Value in Therapy: Part 3, Is Therapy a Trojan Horse?

Using James Mumford's New Atlantis essay "Therapy Beyond Good and Evil" in the last post I raised the question about if human flourishing can be found in a value-neutral, value-absent, or value-skeptical context. If mattering, for example, is integral to mental health, along with the mattering of other people, then human flourishing is necessarily embedded within a context of value, which necessarily creates moral concerns. Health, therefore, is pursued and achieved in relation to a transcendental goodness. Consequently, insofar as therapy implicitly or explicitly denies the reality of transcendental values, and our need to attune with them, it becomes a poor steward of our mental health.

Not that therapy is in any way harmful or ineffective. A value-neutral, value-absent, or value-skeptical therapy can provide a variety of opportunities for self-exploration and the acquisition of self-regulation skills and techniques. It's good, for example, to learn how to practice mindfulness. Or to gain insight into your emotional triggers. And it's always helpful to experience acceptance and support when we go through difficult seasons of life. But a value-neutral, value-absent, or value-skeptical therapy will be existentially limited. A value-neutral, value-absent, or value-skeptical therapist, for example, won't ever tell you that you ought or should do something, even when you really ought and should do something. Therapy is non-judgmental and supportive, and doesn't traffic in the moral demands of goodness. 

But I want to raise a question here. Is therapy as neutral as it claims to be? Might therapy be smuggling in values that it fails to appreciate and recognize? Might therapy be a Trojan Horse, presenting itself as non-judgmental when, in fact, it is secretly inculcating values without its clients being aware? Might therapy be, in fact, a form of moral education and formation? 

To start in upon an investigation into this question, I want to share a bit about theological criticisms that have been raised about the modern secular state, especially in regards to liberalism and neoliberalism. 

The modern liberal state purports to be neutral in relation to values. That is to say, the modern liberal state doesn't tell you how you should or ought to live your life. The liberal state creates a "secular" space where its citizens can pursue happiness in accordance to their own beliefs, moral code, and religious convictions. To be sure, the state does police some moral boundaries. Some drugs are banned. Abortion laws are passed. But the regulating ethos of the liberal state is that, so long as you don't bother or hurt your neighbors, you can live however you want. If you want to be a priest, you can do that. If you want to be a pornographer, you can do that. If you want to to be a Christin, you can do that. If you want to be a satanist, you can do that. So long as you don't violate the rights of other people, you can pursue your own values. That is what I mean when I say that the liberal state is "neutral" in relation to values.

But is the liberal state really neutral when it comes to values?

Theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Milbank have argued that the liberal state actually espouses metaphysical convictions and values. It's just that the liberal state has hidden these values. Or, perhaps more accurately, these values have become so common and assumed that we no longer recognize them as values. Liberalism is just the air we breathe.

It's like that famous story of the two young fish swimming along. They pass an older fish, who greets them, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” After the older fish swims away, the two young fish look at each other and say, “What the hell is water?” That’s liberalism. We’re swimming in values we cannot see.

So what are these hidden values? Here are two:

• Freedom, independence, and autonomy are the highest good.

• We ought to pursue self-interest.

To be sure, you might not subscribe to these values. At least not overtly. But these are the values of our culture, the moral waters we swim in. And even if you think you’ve rejected these values, you've likely been shaped by them.

For example, how many of us live in the city where we were born? Not many, I’m guessing. I don’t. I’m at the age where many of my friends and colleagues are dealing with aging parents, and one of the biggest challenges is that these parents live in another city or state far away. Why this distance? Why have so many of us moved so far from home?

Answer: the moral culture of liberalism. It’s simply taken as a given that we should move away from home to pursue career opportunities and personal success. In privileging autonomy over familial bonds, and self-interest over familial obligation, we’ve become a mobile labor market. It feels “natural” for us to relocate in pursuit of an individualistic vision of success. And the fact that this new moral code perfectly suits capitalist interests is precisely the point.

My point is this: even if you reject the moral code of liberalism on paper, you’re still a liberal. We value freedom and the pursuit of self-interest. Whenever we face choices, we instinctively ask, “What do I want? What’s best for me?” And we would chafe if anyone took away our freedom or independence to ask and answer those questions.

But here’s the crucial point: These are value judgments! These are moral deliberations!

In short, the liberal state is a Trojan Horse. Liberalism is a moral worldview. It promotes certain values over others, generally those that serve corporate and capitalistic interests. Like the dissolution of family bonds to create a mobile labor market.

Which brings us back to the issue of therapy. Like the liberal state, therapy claims to be value-neutral. But is that true? Might therapy, like the liberal state, be a Trojan Horse? Could therapy actually be a servant of liberal moral order? For example, therapy often takes for granted--like those fish failing to see the water--that autonomy, freedom, and self-fulfillment are the goals. It rarely stops to ask whether those goals are good. Instead of calling our desires into question in relation to a transcendent good, therapy often just helps us chase our desires more effectively. In this way, therapy can end up reinforcing the moral logic of liberalism, where self-interest is paramount and the good life is defined by maximizing personal well-being. Worse, by keeping our focus on personal fulfillment, therapy might actually be cutting us off from deeper conversations about the true, the beautiful, and the good. If that’s the case, then therapy might not be helping us. It might be making things worse.

To be clear, not worse in terms of coping with the current liberal order. Therapy is effective at getting us back to a functional equilibrium. But therapy, so shy about conversations involving value, is unable to raise questions interrogating the health or goodness of that equilibrium. We are simply learning how to cope with a sick status quo, being made functional and rendered useful to a deeply broken world. In this view, therapy provides palliative care for the sicknesses created by neoliberalism. 

Could therapy do more than provide palliative care? It could. But to do so, it would have to begin trafficking in values, becoming willing to raise questions about what is truly good. Most importantly, it would have to interrogate its own implicit moral assumptions and face the truth that it is not non-judgmental or value-free but is, in fact, a form of moral education and formation.