Mark Zuckerberg, Therapist of the Year
It's not nearly as fun a name to say as Julian Assange, but who are the editors of TIME magazine to care about that? Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook mastermind, is 2010's Human of the Year. Well, technically, the title is Person of the Year -- but it ought to be, in this case, Therapist of the Year. Here's Zuck's apparently formulaic reaction to receiving the Great Title (posted, yes, on his Facebook page):
Being named as TIME Person of the Year is a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I'm happy to be a part of that.
Boring, right? But consider this, via Alan Jacobs:
It’s easy to dismiss words as airy nothings and talk therapy as mere talk. Sitting on a couch can seem like such an antiquated form of treatment. But the right kind of talk can fix our broken mind, helping us escape from the recursive loop of stress and negative emotion that’s making us depressed. Changing our thoughts is never easy and, in severe cases, might seem virtually impossible. We live busy lives and therapy requires hours of work and constant practice; our cortex can be so damn stubborn. But the data is clear: If we are seeking a long-lasting cure for depression, then it’s typically our most effective treatment.
Relative to the ubiquitous scientific cope-all known as prescription drugs, talk therapy is very 'aristocratic' -- labor-intensive, time-consuming, attention-demanding, investment-based, costly. But Freud wanted therapists able to practice without a license. As reality television has spun into fantasy escapism, reality internet has risen to replace it as our go-to destination for public group therapy. Facebook isn't exactly dominated by what we're used to thinking of as therapeutic communication, but it's the perfect platform, and, already, we can begin to think of the endless networking and photo-posting and venting and status updating and friending and unfriending as a kind of collective coping mechanism for precisely the rise of real-life social awkwardness that online living seems to deepen.
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Aug '10
Re: Mark Zuckerberg, Therapist of the Year
I am about to finish Neal Gabler's Life: The Movie. I just started to type that I wished he would write an appendix to address social media but a quick googley search found this article on the Zuckerberg revolution published last month.
Gabler, like Neil Postman, Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry and Mashall Mcluhan before them all, can so clearly see what we refuse to:
Here's a question: If you have refreshed your browser in a desire to if others have "liked" your comment or favorably commented upon your comment, does that make you a narcissist?
Edited on Dec 15, 2010 at 2:07pmMay '10
Re: Mark Zuckerberg, Therapist of the Year
James Poulos, Ed.:
Relative to the ubiquitous scientific cope-all known as prescription drugs, talk therapy is very 'aristocratic' -- labor-intensive, time-consuming, attention-demanding, investment-based, costly. But Freud wanted therapists able to practice without a license. As reality television has spun into fantasy escapism, reality internet has risen to replace it as our go-to destination for public group therapy. Facebook isn't exactly dominated by what we're used to thinking of as therapeutic communication, but it's the perfect platform, and, already, we can begin to think of the endless networking and photo-posting and venting and status updating and friending and unfriending as a kind of collective coping mechanism for precisely the rise of real-life social awkwardness that online living seems to deepen. ·
I'm so disillusioned. Facebook? Here I thought that Ricochet was supposed to be the benevolent bearded Freud-substitute-note-taking listener for us non-Oprah types.
Nov '10
Re: Mark Zuckerberg, Therapist of the Year
Actually, the data says that the best treatment for severe depression is electroconvulsive (shock) therapy. It's inexpensive, easy, and fast, and effective, but somewhat gruesome. Say, that's very "bourgeois."