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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
July 20, 2003
Not talking
"We have an ideology that it's good to talk according to a psychologist named Simon Wessely. He was one of a British team that recently reviewed the results of eleven scientific studies" on the "counselling" that people are routinely provided after disasters. In the manner of all scientists Dr. Wessely was of course using his word in a technical sense: for the talk he meant was not the general prattle that passes for "talk" among amateurs such as ourselves but rather the professional kind provided through the emergency agencies of the state to persons who have just suffered a fire a car crash a violent assault a dog bite whatever. He meant specifically "single-session debriefings" in which the victim of a disaster trying to make sense of what has just happened around him and to him gets told what's what by a professional empathy-provider. I have often thought this kind of thing a joke -- though not "funny ha-ha" but rather funny sick . For human beings recover from disaster in quite a variety of ways; as they handle stress quite variously. You would really have to know the human in question quite well to anticipate what his reaction might be. And while "surgical trauma" is one thing -- requiring less talk than objective medical intervention -- the psychological sort of trauma is another. Human minds are much less predictable than human bodies. This puts the total stranger no matter how trained at a disadvantage. He is trained to deal with that abstract and non-existent entity the "average person" and he is equipped with a professional check-list of procedure. But the really existing individual person is invariably not average. Priming someone to expect "post-traumatic stress" or even "talking through the incident" might prove quite unhelpful. Leaving the victim alone might be more helpful. At least this is was what the British study-of-studies established after reviewing the results of the direct studies that compared the results of intervention with the results of non-intervention by "counsellors". According to New Scientist where I read about this a Dutch study-of-studies found the same. The very anticipation of a bad reaction to a bad event is more likely to trigger than prevent a bad reaction. And I could have provided this conclusion off the top of my head for I have a logical mind. "Post-traumatic stress" takes many forms and most of them go away of themselves. The thing itself -- the trauma in whatever psychological form -- is probably good and useful. It is a blown fuse it protects mental or emotional circuitry that is overloaded. It may not look like a good thing until we consider the alternative. And this is the routine failure of post-modern thought -- to resist something as an evil in itself without considering the broader picture in which we may discover it is the "lesser evil". If I were myself in some sort of accident -- let's imagine a good car crash in which my companions may be dead and I am suffering debilitating but still undetermined injuries -- I might appreciate a moment to collect my thoughts. I would have some questions I might wish to have answered such as who is dead and who is alive and which parts of my body are missing. I might rather the answers sooner than later. My reader might have other priorities I can' t imagine what they might be. One might even wish to pray -- for oneself for others -- on the plausible observation that one is standing at the gates of hell and wants Christ to protect him. It is the kind of reaction more common in the past than today when few people are Christian and few who imagine themselves Christian much pray. Imagine this scene for a moment. A priest I could handle. In fact I would find his presence comforting and a convenient way to focus my thoughts away from myself and to God -- through the priest. Assuming he knew his stuff which priests often did in the old days there would be little talk between us; for saying a prayer over me or even leading me in the prayer is not talk. And such talk as there were would be on my agenda. The priest would listen for what I wanted to know. Now any person any person at all who is present at the scene of such a disaster -- man woman or child -- may become a priest for the duration of the emergency (or until a real priest arrives). The job is to listen all ears and soul and to love in an emergency. This is not the job description for what I have called the professional empathy-provider though I am quite sure the best of them do just this from human motives. But the purpose of the professional "single-session debriefing" is -- I'm not sure what. I suspect the word "debriefing" is misused for it suggests the subject gets to do the talking. I have no idea what "counselling" does it is the sort of thing everyone understands and accepts until he thinks about it. If it means telling a person what to do it is merely a form of tyranny. To the post-modern mind a priest is intrusive. What if the victim isn't a Christian? Why a Christian priest and not a Buddhist bonze? And who is paying the priest's salary? To which the counter-questions are: What if the victim isn't a secular humanist? Why a psychologist and not a priest? And who is paying the psychologist's salary? So that now those questions have been cancelled out we can compare what a priest does to what a psychologist does. The choice comes down to prayer or talk. Which would you prefer in an emergency? A third option is "neither" and that seems to be what the British and Dutch studies-of-studies have reached for by default. They can't help being post-modern any more than the rest of us can -- and being post-modern they can't help thinking that what they are doing by comparing the results of studies empirically is "science". They do not grasp that this kind of science is itself just talk: for not only do different people give different results but different cultures give different averages and all people and cultures are constantly changing. Science without philosophy is mere prattle. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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