as to whether he'd been ready to deal with Fritz' issues?
Oof. Well, my two cents. When you're talking someone who needs therapy, any good relationship can be *therapeutic*. In fact, quality of interpersonal relationships is a major predictive factor for who gets PTSD and who doesn't. I'm pretty sure that Fritz didn't have it *worse* because he had so many people around him validating him (including two who got their influence in before Dad took an interest around age 6). FW, despite having absolute power, was an outlier in terms of his beliefs and abusive practices.
So even though Fritz got very little effective protection, he was constantly getting validation on all sides, as well as mitigation. (The number of anecdotes that can be summarized as: "FW tells X to do this awful thing; X does the bare minimum/obeys in letter more than in spirit/at least apologizes" is astounding. Even Katte's executioner refused FW twice and then was apologetic about it to Katte when FW insisted.)
So any surrogate father figure he could get would be good for him. And we know Fritz would occasionally confide in people about his trauma, e.g. "listener" Catt's memoirs (I see no reason to doubt Catt on this point).
But as for actually engaging head-on like a therapist, a few factors would have to be present.
- Fritz has to believe that a current psychological problem exists. - He has to believe that it can be solved or at least alleviated. - He has to believe that someone else has answers that he doesn't, or at least that he might come up with answers by talking to the right person. - Bach has to know what he's doing, if not to come up with the right answers, then at least to guide Fritz in the right direction. - They're gonna need more than one session for this. Fritz has the kind of problems that frequently don't get solved over a lifetime of professional therapy.
Now, Fritz knew that his father had left marks on his psyche. Not too long after Küstrin, he wrote, "They have cut deeply into the marble, and that stays for ever." He's not wrong. What he would need would be to recognize that some change is desirable and possible. I'm not sure he ever got there. If nothing else, he was a serious pessimist (again, childhood experiences playing a major role here). But I do think he was intellectually committed enough to the idea of being rational and spent enough time thinking about the interplay of emotions and reason that he *could* get there. (Fritz had the big problem of a lot of committed-to-rationality people, namely that when he's being rational everything's hunky-dory; when he's not, you'll have a hell of a time convincing him he's not.)
Then, he'd have to be willing to at least take some advice from someone else. Hoooo boy. That's where we hit a big sticking point. In that modern AU fic where he gets therapy, 1) it takes him until he's in his 50s, 2) this is a kinder, gentler, more modern Fritz, who's so different he's even capable of walking away from absolute power. It's well written, plausible, and I love it, but it's frankly OOC for historical Fritz.
So, while not knowing enough about Bach's personality to know how much he's qualified to deal with (being a good dad and surrogate dad is a wildly different skill set from being a good therapist)...here's what I think.
Fritz talking about his traumas, sure. Fritz getting validated by Bach, sure. Bach saying helpful things, sure, especially if they agree with what Fritz is already thinking. Bach getting across useful new insights...very, very dicey prospect.
If I had to take a stab at it, I feel like the way to deal with Fritz's issues would be 1) don't argue with him, 2) give him more than 74 years, 3) give him modern psychological literature to read and let him come to his own conclusions. Most of the really good work on the long-lasting effects of child trauma has been done in the last 30 years, and a lot of it has been rooted in evolutionary biology*. Mind you, we're still in the infancy of understanding how to *fix* any of it. But Fritz's mental health, intellect, and determination were robust enough that if he decided something needed to be done, he might be able to figure out a way. The point at which he decided what needed to be done would be the point at which other people could get usefully involved in the process.
* Which also leads me to wonder, is Bach going to be able to have this conversation without references to religion that are going to turn Fritz off? Because, again in our infancy of psychology, a good *rapport* between practitioner and client is a better predictor of success than most things (and if you ask me, that's because most psychotherapy taught and practiced is bunk, and even within the decent schools of thought, which are a minority, most practitioners demonstrably don't know what they're doing).
