AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Pathological altruism12/25/2023 ![]() ![]() Eric Berne's brilliant Games People Play has a description of a game called 'I'm only trying to help'. Many years ago Shelle Rose Charvet coined her own term for people who are overly keen to help, she called it 'healitis'. Natalie Angier reports how Dr Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain and A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind, saw an oncology colleague's "zeal to heal could border of fanaticism, and how his determination to help his patients at all costs could perversely end up hurting them." Burton says “If you’re supremely confident of your skills, and if you’re certain that what you’re doing is for the good of your patients, it can be very difficult to know on your own when you’re veering into dangerous territory.” A new book called, unsurprisingly, Pathological Altruism is according to Angier "the first comprehensive treatment of the idea that when ostensibly generous 'how can I help you?' behavior is taken to extremes, misapplied or stridently rhapsodized, it can become unhelpful, unproductive and even destructive." Interestingly, Barbara Oakley, editor of the book said that when she first started talking about pathological altruism at conferences “people looked at me as though I’d just grown goat horns." Oakley suggests this “epitomized the idea ‘I know how to do the right thing, and when I decide to do the right thing it can never be called pathological'.” The article is a timely contribution to the debate I have been having with Steve Andreas, Nick Kemp and others about how facilitators know when what they are doing is not working (see Calibrating whether what you are doing is working). ![]() A recent New York Times article* reviewed a subject that is beginning to gain credibility in the psychological sciences, pathological altruism.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |