Counter-Therapeutic Dogs

Readers who have read my blog, “Happiness is Doglessness,” may have come away with the misperception that I dislike those cute creatures. Truly, I do not. What I dislike about them are the inconvenience they saddle their humans with and the dirt they spread in their owners’ homes, including, yuck, their beds. Lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas, ticks, the dog poop they’ve rolled in and lord knows what else. If you’re okay with that and with being licked on the mouth by a tongue that recently licked Fido’s butt, more power to you. Pardon me while I just admire your lovable little poochie from a distance.

The therapy dog phenomenon has always amused me. Aside from seeing eye dogs, they were never a thing until our society reached a level of narcism that provided their current niche. Until then, for millennia dogs were loved pets or workers. But foremost, dogs were, well, just dogs. Therapists? Then again, as one who was a therapist, looking at today’s crop of therapists, it is clear the profession has gone to the dogs figuratively. So perhaps it is not so far fetched that it should also do so literally.

Therapy used to be a means of growing into a mature person, securely independent and capable of healthy relationships with our own species, you know, humans, but that required a lot of time and effort from both therapist and client.

Who has time for that when there is so much phone surfing to be done? By the way, have you noticed dogs don’t have phones? The only way to relate to a dog is on a personal level. Until very recently this is the way it was between humans. (No, seriously. I kid you not.) In fact, mental health used to be defined largely in terms of the quality of interpersonal human relationships. Now narcissism, with its need to be admired and loved unconditionally, is the norm. Dogs fill narcissistic needs to perfection. All you need to do for a dog is feed and walk it, and no matter what a jerk you are, your furry Freud assures you you are the greatest. So much easier than making the effort required to elicit such a response from a human.

I’ve written at length about how societal forces have normalized narcissistic personality traits and behaviors and why they have become so ubiquitous. I won’t rehash this here.

To be clear, I am not stigmatizing all dog owners. Of course you can love your dog and still be an emotionally mature person. Owning a pet does not make you a narcissist, and not all narcissists own pets. To my knowledge there is currently no “First Pooch” residing in the White House. (The only animal located there is a portion of a horse. I leave it to you to guess which part that is.)

Here is how dog “therapy” works when the patient has narcissistic personality traits: The narcissist has the developmental maturity of a toddler, and, like a toddler lacks “object constancy”. This means they can’t tolerate separation from caretakers. If Mom is not in sight it’s as if she’s gone forever. The classic teddy bear was, for a long time, Mom’s stand in, a “transitional object” through which a connection to the missing mom was maintained. Similarly, the live “teddy” dog’s presence in the adult toddler’s life alleviates the terror of perceived abandonment —be it emotional, such as when people refuse to acknowledge demands for unlimited approval, or actual physical separation. This is why so many people suddenly need to take Fido along everywhere.

The popularity of therapy dogs arose during the era when access to skilled therapists became almost impossible. At the same time alleviation of symptoms without personal insight or change suited the “therapeutic” goals of clients, drug companies and health insurers alike. Here’s the rub: The dog alleviates anxiety the way a pain pill alleviates the headache without addressing the brain tumor causing it.

In this sense, therapy dogs are counter-therapeutic as they alleviate the emotional discomfort of their owners without addressing its actual causes. This shortchanges their owners and can be annoying to those who are not desirous of canine companionship when they interact with the doggy dependent.

Then there’s misuse of the therapy dog craze, the faux-therapy dog scam. Put a little red vest on any doggie and you can foist him on your fellow airline passengers, some of whom are allergic to dogs, not just unappreciative of spending their flight trapped in an airborne menagerie, no questions asked.

No matter. The world is going to the dogs in many ways for the same reasons that spawned the rise of the therapy dog.

To paraphrase the Bard, cry havoc and let loose the dogs of therapy.

Just not in my house, please.