Talking Therapy

Talking therapy is often referred to as an alternative to drug interventions in mental health care, but it's much more widespread than that. The amount of time committed to palliative 'discussion' in society must be truly staggering, varying from regular G7 junkets and social media fixation to the more traditional forms of public small talk. 

Why is it so important to humankind, when the product of it is so often negligible?

Here's a few suggestions.

Talk is usually easier than action, so moving mountains in conversation is very often simpler and less onerous than digging over the garden. We are giants of the imagination and midgets of effective, coordinated application.

Talk is agreeable, toil is not.

Another aspect of conversation is mutual, informal counselling. The unwritten rules of chat, are establishing your credentials as a friendly well informed human being, lifting your mood with jolly exclamations, and temporarily suspending conflicting views with short-term tolerance and disingenuous consensus. Red flag waving communists are often seen shaking the hands of armbanded fascists, as long as a reciprocal buzz of tenuous sympathy is briefly achieved.

Perhaps the most important part of informal talk therapy is distraction. The world is a difficult, challenging place and any activity which diverts attention away from it's insuperable problems may be tempting indeed. Individually, we can never stop a war, but we can cheerfully feast on our absents friends' weaknesses.

To be continued.