Personal Responsibility in an Age of Projection and Quick Fixes

Mental health issues are a parallel pandemic as COVID cases, acting as both cause and catalyst to these issues, are rising. It is easy to blame in an era of increasingly less control over health due to the global pandemic, a lessening of personal safety due to political fracturing, technological cybercrime, AI infiltration, and financial insecurity caused by inflation and other economic forces outside ourselves.

But what motivates or causes the development of psychological issues amidst these factors, and whose responsibility is it to fix the effects of the many problems and crises in which we find ourselves? What does personal responsibility mean in an unprecedented era of passing the proverbial buck?

Why Blame Is Easy

Psychological unrest and the emergence of symptoms are often attributed to exogenous forces; something or someone is to blame. To some degree, there is truth in this; ask anyone on the front line treating COVID patients. Life brings trauma, and suffering is unavoidable.

However, perception, response, and responsibility about approaching psychological issues vary. Are there biological factors that contribute to causes of psychological unrest? Yes, severe mood disorders can indeed be inherited. Unfortunately, looking farther and farther afield for all ill that befalls us to diminish personal responsibility seems easier in today's climate.

Firstly, the COVID pandemic has caused and also influenced, triggered, and rationalized many psychological symptoms and problematic behaviors. But the pandemic is only the latest in a long series of blaming something or someones for why we are psychologically ailing. Secondly, quick-fix schemes seduce, which further rationalizes and minimizes serious problems and ultimately fills the coffers of cottage businesses seizing on the opportunity of the downtrodden.

One can pick among many mental health issues, and there is a quick-fix "evidence-based" remedy ready to be administered by a "licensed counselor" of some sort in a few sessions, even via text. A recent article in The Economist reported that "Mental-health-tech firms raised nearly $2bn in equity funding in 2020 ... Their products tackle problems from general stress to serious bipolar disorder." How is it possible to tend to the fluctuations of bipolar disorder, a lifelong syndrome, in a few face-to-face sessions, let alone via text?

There is a dramatic increase in individuals seeking mental health treatment. Stigma has come way down, so more people are coming forward who need help. Concurrently, however, so has the quality of care. In line with the demand for service is a notion that mental health issues can be treated with a bunch of sessions, hopefully, by a physical, though perhaps virtual, live person. The billion-dollar mental health app industry has convinced many that help by an intelligence clinician—that is, an artificial intelligence robot, is effective. As The Economist reported, "Woebot ... is a chatbot which uses artificial intelligence to reproduce the experience of cognitive behavioral therapy. The product is marketed as clinically validated based in part on a scientific study which concluded that humans can form meaningful bonds with bots." How is this possible?

Symptom-based issues like eating disorders, sex/porn addiction, and substance use disorders are pandemic. COVID has certainly exacerbated and triggered the increase in self-defeating behaviors, which often severely impact and sometimes destroy relationships. To blame COVID, TikTok, and the accessibility to porn as causative of symptom-based disorders provides an easy out. Social media culture allows accessibility to sites that promote self-defeating and relationally harming behaviors; human beings create symptoms. Blaming COVID for agoraphobia, overeating, and medical conditions caused by being a couch potato is a stretch.

Social Media and Parental Control

Adults are ultimately self-guided on social media; no external force pushes the mouse or guides the keypad. Porn is ubiquitous in most cultures. Accessing porn is a choice adults make and is currently accounting for a significant increase in erectile dysfunction in men and creating relational chasms and difficulties in sexual intimacy between partners.

Children are at the behest of good parental oversight and boundaries. Yet, many teenagers have unfettered access to the internet. The lead sentence in a recent front-page article in The Wall Street Journal linked the influence of social media, particularly TikTok, to the rise in eating disorders. TikTok's response to changing its algorithm to avoid pushing too much content will hopefully reduce access. "Fewer popup videos will hopefully 'pop up' less on the accounts of millions of young female viewers worldwide," reported WSJ. Eating disorders are complex issues with devastating consequences and have increased during the pandemic. TikTok and the pandemic create a culture where an existing or budding eating disorder can flourish.

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Responsibility for the decisions or absence of decision-making is in the individual or parental hands. Unfortunately, living in a world of perpetual gaslighting, projections, anger, fear, and entitlement has led many people and entities down paths of blame to which end there can be no repair.

However, an old view of problems, not typically favored in an era of superficial understanding and quick fixes, has never lost favor for some clinicians who treat psychological problems which present as symptoms. A return to tried-and-true treatments from the past are making a comeback. Psychodynamic theory and therapy provide insight into motivation and behavior and empower the individual to change. Unconscious processes, profound emotions, ambivalence, and the quest for love make us human and are the cornerstones for understanding what makes us tick through a psychodynamic lens. Complexity makes us exciting, engaging, and ultimately responsible for what motivates us and the choices we make; symptoms are ours for the choosing.

Reframing the understanding from exogenous forces being the cause of psychological unrest to exogenous forces being the catalyst or metaphoric representation is at best necessary; at worst, it demands consideration. Turning the focus inward can offer more lasting solutions. Human beings are clever and crafty; the psyche converts psychological conflicts into symptoms requiring solutions. Many behavioral treatments are available; there is a lot of research to corroborate their efficacy on the one hand and contradictory findings on the other which dispute their claims. Evidence-based treatments rarely examine the cause. The field of psychology has done a disservice in creating tidy solutions to complicated issues. Perhaps the field, in general, has its role in reinforcing the "not my fault" phenomenon.

Symptoms are concrete evidence of a complex unconscious attempt on the part of the patient to resolve an internal psychological conflict. In psychoanalytic theory, the conscious form of a repressed wish or idea has been modified or disguised as in a dream or symptom to be unrecognizable; thus, it is known as a Compromise Formation. "Unable to express himself via conventional means, the patient resorts to a somatic protolanguage as a method of communication ... The treatment of such a condition rests on the careful interpretation of the symptoms as a symbolic form of expression and gently encouraging the patient to communicate more freely and directly (Ruffalo)."

Perhaps it is time to accept that psychological ills, although triggered by exogenous forces, are often caused and maintained by conflict held in an individual. The individual's awareness of what appears to be exogenous can guide one's inner awareness and establish responsibility for fixing the problem. Symptoms ultimately are a manifestation of what's in our heads.

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