Incentive for Psychoses in a Therapeutic Culture

Even on the Internet, it can take considerable time for interesting stories to work their way around the globe.  Such is the case with this 2007 cautionary tale about the plausible excesses for a culture that removes individual responsibility from every undesirable behavior:

Roger Tullgren, 42, from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has just started working part time as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.

Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren’s salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.

“I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap,” Tullgren told The Local.

“I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against.”

Those who object to the advance of tasteless and decadent material into the popular culture are often lectured about the ease with which they can simply turn it off.  As Rhode Islanders have just seen with the controversy over the Cranston prayer banner, and as the nation has seen with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate for contraceptives, similarly advancing forces are keen to restrict religious principles to the home and the (narrowly defined) chapel.  When it comes to material that the police of public standards like (suspiciously consistent in the degree to which it fosters self-destructive, infantilizing behavior in its votaries), however, it can attract not only staunch defense, but subsidization.