The social-adjustment therapists are always trying to tell us that what is real isn’t real. They keep on repeating it. They never seem to get tired or angry or impatient –they just keep on repeating the same old story, the same old lines, over and over again. They keep on repeating it until eventually we come to believe what they’re telling us.
It’s the oldest trick in the book. It’s the oldest trick in the book for a reason – because it works. After a while, when you see yourself going against what they’re saying, when you notice yourself rebelling secretly in your mind, you feel bad about it. You feel guilty, you feel that you are letting everyone down. It’s something to be ashamed of – they call it ‘therapy resistance’. You can bring it up in your individual sessions and your allocated therapist will nod understandingly. They are good at that. They have been thoroughly trained…
Of course it doesn’t always go the therapists’ way. Sometimes a group of us would hook up and we’d resist therapy together, on the quiet. We’d tell each other that the therapists were conniving little shits. We’d stay strong, we’d hold out against the pressure. But eventually they would work out what was happening and we’d be split up and put in different groups. They’d work harder on us in the individual sessions and that would be very difficult to resist. They are very plausible, these adjustment therapists. Very plausible and very persuasive – they have the whole system on their side, after all.
When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time on the internet. Back before it got regulated. There were sites were you could hear the unofficial version of what was going on in the world. There were people who showed great dedication to uncovering the truth and working things out for themselves. Free thinkers, I guess you could call them. People who weren’t content to believe what they were told. A dangerous breed. It seems to me – thinking back to it now – that people used to have a bit more of a spark to them back in those days. It seems to me that people weren’t so stupid, weren’t as aggressively superficial as they are now. I know how that sounds. It sounds like I am saying that everything was better back in the old days. That’s what I am saying, of course, but try saying that in your therapy group! You’ll get a lot of good-natured chuckles and condescending smiles. ‘Sure it was, pops’ they’ll say, ‘you just keep on believing that…’
I wish I’d been born a hundred years earlier. Back in the second half of the twentieth century, when people could still think for themselves. Or back when some of them could, anyway. A few here and there. Back before social-adjustment therapy became compulsory. Before the rise of the New Right and the reintroduction of the discredited ‘science’ of psychiatry. According to the ideology of State Psychiatry mental illness is caused by what they call the ‘non-adapted self’. The cure is therefore to expunge this non-adapted self. To iron it out thoroughly so that no trace remains. Hence the compulsory therapy groups.
The theory is pure nonsense of course – anyone with even the slightest bit of sense can see this. Probably even the therapists themselves can see this. It’s all just a transparent pretext for maximizing political control. The scary thing is though that after a few rounds of social-adjustment therapy you just can’t help believing it – it all starts making sense and that part of you that knows the truth gets disowned and rejected. You end up betraying yourself under the relentless pressure of the sessions. These guys are frighteningly good at their job, as I keep saying…
