thing interesting about this story is that people find it interesting. It is neither important nor symptomatic of larger problems or trends. It’s just gossip that makes people feel socially and culturally aware and engaged, but is actually just a way to avoid actual social and racial issues.

I think this sort of dismissal via comparison is deeply flawed and sort of a dead end. Indeed, the people being discussed are deeply privileged. But in comparison to what? It’s hard to find a citizen of America who isn’t, by so so many metrics, deeply privileged. The oppressed and arrested citizens of Ferguson are —…

So obviously the dude who refuses to make the cake is a bigot. And I hope someone pees in his lemonade. But I’m not sure what is gained by forcing him to engage in a speech act he doesn’t want to. He should be obligated not to discriminate against customers, but that isn’t what this is about. It’s about being…

Maybe she’s less interested in being a “Michaelangelo,” then with disturbing and unsettling the way people think about gender and responsibility? The error that you are making is assuming that this piece can or should be judged by some timeless standard of art. Maybe you think “You dont tell people who to consume…

I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I feel like that’s sort of like saying that every woman who walks in public is facilitating their objectification on the part of men.

You almost feel bad for them. Think how scary it must be if you confused a social construct for a transcendental truth and then suddenly, as social constructs do, it shifted around you. It’d be a real, real scary thing. Poor guys. It’s too bad, though, that their anxiety (totally understandable if you made the…

The criteria for those are different. While it may fail some conceptual or aesthetic criteria, as a piece of political expression, it seems to be quite successful, just given how much ambiguous attention it’s received. It’s incoherent, ugly, and hard to formulate an opinion about. Seems pretty successful. It’s not…

But you are assuming it should be judged as art — on some aesthetic or conceptual criteria that you’d bring to a movie or a painting or a poem.

oh cool! Sorry.

Is it? I don’t think it’s too deep. I just think it’s always a bad idea to have too much of an idea of what rape looks like. It’s not far from that to some idea of “legitimate rape,” ya know?

Don’t you think it’s likely that many acquaintance rapists would think back to the time they raped women and also think that it was “clearly a consensual performance”?