©David Schultz 9-4-00

Something has come to my attention which I think may explain some of the things we find on the Mac Web. Very simply, the Mac Web seems to function as therapy for many. I see this on several levels, but once we take it seriously (and is there any other way to take it?), the notion of the Mac Web as therapy makes a great deal of sense. Of course, all therapy is a cure for something, and the point here is to find out what the Mac Web sures, if anything.

"Therapy" means "care, cure." It was associated in Greece with one's dealings with the gods. One who served the gods "cared for" them. Hippocrates of Cos, the father of medicine, used the term in it's medical way for a surgical procedure. It was soon after this, in some later Greek and early Roman philosophers, that philosophy itself was viewed as a kind of therapy. Thus, Epicurus gives us what he calls "The Fourfold Cure," of "what is hard is easy to endure, what is good is easy to get, do not fear the gods, and death is nothing to us." If we adopted these four beliefs, he thought, we would find peace of mind, and thus we would be caring for our souls, and thus philosophy is therapy, that is, a cure. Even today we see philosophy as therapy in the great 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophy is the therapy for confusion, rampant desires, fear and ignorance.

Today we associate the idea of therapy more with psychiatry and psychology than medicine or philosophy. "I go to therapy" amounts to "I have a psychotherapist" (literally "psych-therapist" means, "carer of one's soul/mind"). We will adopt the convention here that the therapy I am concerned with is psychological at its core and set aside its other medical meanings.

Therapy is more often that not associated with how it is practiced than anything else. But one thing remains constant - - all therapy is remedial. All therapy is a remedy for some illness which has befallen us. It might be an illness of the body or the mind, but therapy makes no sense in a perfect world. Epicurus' Fourfold Cure was aimed at the illness of fear - - it was a remedy for people living in fear of losing out on the good, suffering the bad, fearing death, and the wrath of the gods.

So, if the Mac Web is therapeutic then it is so because it cures some ill we might believe we have. That is, the Mac Web is a remedy for something, and just what we want to know. Let us look further.

Not only is therapy always remedial, remedies themselves always aim at some good we think we're losing out on. Generally, we call this "health." But the concept of health itself is very broad. We have health of body, health of mind, and health of spirit. What terms we choose to define "health" itself with is an open question in my mind. So I will fudge the issue by making this general claim: Health occurs when one is functioning as he ought in body and/or soul.

An illness therefore is the lack of proper functioning in body and/or soul. An illness of the liver occurs when the liver is not functioning as it ought, and so on. A function itself is further defined in terms of aims or goals. Let us just speak of "not functioning the way we ought" as a general catchall for illness and the goal we will call "health."

The reason I am writing this article will be plain to many out there who read me and have corresponded with me. When I wrote "Thinking Different and Mental Illness" I was slightly taken back by the responses I got - - people thanking me for talking about mental illness in a responsible way, and then they shared their hearts with me. I mean really shared them. When I wrote the "Can we talk?" a week ago I started with a quote from Kierkegaard which had to do with suicide and reflection. One I have never met but have corresponded with many times wrote of the death of his best friend six years ago, a self-inflicted death. So I shared the story of my own best friend who drowned many years ago. It was cathartic, and therapeutic. I had no idea such a simple article would joggle such a memory in a person, and I had an even lesser idea that one would write me about it. I am glad he did, and if we were ever to meet I suspect we would sit down in a cafe and pick up right where we left off. Also, someone from a large Mac site once said to me, before I knew much about this person, "The Web is perfect for me - - I am antisocial by nature." I don't think this person meant it like it sounds. I think this person meant to say that on the Mac Web he can, in a very paradoxical way, be himself and feel safe. All this got me to thinking over the months and it has culminated in this article.

Let me be more precise here. I am not sure, at this stage in my thinking, whether the Mac Web is therapy or whether the Mac Web produces a therapeutic environment. The difference is very important. Therapy is the actual process of recovery and rejuvenation of health; a therapeutic environment is a context in which this can occur. (True, a therapeutic envoronment can itself be therapy. See below.) So the question in my mind is, "Which is the Mac Web? Therapy or an environment for the same?" Of course you know how I am going to answer it: Both. That is, the Mac Web produces a therapeutic environment in which therapy can occur and thus becomes therapeutic itself. It doesn't follow that it always does, mind you. But the potential is real.

When I say the Mac Web produces this environment I do not mean that it serves the same function as, say, anger therapy, where a person hits a pillow and "gets things off his chest." We see this on the Mac Web with writer's rants and border wars all the time. But this is a rather simple level of thinking and I wish to go beyond it here. I want deeper truths, if there are any. I think there are, and they turn out to be very paradoxical in fact.

