What's wrong with you? Don't worry about it. It probably doesn't matter.

My wife and I recently watched The Soloist, which is based on the true story of LA Times reporter, Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man and musical prodigy who studied music at the Julliard School.

The story is powerful and I strongly recommend it. You can also read Lopez's articles or the book that inspired the movie.  

At one point, Lopez is talking with the director of a homeless shelter about how to help Ayers. Lopez suggests that Ayers should undergo a psychiatric evaluation to discover what is wrong with him.

Director: "I don't get too hung up on diagnosis."

Lopez: "But how do you help somebody if you don't know what they have?"

Director: "Look at these people. Every one of them's been diagnosed more times than you can imagine and, as far as I can tell, it hasn't done them any good."

I agree. I think we are too hung up on diagnosing our own problems and the problems of others. Diagnosis usually doesn't do much good and it actually causes harm by making people believe that they are inadequate, flawed or damaged.

Think about it. A century of traditional psychology hasn't done much to improve our mental health, happiness or fulfillment, but it has done a lot to brand people as broken and in need of repair. I think it is time for a new approach that focuses more on what is right with us and less on what is wrong with us.

Lopez comes to a similar realization at the end of the movie. At some point, he stops trying to fix Ayers and begins treating him like a friend. He stops trying to find what is wrong with him and begins to accept him as a fellow human being. I think this is a good model for the rest of us to follow with our spouses, kids, friends, co-workers and employees.

Comments

[CathyD]

"A century of traditional psychology hasn't done much to improve our mental health, happiness or fulfillment, but it has done a lot to brand people as broken and in need of repair. "

Ain't it the damn truth! I just LOVE that! And this belief of "broken" and needing repair just leads to the glorification of victimhood we see so much of nowadays.

[Fiona Leonard]

Your comments have application beyond psychology. I've worked a lot with gifted children and am beginning to wonder whether we do them any favours my labeling them. It's supposed to be in the best interest of getting tailored educational support and understanding their needs, but shouldn't that apply to all children?

As soon as you pop people in box, they have to fit the exact criteria of what it says on the label.

[Rox]

Thank you for this post. Positive Psychology is a growing niche of psychology that focuses on what is going right instead of wrong.

If you want to learn more about Positive Psychology, just google Martin Seligman or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheek-sent-me-high).

Here is my favorite TED video about Flow and Positive Psychology: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

There are also online courses by UPenn. One just started but they may let you squeak in right now: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/online/non_credit/fpp