Psychological approaches

The following posts are by Noura
From here on in this Blog is work-in-progress, some thoughts as I go along. Feel free to send any comments - making it clear if they are NOT for publication.

It is always problematic when people attempt to come up with explanations that try to cover everyone and every situation. When I write of psychological approaches to illness, it is no way intended to generalise over this, but rather to draw some ideas together for further thought or discussion.

I once saw a young man who claimed in front of an audience that he could 'tune in' to someone's psychological tendencies and suggest the kind of illnesses they would be likely to have. All I can say is, from what he and people in the audience said, he seemed to be making useful observations as if 'inspired'.

Clearly a psychological approach is not applicable to everyone and every type of illness, and maybe this type of approach can be dangerous, 'a little knowledge being a dangerous thing' or how the saying goes. My mind does not handle the approach or concepts of Greek or other mythologies. But some people suggest the Greeks and others knew a thing or two about psychology, human problems and situations. Perhaps some of that can be useful today, and perhaps some would be contra-indicated. I don't feel anything should be applied 'across the board'.

Before moving on I'll raise the issue of whether our psychological frame of mind, way of thinking, whatever one calls it or what it may be, is at least likely to affect our approach to the world, our psychological wellbeing, how 'successful' we are. Over the last 40 years or more there has been a trend towards thinking in terms of 'win-win' situations or 'can do' attitudes. People wrote a lot of books about mental attitudes and how to change them - and hence one's 'success' story or narrative.

I can't help wondering if some authors of those books implying they 'got it right' for their own lives, keep really quiet when going through hard times themselves. Sometimes they bounce back and make a success some other way, so perhaps there's a genetic tendency for robustness or innovation. Perhaps we can learn some of the techniques anyway.

It's hard to know for ourselves, and certainly we can't push ideology onto others irrespective of their tendencies. People seem to know what is best for themselves, almost with awareness of their personal pipeline or destiny, which doesn't mean one can't try to help but I don't feel one should impose.

Then there's that other thing called money. Someone might indeed have a brilliant, humanity-saving idea or ideal. Why then do some people capitalise on it in terms of their personal prowess or cash register?

What is it about other people too that they get drawn into that, forking out money for someone else's 'success story'?

It's a strange world we live in . . . And none of us really knows.

In what appears a contradiction to the theme here, there are some individuals with a natural flair for seeing what might be an appropriate course of action for someone else, and I'm not knocking that at all!