A right without an attendant responsibility is as unreal as a sheet of paper which has
only one side. Felix Morley

I did it to myself. It wasn’t society…it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or
being black or being poor. It was all my doing — Ray Charles, on his heroin addiction

I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but
we are responsible for who we become. — James Rhinehart

This being the Age of Therapism, my local school, which has a leaking roof, has a
resident team of forty counselors. Talk and listen, talk and listen. All will be cured.

Therapism absolves us of personal blame, assures us that there is no such thing as a
moral problem, only one of confusion, for which the cure is counseling.

Look at it our way, beg the therapists, the universe is essentially good! The fat
aren’t greedy, or genetically doomed: no, their unaesthetic shape is caused by abusive
fathers. As in Erewhon, our criminals are mentally ill, poor things, and the ill (as in
AIDS) are the criminals: they didn’t eat right. All things are mendable; the pedophile and
the rapist can be cured by talk and investigation of the past; the police, unlikely to
catch the robber, can put the robbed in touch with their Victims’ Support Group.

All shall be well, and all shall be well. Once Christianity was the opiate of the
people; now its sleeping draught is Therapism. Fay Weldon, 1998

—

Graham J Weeks