Posted by Ryan on September 5, 2005, 10:04 pm, in reply to "Part 4: Court-ordered treatment" “Hah! That crap’s no good!” my therapist chided when I told him about it. “What you need is real therapy—from me.” “All I said was I was starting in their program....” “Well, they’re just a bunch of dick-head amateurs who don’t know the first thing about psychology.” I shouldn’t have said anything about it to him. I had thought that if his goal was to cure the condition, he would be glad when some other program was supplementing his treatment. Apparently he wasn’t. So he trudged through the session, bored and worn-down looking. Finally he yawned and looked at his watch. “Well, that’s all for today.” It had only been 45 minutes. “But it’s supposed to be an hour.” “Well sorry, but that’s just all there is for today’s session.” There was no arguing with him. He had the ability to send me to jail. If ever I came five minutes late, he would cancel the session, but would still require me to pay for it. And there was no canceling of sessions from my end, not even if it was done more than 24 hours in advance; if ever I didn’t come, I still paid, period. Later I learned that he had spoken to the judge and the probation officer in charge of my case before it had gone to trial, and had told them I was a danger and a threat to society, and that I was desperately in need of his treatment, and the judge had just taken him at his word for it, in deciding what to do with me. After all, putting yourself in the judge’s position, whom is a judge supposed to believe? A court-appointed psychologist or the defendant who is in the process of getting the label “sex offender” pinned on him? I can’t really blame the judge. Strange though, that the therapist had come to his conclusion about what I was even before he knew all the facts surrounding my case. It made me wonder, what about other, similar cases? What about cases where young people from the rowdy crowd just decide sometime to go skinny-dipping somewhere, and although among their circle of friends their standards of bodily decorum are looser than what society has traditionally deemed appropriate, in their minds it isn’t exhibitionism, it’s just wanting to go swimming but not having their swimsuits with them, and not caring if they’re in mixed company? So then, what if it were a case like that? I tell you, those circles of people do exist. So, what if they were out skinny-dipping somewhere and some old hag came along and called the cops on them? What if some unfortunate guy among them got nabbed and taken in, then was sent to the shrink for his psychiatric evaluation, and when he tried to deny that it was a compulsion towards exhibitionism, the court-appointed shrink responded with, “No, you’re in the stage of denial—and I’m going to advise the judge not to let you go until you admit this problem you have and take a few years of my expensive therapy sessions twice every week, blah, blah, blah...”? But what if the guy didn’t have the problem? He didn’t give me much of a choice about denying it—would he refuse to give others that choice as well, even if it weren’t the case with them? And then after getting involved with Sexaholics Anonymous, he starts giving me the business about them being, quote, “a bunch of dick-head amateurs.” Could that be because it’s a group that the courts are starting to recognize sometimes has some results, and it’s free, and maybe someday it just might even offer some competition against him and his business? Imagine running a business where you had the power to threaten all your customers with jail if they didn’t buy your product or patronize your service, and your country’s judicial system backed you up with it. What happens to human nature, over time, in the case of the individual who is given that kind of absolute power over a whole class of consumers beneath him? I’ll tell you what happens in some Third World countries, since I’ve spent some time living there, and have learned a little about how things are done there. In each industry, there is one wealthy family that owns one business putting out one kind of product, and that family maintains a monopoly on the entire industry in the country. Though there are brands imported from the developed countries, usually the same family that produces the local product also has a monopoly on all rights to import all the foreign brands as well, and still makes all the profits on them. All the families get together on their estates and shake hands and make gentlemen’s agreements amongst themselves that they won’t go meddling in each other’s industries by starting companies that come up with products in competition against each other’s. Then they kick back and enjoy their wealthy lifestyles, having the reassurance that no competing company will ever be able to arise against them—and if any of the people beneath them on the economic ladder ever try it, they start exercising their muscle against them: with their wealth, they control the government and all the laws that get made regulating commerce and industry, which they can manipulate in any way they wish, to make things impossible for any burgeoning company that ever tries to rise up in competition against them. Was it some poor people who somehow managed to gather together enough dough to start some business, or who discovered some new innovation from which some substantial amount of income could be made? Then yank it away from them and send them back to being poor people again! No reason for the poor classes to rise up above their poverty and start threatening the wealthy families’ security by starting businesses in competition against theirs. “How dare you set foot in our turf?” is the attitude they have. “You’re poor people, and your lot in life is to stay poor!” The kind of situation where the words “land of opportunity” aren’t heard of. You see, the reason Third World countries never progress above their poverty isn’t that they don’t have the ability to. It’s because the wealthy families who run them don’t want them to, and continuously use their muscle to stop it from happening, no matter what any benevolent organizations from the developed countries ever try to do to help the poor people there. I’m not any right-wing fascist, not with all the left-wing beliefs I hold, but I just can’t agree with any economic theory that involves having one monopoly—whether private, as in Third World countries, or government-run, as it was in the communist countries—controlling entire industries and having the ability to set the prices however they want. What has always ended up happening? Whether in right-wing Third World countries or left-wing communist countries, it has always been the same: prices were always up—in ratio to the standard of living—and quality was always down. Why should those who ran the companies go to the extra trouble of bringing the quality up when they didn’t have to? Did you think prices were cheap in the communist countries, and continue to be so in Third World countries? Well, they would be much cheaper, if things weren’t manipulated the way they are, in said countries. (On the other hand, if functioning free markets were allowed to come into existence there, prices would come up, but it would be good, because their standard of living would eventually come up too, at a faster rate than the prices.) In the United States, the theory is that these manipulated situations are not supposed to be able to exist. That’s the meaning of the words “free-market economy”: monopolies and trusts are forbidden by law, and the multi-company competition that exists in every industry forces each company to stay on their toes, constantly being forced to spend money they would rather pocket themselves, to keep finding ways to make their product better, while at the same time keeping the retail price down as low as possible—and if they don’t, they get squashed by their competition and run out of business. Not so fun for the rich people who own the companies, but the result is the highest standard of living possible for the greatest percentage of the population—and a world population of impoverished people who all want to immigrate to your country, in waves of billions, if they could. Situations that thwart this idea—so that someone who puts out some product or service can slack off and start getting lazy, keep raising the price while delivering a poor product—maybe even a product that keeps getting poorer and poorer—yet have no fear of losing the customers because, for one reason or another, they’re being forced to pay for his product or service—are not supposed to be able to exist in the Land of Opportunity. But sometimes, in some circumstances, they do. I was so naive back then. I didn’t even realize that if one therapist was abusive with you like that, you had the prerogative of changing to another, just as long as the judge could see that you were getting some court-approved treatment somewhere. (Of course, you’d have to get the new therapist to vouch for you that you were cooperating with his treatment, and you had to be discreet about what you said to the therapist you were dumping, because if you didn’t, he’d go to the judge and say, “He’s not responding to my treatment—send him to jail,” when what he really means is, “He’s not buying my product—send him to jail!”) So with him constantly reminding me of all the dangers and horrors of jail—in case I ever decided to do the time instead—and wielding absolute power over my life, I just took all kinds of crock from him, some of which, I now realize, might have been possible to avoid.
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Message modified by board administrator September 6, 2005, 9:51 am
(Originally posted on 11/7/2003, 6:49 pm)
Sometime after that, I heard about Sexaholics Anonymous and decided I needed to get involved in it and begin its program. 
