Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT 7-11 March 2011 (1876-80)

<< < (45/75) > >>

TheEvilDog:

--- Quote from: DJRubberducky on 10 Mar 2011, 08:22 ---Sorry for going all the way back to yesterday's strip with this comment, but:

I'm really surprised nobody else has made explicit mention that Dora just might be freaking out about the therapist wanting to spend the whole nominal-hour talking about her brother, when one of her major insecurity issues is that she felt everyone cared about her brother more than they did about her.

Yes, in this case there will probably be some helpful advice coming out of such talking, but that doesn't change the fact that her therapist very neatly pushed one of Dora's buttons right there in the first session.

--- End quote ---

But therapy is never just about the person in the room with the therapist, it's about their interactions with other people. The fact that Dora spent 45 minutes talking about Sven alone spoke volumes to the therapist. Its one thing to say you have problems and issues, but that doesn't really help solve them. Which is why therapists often ask about family, friends, relationships, to know what can push someone, to help their patients figure out how to stop those specific buttons being pushed.

I mean, come on, one of the first sessions and Dora spends 45 minutes talking about her brother, her (supposedly) successful older brother, song writing career, has his own two storey apartment (I can't imagine those would be too common, or available to someone with an average wage), doesn't have to work and has essentially coasted through life with little effort. And yet Dora has struggled to maintain her own buisness, was average in the extreme in school, has developed a very serious case of sibling jealousy and has resorted to living with said brother. Whether she knows it or not, Dora has modelled her life on what she has seen Sven do with his, and has failed to notice that Sven is utterly miserable, a man who has failed to have one, proper, meaningful romantic relationship.

A person isn't just one person, defined by their own actions, but their interactions with the people around them. A good therapist will never just talk to a patient about themselves (the patient).

Is it cold in here?:
All points well taken, but the original point still stands. Dora may resent the room her brother takes up in her mind, and specifically may resent that she spent a whole therapy session talking about him, even though or especially because it was her call to do it.

DSL:
I think we forumites all see the point that Dora (or anyone) is the sum total of a bunch of things, including interactions with others, and therefore that is a legitimate thing to talk about in therapy. The larger point, and for the purposes of the comic the punchline, is that Dora doesn't get it: "When is it going to be about me?"

westrim:
What is this, XKCD?

--- Quote from: Eddurd on 10 Mar 2011, 03:38 ---Maybe this falls under "Don't Explain The Joke", but for the non-math-inclined ...

Why is Marigold's self-loathing the square root of two?
Because it's irrational.

Dora's flaws would be sqrt(-1), since most of them are imaginary.

--- End quote ---
I guess it is.


--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 10 Mar 2011, 00:55 ---
--- Quote from: westrim on 09 Mar 2011, 13:59 ---All I saw:
--- Quote --- thigh spread wider
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
I first wrote "attention was drawn to the difference between Dora's legs", but at the last moment I realized, which 3 words would mind-in-the-gutter language police copy/paste out of that sentence?

--- End quote ---
Yeah, I kind of had to stretch to make my pun. Thighs wasn't plural, for instance. Still, it was inevitable that someone would make the allusion, so I decided to go ahead and do it.


--- Quote from: DSL on 10 Mar 2011, 08:05 ---Well, hell, Sven, how hard would it have been to say "Hi, Marigold"? I'd Gibbs-slap ya if it wouldn't bust my computer, you bein' a cartoon character and all.

--- End quote ---
He might've, but Hannelore beat him to the 'ello, and with a follow up question no less. Notice how he wavers a bit before skipping the pleasantries and just answering her question.


In regards to Dora, part of her neurosis is that under her veneer of socialism (not that one) is a fairly self centered person. Thus, though she may have recognized that she needs to talk about her brother in abstract, she wanted to talk about herself first and foremost with someone she finally didn't have to care about judging her, and later bring her issues with Sven or anyone else in as a secondary issue. Underlying her entire world view is the question "but what about me?", and she thought the therapy would answer that question- when what she needs to do is change the question, if that makes sense.

Also, writing it that way was funny.

Is it cold in here?:
Isn't there some school of philosophy which holds that we only exist as the sum of our relationships with other people and things?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page