WE FEEL YOUR PAIN, NOW PLEASE GO AWAY

Need some healing and closure? Read on (Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, July 20, 2004)

I know a woman who once raised a chimp alongside her own kids as part of a scientific study. After a couple of years, the study ended and the chimp was banished to a monkey sanctuary. Chimps are not so very different from us, and he was furious. Many years later, the woman finally went to visit him. As soon as he saw her, he jumped on her, twirled her around a few times by her ankles, and nearly bashed her head in.

That was his way of achieving closure.

If people were more like chimps, life would be much simpler. Think how much money we would save on therapy and costly psychopharmaceuticals if, instead of brooding on the traumas inflicted on us by those we trusted, we simply jumped on them and tried to bash their heads in.

But we have evolved better ways of dealing with our feelings of grief and anger, separation and loss. We have healing and closure.

I am not sure when these terms began to leak from the world of therapy into real life. But now they are ubiquitous. No sooner does some catastrophe strike than people begin declaring that the healing has begun. Soon the victims are forgotten, and the spotlight turns to the real victims -- us.

Without a doubt the most confusing, morally offensive and emotionally debilitating concept the wonderful world of psychology has bequeathed us.