I'm good enough, I'm smart enough....

In this week's NY Times Magazine: For years, therapy has been about discussing and reliving your trauma. But now there's an argument that it may be better simply to keep it to yourself.

... A study done by H.J. Eysenck in 1952, a study that still causes some embarrassment to the field, found that psychotherapy in general helped no more, no less, than the slow passing of time. As for insight, no one has yet demonstrably proved that it is linked to recovery....

Repressionist (my term, not theirs) therapists have all kinds of anecdotal and autonomic data to show that people who repress traumatic events have a lower incidence of lasting trauma. There are various theories as to why:

[An Israeli] study [of heart attack survivors] hypothesizes at one point that repression may work as a coping style because those who ignore have a uniquely adaptive perceptual style. Repressors, others posit, may be protected by their presuppositions regarding -- and subsequent perceptions of -- stressful events, meaning that where you see a conflagration, they see a campfire, where you see a downpour, they see a drizzle. Still other researchers suggest that repressors are good at repressing because they can manipulate their attention, swiveling it away from the burned body or the hurting heart, and if that fails, they believe that they can cope with what befalls them. They think they're competent, those with the buttoned-up backs. Whether they really are or are not competent is not the issue....

Expressionists (again, my term, not theirs), the therapists that want you to tell all and learn to confront the trauma and deal with it (which has been the prevailing method of treatment since the 1980s) argue Repressionists are only saying that "repression is useful for repressors" and people with different coping styles are harmed by repressing trauma. The argument is also made that different types of traumatic events have different effects and should be treated differently (e.g. sexual abuse or something perpertrated by another person vs. a heart attack or other medical event). But then I think it dissolves into the semantics of characterizing trauma.

So all it really seems to boil down to is that a therapist should be able to figure out if a person is naturally repressive or expressive and encourage them to use their natural coping skills to their best advantage. (Just like that. Easy as pie.) There's something to be said for examining your past to learn from it, and there's something to be said for moving on and getting over it.

I'm finding this particularly interesting for a couple reasons. The first being that I always wonder if I should be going to therapy. Not because I feel like I have a problem that I really need to work through, but because it seems like it would be nice to get some things off my chest and get some feedback on them in a way that I have a really hard time doing even with my closest friends (and after seeing A Girl Thing I wish Stockard Channing could be my therapist). And also because I really like Dar Williams' What Do You Hear In These Sounds?

And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself...

I've never experienced a trauma of any kind, so I don't have an informed opinion on any of this. And I can't afford to go to therapy anyway, so I guess I'll keep on repressing until I can.