Shaming as a form of psychotherapy.

This is a description of how men react to stress, written Roger KIngerlee in Psychology and Psychotherapy, I have stripped out the references and shorted the language.  He begins be describing the male role as (using the new research paradigm, that women are normative) as less empathic, more inhibited, more status seeking, and more sensitive to shame. He then describes what happens when this gets broken down.

Initially, the man in question develops an awareness of distress, mediated by internal sensing mechanisms  for example via intrusional thoughts and/or feelings … associated meta-cognitive beliefs may be activated, including notions that (1) negative feelings or mood states are unacceptable, (2) must be hidden from others, and (3) are shameful. Certain automatic negative thoughts may be generated, often relating to such notions as the man’s perceived weak and shameful nature, or not being a ‘real man’

The meta-cognitive beliefs may also launch the hypothesized reflection abandonment mechanism (RAM). Since the man perceives his distress as taboo, the effect of the RAM is to propel the man away from further reflection on his psychological condition, which he perceives as shameful, and as a threat to his status, towards one or more recognized male externalizing behaviours. From an ethological perspective, this spontaneous behaviour, reliably noted in distressed men, bears some resemblance to innate releasing mechanisms (IRMs) noted in animals . Such behaviours in men – often maladaptive forms of self-soothing, all more common among men than in women in the United Kingdom – may include substance use , ‘acting out’ (e.g., via increased work-related behaviour), or other externalizing, antisocial behaviour such as violence, around 80% of which against strangers in the United Kingdom is committed by men . Some argue, furthermore, that such violence is a direct attempt to avoid shame . Moreover, it may be reasonable, in the light of practice with men, to hypothesize that the RAM also discourages the distressed man from seeking help from others, even from intimates. The possibility of the restoration of health then is, at least temporarily, lost. Compared with women, of course, men find it harder to ask for psychological help – broadly in inverse proportion to their valuing of stereotypical male qualities such as strength

In more extreme situations, the RAM can be hypothesized to act as a pathway to suicide – abandonment of self and other(s). Since, in the distressed man’s perception, reflection on the psychological issues is either difficult, impossible, and/or meaningless, a further self-destructive act that seems logical at the time may be a suicide attempt – which can be seen, among other things, as an effort to regain control.

Stripping out the psychoanalytical jargon, this passage using shaming language. Firstly, the ways that males interact as seen as strange — to the therapist, who is verbal, facile in discussing emotions, generally introspective, and generally comfortable in feminine and feminized situations. The bulk of psychologists and therapists are women. There is an acceptance of the female victim and male brute paradigm.

The methods men use to cope when stressed are then described using pathological language, when many of these ways are not uncommon. Working is seen as acting out — as akin to assaulting strangers, thus lumping the adaptive (those legal and child support bills do not go away) and the criminal.

The authors then point out that men will not seek healing (code tor therapy) — and in a circular argument see this as another form of maladption.

Now, men can and are violent. And men far too often commit suicide. But… at least where I sit, in the acute wards and emergency services, getting the social burden of child support and child access sorted helps more than this kind of exploration.

I do recommend therapy — after the social situation is stable and the legalities have been sorted. To do that, I avoid this kind of language. I avoid saying males are defective. Instead I talk about this being difficult, and how important it is to hand around for the kids… and how to make that work when you are stressed.

This paper, by the way is a systematic review with no data but hypotheses and therapeutic observations. It is another example of why psychotherapy is now loved but by women, and generally feminist women at that.