a question for everyone on the network [video]

[birdhousesoul]

Apparently there's something called psychology. And applying it is tricky, because of cultural differences, and such. Yes?

If there's one thing we have in abundance, it's cultural difference. So it might not be so simple to offer psychological help at our clinic.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

But an incompetent healer can cause damage, or exacerbate it, and that's the last thing I want.

So. [The preamble having been finished, he leans back in his chair.] Exsilium network. Tell me what psychology entails in your world. The idea of it, and also the practice of it. If your world has that, or something like it, I mean, and doesn't just chalk it all up to demons.

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[birdhousesoul]

[The mun welcomes handwavey paraphrasing in brackets, if it makes life easier. Anders wants to know everything, and finds he learns more from people than from books.]

It's rather a tangled nest of questions, not so much a single question, I suppose. Sorry.

I'm prepared to hear out answers of any length. I really am interested to know more about this sort of treatment.

[myownbestfriend]

[Emma sighs and leans back in her chair, thinking about how to explain to someone from what sounds like a medieval world.]

An insect hatches from its egg knowing everything it needs to about how to be an insect. A cat is born knowing less, but even if you take a kitten away from its mother too young, it will still be able to hunt when it's grown.

People are born knowing almost nothing. We spend two decades learning what we need to be people, and because of that, the mind is extremely adaptable. It will twist to fit its environment, like a tree that's met with an obstacle, or that grows in a place with constant wind.

This isn't always a good thing. Someone who grows up in a war zone, or extreme poverty, or any other situation where things are uncertain or dangerous will be like those trees--the mind has done what it needs to survive, but once it's removed from that constant threat, the twists and gnarls no longer serve a purpose, and can in fact be dangerous themselves. Something similar can happen with great, immediate mental trauma, like witnessing a murder.

The purpose of psychology, and here's where the analogy starts to fail, is to unbend the mind. You can't do that with a tree trunk, but we stay more flexible. A psychologist is trained to recognize common patterns of thought and to ask the kind of questions that get to the heart of someone's troubles, and then to help the patient learn a new way of thinking. It's a slow process, and depends on a great deal of trust between the patient and the therapist.

[Then there's telepathy, but we're not talking about that.]

[birdhousesoul]

[By Thedosian standards, Anders is extremely well-educated; a Circle education is better than even most nobles can boast, since, well, there isn't much else to do in the Circle of Magi.

The success of Emma's explanation has less to do with Anders' acuity than with the way she's chosen her words, however. Emma's gone very light on the jargon, and used some metaphors that make intuitive sense -- lots of nature imagery, good! Anders isn't a huge fan of the outdoors but he does understand how things grow -- and the description of psychological trauma fits what he's observed in the Blight refugees he's treated over the years.

So rather than a baffled Andersface, a concerned and thoughtful Andersface can be seen. It's hard to imagine how he'll go about implementing all this, but he understands at least the gist of what it is.]

We need that.

The conscript community needs that. These bastards have been mucking about in our heads, mining our dreams and memories. They've drugged some of us to make us love them or heighten our fear of their enemies. They haven't a clue what they're doing and they don't care what they break, or who.

Some of us may need help putting ourselves back together.

[myownbestfriend]

And how were you planning on convincing people to trust a near stranger with their minds? Where I'm from there are professional...guilds, I suppose you could call them, for therapists, that have the power to certify and discipline their members. There's no such accountability here.

[Not that Emma cares at all about accountability, but this is a public transmission, and it's better to hide her general opportunistic amorality when people are watching.]