The possible reason is that therapy functions within certain parameters that necessarily excludes the possibility of understanding ‘the Whole”.

Therapy, that is to say, is not as philosophy.

The danger of understanding the whole is that one would see how all the events of life are inexorably linked (much as Nietzsche saw when he wrote of the Eternal Recurrence). In this philosophical sense, whatever happens to a client is absolutely necessary and inevitable, because the client’s life and destiny, just like every individual’s life and destiny is woven into the fabric of life. This means that change happens when “it will” and not by any process of intervention or manipulation.

To see the whole is to see why such-and-such an event just had to turn out exactly and precisely as it happened to turn out. This is not a pessimistic point of view any more than it is an optimistic point of view, but just what it means to see and understand life as deeply as it can be understood.

The philosophical point of view goes like this: “One’s parents had to do A and B, just as it was necessary to learn from their treatment, when they did A and B, how to transcend, or escape or to adapt. OR,. how to fail to transcend and adapt and to fail to adapt in order to not learn it, but to become or to be something different. In any case, the outcome is that you are what you had to become on the basis of A and B. We are here now at another point, C, which is woven into life just as inexorably as A and B were. All of this pertains to the whole, and all of it is necessary for the whole to have come into being.

From a philosophical point of view, then, “How could it have been any different?” and “How could it be any different now?” are questions that are in danger of doing violence to this very fundamental sense of there being something to understand that is “whole”.

But viewed from a very different perspective to the rigorous philosophical one that I have just described, the psychologist is necessary prompted to ask impertinent questions, precisely along the lines that things “can” or “should have been” different. Perhaps their intervention is useful, too, in that it changes the direction of the client’s life thenceforth, so that they live a different life based on the melding into the existing fabric of a different kind and style of perception. But nonetheless as the psychologist wields his or her scalpel into reality, the whole is bisected. It is necessarily reduced into something else — something smaller, more manageable, less complex, less interesting. (It might be worth while, certainly, as many interventions are, but I am here explaining the other question of why the psychologist NECESSARILY is unable to work with “the whole”.)

Hopefully this makes sense, the more you think about it. (And it does require much thought to understand what I have tried to say.)

As an addendum, I can add that Nietzsche’s philosophical (not psychological) solution in relation to this whole conundrum was to learn to “will backwards”. That is, to change every “it was…” into “I willed it thus.”

This willing backwards, when achieved, can produce a transformation of perspective that gives back control to the individual. The exercise involves seeing the past as raw materials, artistic “found objects”, with which to make a future life. But it relies entirely, as it must, on the individual’s own self-understanding.

Not really. I don’t think it happens like that. But I do think that those who embrace these so-called modern Critical Theories do not go deeply enough in their analysis to the point that they actually understand their own historical roots and its links to a deep need for belonging. Instead the commit the fundamental error of treating belonging as though it were arbitrary — specifically as if it could come and go without having any particular psychological impact on them.

Take for instance the recent Meaghan and Harry scenario. (And this is referring to a situation of evoking Critical Theory Lite, not the deeply theoretical Critical Theory). On the surface (and perhaps more deeply) it seems that both people take for granted that they are free to criticize others without jeopardizing their own place in society. Meaghan is convinced that America has her back and that Americans will never let her down, and Harry seems blinded to the possibility of jeopardizing anything about his own status back in the UK. Indeed, there is also the risk of bad blood (as it were) on both sides, as a result of their apparent haughtiness.

And I think the reason for this is a distinctly Western thing. It would not happen in the parts of Africa I grew up in, at least not like this. I think Westerners feel disconnected from the social bed — their mother culture — in which they were raised. It is as if they can become freewheeling moral arbiters without any care of concern for the connecting side of things, the nurturing side. At the same time, the apparent hypocrisy in this is that they will in fact go running to receive the nurturing and reassurance from their home culture when the going gets tough. It’s just that during their time of being moral arbiters and telling others where to go and what to do, they feel super independent of anything that would hold them back, or make them think again.

Also I think that onlookers do sense this fragile state in those who go on the attack about the racism apparently inherent in others. This is the reason why currently Meaghan and Harry are being criticized.

I cannot say for sure, but I think there is a bit of a reflex, a bit of a knee-jerk, in defining women as having personality disorders. It is a manner in which misogyny likes to go around, whilst disguising itself as rational and scientific.

Take my own experience, for instance. I tend to use ironic self-depreciation a lot. Or at least I tended to. Until I found that a huge sector of the American population have not place for this degree of subtilty. My mannerisms, indeed my underlying tone, tend to be dryly British, even “highly” British, since my style of thinking is inherently stoical.

But Americans — especially young American boys — seem to have no love of feminism, either. And I am a feminist.

I could never have anticipated how my ironic tone about things could have gone over their heads when I wrote on a blog I used to keep, “I train (in martial arts) too much — but not as much as I should do.” Granted, it was a bit of an inside joke about my failure to maintain the standards of precision in my training, despite putting in a lot of effort.

The statement went so over their heads that it gained a momentum of its own and hit me sideways. {Joke, joke, joke. Not paranoia — JOKE).

A lot of these young fellow began smearing my character by putting it around that I “overdid things” — in their clear view this was a symptom of borderline personality disorder.

So they began to create a campaign to get rid of the hated feminist. (True story.)

And to get back to the point of the question — misogyny finds its cover and disguise in accusing certain women of having personality disorders. This superficially seems like an effective way to target women and discredit them.

In my case, this was not a good idea to try. I do hit back. And hard.