Everything the Mac Web shouldn't, by its nature, produce, it seems to create, like the therapeutic environment I see. Think about it . . .

If you have ever gone through psychotherapy you know the dynamic that is at work. I won't go into depth here. Let me summarize it like this: Therapy is a form of breaking down barriers, be they false beliefs, rationalizations, unrecognized anger, and the whole lot of defense mechanisms, or those little tricks and rituals we go through trying to protect ourselves from pain. It is, in a sense, a psychological divesting - - you sit, naked, with the therapist after a time. (This is why when a break through is about to come many leave therapy.) Strangely, to me anyway, the Mac Web seems to divest people too.

In another article I wrote this:

"What is it about the Web which creates this immediacy . . . ? At this point, I will admit, my words outrun my thought-it's hard for me to put it into words. I am not even sure I have a thought to state, to be honest. I could talk about competition. This creates immediacy. Getting hits does too. Press releases and the nature of technology as such creates this immediacy. But I think it lies deeper than all of these. Yet I can't quite put my finger on it. One reason is because the whole thing seems so paradoxical to me. The Web, if anything, cannot create immediacy, for immediacy is born of nakedness and the Web is nothing but a rented suit. The Web is an amour suit writers wear as they fire their shots at others knowing they will never be punched in the nose for it! That this creates immediacy boggles my mind, at least on a rational level. Also, immediacy is constituted by contiguous parts, like time and space; but the Web is not made up of contiguous parts of time and space. It is fast, but fast does not mean immediate. So let me say it again: The fact the Web creates immediacy does not make sense to me-yet anyway.

I have a thought on this. Maybe the connection lies in an analogy with thought and speech, the short distance between thinking something and saying it (for some anyway). Another clue lies at the end of Plato's Republic, but that will have to wait for another essay. In the meantime, let me know what you think."

I have some more ideas on this now. The divestiture I speak of here is the kind of nakedness I was speaking of in the former article. The Mac Web makes people naked in a psychological sense to the point that a therapeutic environment is created. But as I said, the Web itself doesn't seem able to produce this yet it does. Why? That is the question.

We have a commonality - - the Mac. That is enough said. But somehow we transform emails, articles, columns, and even the form a site has, into something much more. I call it "identification." That is why audiences congregate at sites because they identify with the material there. I know here at Applelust.com many people identify with what we are trying to do - - the way we write, what we write about, the topics we choose, and so on. We go deep, we are nerds, dare I say. The professional term is "academic," mind you, but you get my drift. Somehow, there are people out there who have thought many of things we have thought; or if they haven't thought them, they at least click with the ideas we discuss; or they have a sudden realization, or something like this, from reading us. (I am not saying this does not happen at other sites: I can only speak about what I know. ) Dare I say that some have break throughs in clarification . . . but I am not here to toot our own horn, so let me get back to it.

There is a certain identification people take on with Mac sites; it is no accident that many who write me are involved in academics in some way. But the identification occurs at a deeper level. It is a meeting of minds and hearts, a way of seeing the world which peopel share. I am willing to guess, and this is the point, that they have not talked very much about this in public to other people. There is such a thing as being laughed at because one is thoughtful and reflective - - it has happened to many of us, has it not? I suppose then that those who do identify and write us therefore assume that they will not be laughed at if they venture a conversation with us. It's called safety, and at this point - - the divestiture has taken place and one stands naked - - rationalizations and fears are gone. They open up. They share. We listen.

But if you think about it, the Mac Web is the last place this should happen (as I said above). I am not saying that it should not, that it is a bad thing. I am saying rather that the Web in the "Mac Web" seems to me to contradict this whole process. Intimacy, trust, identification, all require deeper contact than the Web can give, by its nature - - but it's there, I see it. But why? Is there a paradox here or not? Am I just confused?

I think there is a paradox but it's hard to state. The Web provides protection from people. I think this is a good thing - - it discounts disabilities and other social factors and appearances which ground prejudice and ignorance, and discrimination. The causes of discrimination remain in the background and we communicate as people. Trust is encouraged over time, divestiture is produced, and a therapeutic environment is produced. People start sharing their hearts, and I see this as a good thing. It doesn't make sense to me because on the Web we are talking to strangers, on one level, and it's hard to produce the kind of dynamics which produce a therapeutic environment let alone friendship and such. The personal closeness and contact divesting requires cannot be made on the Web. But it does happen. What's going on?

I said in the other article that I think the clue to this paradox is found at the end of Plato's Republic. But that will have to wait. Until then, you'll just have to think about . . .

David Schultz