Articles

Enjoyment in Misfortune II

This is also a comfort zone – better the crutch and wheelchair and help you know, than the stress of being independent and on your own two legs.

It is difficult to overcome such attitudes. Firstly because the patient doesn’t want to recover. You will only seek treatment if you admit there’s a problem, and they are perfectly satisfied with the status quo. No problem there! Also such people are very good at justifying their actions to themselves and are encouraged in this by their “helpers”.

Just as you cannot reason with someone who refuses to see reason, so you cannot treat someone who doesn’t want to be treated. Even someone like the redoubtable Barbara Woodhouse of dog-training fame suffered a stroke and subsequently refused possibly painful physiotherapy which might have rehabilitated her.

She applied the power of her considerable personality to making sure that the right to refuse treatment became enshrined as a principle in Britain. One suspects that there was secondary gain involved for her.

In fact it may fairly be said that there needs to be some change which impacts on the individual’s motivation, some circumstance which necessitates change. If something like this does occur, then recovery can be startlingly rapid. There have been cases of wheel chair bound people standing up and rescuing infants from danger, or fleeing from a fire. But the countervailing motivation needs to be very strong, and the effect may be only temporary

Similar to this in effect is the Ricksha – “if only they had rickshas, this would never have happened.” It is regarded as the obverse of the Wooden Leg, but both have the purpose of placing blame elsewhere and avoiding any responsibility to improve.