When the Associated Press posted an article on April 16 about Tricia Walsh-Smith and her public tirade on YouTube, the world had the chance to see the angry side of a crumbling marriage straight from their PCs. In a tearful and furious YouTube video, actress and playwright Tricia (”Bonkers”) Walsh-Smith publicly lashed out against her husband, Broadway theatre executive Philip Smith, in a steady spate of negative and personal details about their failed sex life and marital woes. With the growing use of Internet sites such as YouTube, MySpace, and personal blogs, (it is estimated that one in every ten Americans have Internet blogs), many scorned spouses are using the Web to tell their side of the marital saga in a compulsive stream of rageful and embarrassing posts.
In her New York Times article on April 18, “When The Ex Writes a Blog, The Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired,” Leslie Kaufman states that, for the blogger, writing can be therapeutic. And she suggests that, for the reader, blogging can be infectious. Kaufman writes that bloggers who share their personal gripes about marital indiscretions sometimes have between 10,000 and 55,000 regular readers; and the percentage of users with personal blogs has quadrupled in five years.
All of this poses the question: Has the Internet facilitated a new type of confession where ill-advised or uncontrolled statements and emotions can be aired, if not supported and even validated?
In the professional world of psychotherapy, private emotions are explored and expressed in a “controlled environment” where the listener is a trained and willing participant in the patient’s journey of self discovery. Whether it be through behavioral techniques, interpersonal feedback or psychodynamic questioning, the therapist hears the patient’s confessions and offers appropriate dialogue to promote healthy decisions and optimal functioning. But when the listener is an audience of 55,000 anonymous eaves droppers (many with their own personal gripes and emotional wounds), cyber-rage may lead to ineffectual choices and misguided validation.
And what becomes of the children who read about, or listen to, their parents’ personal traumas on line? The public maligning of marriage, most often one sided, is not a healthy way to co-parent children who are already enduring their parents’ relationship struggles. (And children who harbor guilt or personal responsibility for their parent’s fights are particularly at risk.) In this new public arena, boundaries become blurred and unfair allegiances are borne out of a need for a parent’s emotional validation in “the heat of the moment.” And once written, or spoken, they can not be taken back. Instead, cyber-confessions can be book-marked, printed, and saved for personal posterity: perhaps to be used as fodder for the next generation of psychotherapy patients.
In her New York Times article on April 18, “When The Ex Writes a Blog, The Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired,” Leslie Kaufman states that, for the blogger, writing can be therapeutic. And she suggests that, for the reader, blogging can be infectious. Kaufman writes that bloggers who share their personal gripes about marital indiscretions sometimes have between 10,000 and 55,000 regular readers; and the percentage of users with personal blogs has quadrupled in five years.
All of this poses the question: Has the Internet facilitated a new type of confession where ill-advised or uncontrolled statements and emotions can be aired, if not supported and even validated?
In the professional world of psychotherapy, private emotions are explored and expressed in a “controlled environment” where the listener is a trained and willing participant in the patient’s journey of self discovery. Whether it be through behavioral techniques, interpersonal feedback or psychodynamic questioning, the therapist hears the patient’s confessions and offers appropriate dialogue to promote healthy decisions and optimal functioning. But when the listener is an audience of 55,000 anonymous eaves droppers (many with their own personal gripes and emotional wounds), cyber-rage may lead to ineffectual choices and misguided validation.
And what becomes of the children who read about, or listen to, their parents’ personal traumas on line? The public maligning of marriage, most often one sided, is not a healthy way to co-parent children who are already enduring their parents’ relationship struggles. (And children who harbor guilt or personal responsibility for their parent’s fights are particularly at risk.) In this new public arena, boundaries become blurred and unfair allegiances are borne out of a need for a parent’s emotional validation in “the heat of the moment.” And once written, or spoken, they can not be taken back. Instead, cyber-confessions can be book-marked, printed, and saved for personal posterity: perhaps to be used as fodder for the next generation of psychotherapy patients.
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