Page 10 - Phonebox Magazine October 2008

SANCHIA BARLOW Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Member LCP, Registered BPC Subtantial NHS experience
DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, RELATIONSHIP & SEXUAL ISSUES, ABUSE, BEREAVEMENT, LOSS, TRAUMA, COMPLEX DIFFICULTIES
Consulting room in Olney
01234 240454 sanchia.barlow@tesco.net
Dear Editor
I'd like to thank you for the selection of letters in last month’s edition. However, whilst it’s always entertaining to watch people lose their tempers in public, the correspondence has got me wondering what we mean when we talk about anti social behaviour.
For some it appears it's simply two or more teenagers gathered together at the same time in the same place, regardless of whether or not they are up to mischief. Only oiks can be anti social; the term could never be applied to the middle aged or middle class. But clearly at least one person in Olney thinks leaving a pig carcass to rot overnight in a public area is pretty anti social. And then there’s the smoking ban. Is it a brave blow for the right of the silent majority not to be poisoned or an outrageous infringement of our civil liberties? Or speed cameras. Are they (as one wag with a taste for vandalism has put it) simply ‘greed’ cameras or rather an attempt to curb anti social driving and avoid more appalling deaths on the road outside Emberton?
I suspect, when we think about these issues, most of us are guided by two principles.
Firstly, if we dislike a particular form of behaviour, or find it offensive, then it must by definition be anti social.
Secondly, we are British and therefore free to do whatever we want as long as it’s not illegal. We are fed up with the nanny state. We could never be accused of being anti social and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
There is of course a pretty obvious problem with this approach. We can’t have it both ways. Virtually everything we do impacts on other people and will probably be offensive to someone, somewhere –
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10 Phonebox Magazine
HAVE YOUR SAY
Letters