Self-centered psychology

I know a few people who have chosen psychology as their career and education path- whenever I discover this for the first time, several questions come to mind. Psychosis, whatever that may be, represents a deeply personal and unique state of mind, and the treatment of it, from my perspective, requires an equally personal commitment. My personal experience I think parallels the experience of a few other people. The idea that my person, perspective and way of knowing the world would require treatment struck an unfavorable nerve. Admitting this to yourself becomes a precondition to ‘treatment,’ and it comes also with the admission that whatever standards of happiness you have come to know don’t suit those around you, or the ends to which they would like to see you employed. Ultimately, this is the issue of psychology: the presumption that other people know the proper use for a body, and that body can be accurately judged as deviant for ‘rehabilitation.’ And so, the questions:

Have you ever been diagnosed as having mental illness? If no, what makes you so confident as to believe you can understand someone else’s experience to ‘help’ them? Depression in particular is an important case. Despair, absolute reckless abandon, can’t be described or recognized except by those who already know it. Thinking that you can speak to what really matters to a person without feeling their situation is damned foolish and arrogant.

Who are you doing this for? The viewing and treatment of suffering bodies serves as much to help the one ‘treating’ as it does the one treated. It offers redemption and casts the psychologist in a role of savior or moral authority. Self centered actions cannot calm the nerves of psychosis.