Can a therapist can know more about your behaviour than you do?

Today’s TOK class resulted in a debate on many issues which were to be either accepted by us or rejected by us (obviously with a proper justification for our decision). The issue / sentence most debated upon was “A therapist can know more about your behaviour than you do.” Majority of the class thought this sentence to be false except for Krish Raveshia. Although I respect the fact that everybody has their own opinions, I was completely against him in this case. I refuse to believe that ANYBODY, not only a therapist can know more about my behaviour than I do. It is impossible to say the least. It is almost like saying that a doctor knows how death feels more than the dead man.

Let me take a simple example to illustrate this. In a football game, a player is tackled very hard by an opponent and is fouled at the same time but the referee says play on. It is only by seeing the player limp that the referee knows he is injured. Yes, a therapist will know about your behaviour but he cannot feel in the same way. Part of the behaviour is the stimulus but a greater part is the individual response. Behaviour comes from within and can be based on past experiences. Let’s take for example fear- it is a behaviour wherein one tries to stay away from whatever he / she is afraid of. Would a therapist have all the same experiences as you have had to know exactly how you feel and behave in certain cases? I think not. Everybody is different in terms of behaviour. The therapist has studied human behaviour patterns in general and maybe more aware on the subject as he has observed the behaviour of many people but how much can he/she possibly come to know within that limited time.

It is basic human nature for the behaviour to change when being isolated and being observed. The conscious mind makes the person act in a different way which might be more acceptable to the observer. This change maybe little but it completely falsifies the statement in question. It can be hence concluded as Mrs. Balan said- “The therapist is just a catalyst” for you to realize your own behaviour and change it if necessary.

Another issue discussed in class was the relation between evidence, belief and what is true. In my opinion, one may believe in something, even if it does not have any proof. The main reason for this is because people believe only what they want to. Beliefs come from ideas and ideas come from within. The most common example for this is religion and to be more specific- GOD. GOD has been the belief of over 99.9% of the world’s population since the beginning of mankind. Till now there has been no real evidence of a GOD. It is more like a rumour. Rumours can flair up from anywhere viz. recently, there was a scandal about a man walking into a cave and seeing Lord Hanuman. At this sight he was blinded and it has been said that all others who have ventured there have been blinded too. Is there really evidence of this existence?

Astrophysics deals with many theories put forward but there is still not sufficient evidence for most of these. It was only recently that the existence of black-holes and dark matter was confirmed due to X-ray radiations. Science is hence another great example of this. People believed that the world was flat and this was knowledge to them until Columbus sailed west to and reached America and soon discovered that the world is indeed a sphere as it is confirmed today. It is hence concluded that evidence is needed to validate a belief but a belief is independent of anything else. GOD may or may not be true.

A sentence which we did not really discuss in class, but caught my eye was that if something is true, then we know it. This can be interpreted in 2 ways. It can mean that a person knows everything that’s true in this world or it can mean that all that’s true is knowledge. The latter is true but the first is not. It is humanly impossible for somebody to know everything factual in this world. It is however true that anything factual is knowledge if one is aware of it.

Thus, this TOK class was a very interesting one as different people expressed their individual opinions and although they may or may not be right, it is their belief and hence can be regarded as knowledge.