Come sit on the Sociologist's Couch
Why is it that psychologists have choices with their discipline: they can go the academic route if they want, or they can become a shrink and “treat” people one-on-one. I want to invent the sociological equivalent of a shrink.
How could this work, you say? Very simple. The problem with psychologists and psychiatrists is that you go to them and they tell you what’s wrong with you. Who the hell wants to hear that?
A sociologist, on the other hand, is trained to trace all of your individual problems back to larger social issues. It’s not because you’re lazy that you can’t get a job, it’s because the capitalist system requires a reserve army of the unemployed. It’s not because you have some sort of mental condition that you have anxiety and depression, it’s because of the contradictions of (post)modernity that give us more comfort, choices and security but at the same time gives us great unease that all of these things are more out of our control than they’ve ever been.
You see, a shrink would blame you for all of these problems, but a sociologists blames everyone else. Now if you had to pay for some advice on the source of your problems, which answer would be more comforting?
I could make a lot of money off of this idea. In fact, I’m surprised someone hasn’t already. I would argue that the fact that the sociologist’s couch hasn’t supplanted the psychiatrist’s couch yet is proof that the whole “blame society” phenomenon that conservative critics like to rail against hasn’t actually taken hold…yet!