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You can't police offence
Politicians shouldn't try to outlaw psychological distress
Stock, Kathleen http://unherd.com/2022/04/were-all-traumatised-now/
Publisher: Unherd
Year Published: 2022
Resource Type: Article
Delivering people from psychological distress is the business of therapists or priests, not lawmakers.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
The result is an impoverishment of public conversation, a sense of burning injustice on the part of many good-faith conversationalists, and huge and unnecessary toxicity between identity groups. Delivering people from psychological distress is the business of therapists or priests, not lawmakers.
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At first glance, "experts discover new form of trauma!" looks reassuringly scientific, a bit like "experts discover new kind of dinosaur!". But whereas the existence of a dinosaur is completely independent of the activities of the experts who discover it, this is not the case with trauma. The more generous experts are willing to be in their definitions, the more people will then count as traumatised; the more people who count as traumatised, the more people will define themselves in terms of membership of that group, and so become more able to exert political pressure on others - including upon the experts themselves, of course - to recognise the precise nuances of their suffering.
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