Martin Seligman makes the claim that fourteen major mental illnesses are now treatable. Who knew there were fourteen or more mental illnesses? In my neighborhood there’s just one… people are fucked-up or they’re not fucked-up. Converting the FU sufferers to an NFU condition, treating fucked-uppedness, pretty much never emerges as a topic of interest down at the Ace Hardware store. We’re long on diagnosis and short on treatment. “He’s fucked-up,” we might say, but seldom will we say that we think someone ought to go sit with the dude until he gets his head straight.
“How fucked-up is he?” we might ask. There’s a gradation of fucked-uppedness that we’re willing to explore. The sufferer may be diagnosed as “sort of fucked-up,” “generally fucked-up,” or “REAL fucked-up.” A guy who’s REAL fucked-up is interesting, but you don’t want to sit too close to him at the hockey game.
I think we’re more interested in changing the situation around fucked-up people if they hurt others. But the service industry that emerges here is more in the nature of shelter and comfort than treatment. Who gives a fuck if you can treat the fucked-up? The trick is to lend a helping hand… remove the battered spouse, the abused child… maybe listen to what the fucked-up guy has to say. If he’s REAL, REAL, REAL fucked up then we have to isolate his ass. The difference between involuntary commitment and a prison sentence is a line finely drawn and perhaps the only real distinction is that the prison sentence has a sunset date.
The fucked-up guy is as likely to get better in the slammer as he is in the bin. What does it mean “to get better?” Would Van Gogh have been better if he was less fucked-up? I think we can leave that to Scoble, Sierra, and Seligman to sort out.
Thanks to Scruggs for bringing Professor Seligman into the center of the conversation. Imagine! Fourteen different TREATABLE kinds of fucked-uppedness. Can I get Thorazine with that?