TL;DR: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Re: Fredersdorf
I'm deeply curious which movies.
as to whether he'd been ready to deal with Fritz' issues?
Oof. Well, my two cents. When you're talking someone who needs therapy, any good relationship can be *therapeutic*. In fact, quality of interpersonal relationships is a major predictive factor for who gets PTSD and who doesn't. I'm pretty sure that Fritz didn't have it *worse* because he had so many people around him validating him (including two who got their influence in before Dad took an interest around age 6). FW, despite having absolute power, was an outlier in terms of his beliefs and abusive practices.
So even though Fritz got very little effective protection, he was constantly getting validation on all sides, as well as mitigation. (The number of anecdotes that can be summarized as: "FW tells X to do this awful thing; X does the bare minimum/obeys in letter more than in spirit/at least apologizes" is astounding. Even Katte's executioner refused FW twice and then was apologetic about it to Katte when FW insisted.)
So any surrogate father figure he could get would be good for him. And we know Fritz would occasionally confide in people about his trauma, e.g. "listener" Catt's memoirs (I see no reason to doubt Catt on this point).
But as for actually engaging head-on like a therapist, a few factors would have to be present.
- Fritz has to believe that a current psychological problem exists.
- He has to believe that it can be solved or at least alleviated.
- He has to believe that someone else has answers that he doesn't, or at least that he might come up with answers by talking to the right person.
- Bach has to know what he's doing, if not to come up with the right answers, then at least to guide Fritz in the right direction.
- They're gonna need more than one session for this. Fritz has the kind of problems that frequently don't get solved over a lifetime of professional therapy.
Now, Fritz knew that his father had left marks on his psyche. Not too long after Küstrin, he wrote, "They have cut deeply into the marble, and that stays for ever." He's not wrong. What he would need would be to recognize that some change is desirable and possible. I'm not sure he ever got there. If nothing else, he was a serious pessimist (again, childhood experiences playing a major role here). But I do think he was intellectually committed enough to the idea of being rational and spent enough time thinking about the interplay of emotions and reason that he *could* get there. (Fritz had the big problem of a lot of committed-to-rationality people, namely that when he's being rational everything's hunky-dory; when he's not, you'll have a hell of a time convincing him he's not.)
Then, he'd have to be willing to at least take some advice from someone else. Hoooo boy. That's where we hit a big sticking point. In that modern AU fic where he gets therapy, 1) it takes him until he's in his 50s, 2) this is a kinder, gentler, more modern Fritz, who's so different he's even capable of walking away from absolute power. It's well written, plausible, and I love it, but it's frankly OOC for historical Fritz.
So, while not knowing enough about Bach's personality to know how much he's qualified to deal with (being a good dad and surrogate dad is a wildly different skill set from being a good therapist)...here's what I think.
Fritz talking about his traumas, sure. Fritz getting validated by Bach, sure. Bach saying helpful things, sure, especially if they agree with what Fritz is already thinking. Bach getting across useful new insights...very, very dicey prospect.
If I had to take a stab at it, I feel like the way to deal with Fritz's issues would be 1) don't argue with him, 2) give him more than 74 years, 3) give him modern psychological literature to read and let him come to his own conclusions. Most of the really good work on the long-lasting effects of child trauma has been done in the last 30 years, and a lot of it has been rooted in evolutionary biology*. Mind you, we're still in the infancy of understanding how to *fix* any of it. But Fritz's mental health, intellect, and determination were robust enough that if he decided something needed to be done, he might be able to figure out a way. The point at which he decided what needed to be done would be the point at which other people could get usefully involved in the process.
* Which also leads me to wonder, is Bach going to be able to have this conversation without references to religion that are going to turn Fritz off? Because, again in our infancy of psychology, a good *rapport* between practitioner and client is a better predictor of success than most things (and if you ask me, that's because most psychotherapy taught and practiced is bunk, and even within the decent schools of thought, which are a minority, most practitioners demonstrably don't know what they're doing).
TL;DR: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.