"The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication"
About this Quote
Goleman is gently picking a fight with the most passive version of modern mental-health care: the idea that symptom relief is the same as recovery. The line is built like a clinical warning label, but its real target is cultural. In a world that loves quick fixes and tidy narratives, he insists on a messier truth: medication can lower the volume, yet it may not teach you how to live with the noise.
The phrasing matters. "Rely solely" is a careful hedge, signaling he isn't anti-medication so much as anti-monoculture. "Train the mind" borrows the language of fitness and skill acquisition, smuggling in a whole worldview: mental health as practice, not just treatment. That word "train" also carries a subtle moral charge. If depression and anxiety are partly patterns of attention, rumination, and avoidance, then leaving those patterns untouched risks returning to the same grooves when the pharmacological scaffolding is removed.
Contextually, this tracks with Goleman's broader brand: emotional intelligence, attention as a scarce resource, mindfulness as an upgrade to cognition. He is arguing for an ecosystem approach - therapy, skills-building, habit change, social support - while pushing back against a medical model that can unintentionally encourage outsourcing the self.
The subtext is pragmatic, not puritanical: medication can be lifesaving, but it may function like a cast. A cast stabilizes; it doesn't strengthen. Goleman wants people to leave treatment with capacities, not just prescriptions.
The phrasing matters. "Rely solely" is a careful hedge, signaling he isn't anti-medication so much as anti-monoculture. "Train the mind" borrows the language of fitness and skill acquisition, smuggling in a whole worldview: mental health as practice, not just treatment. That word "train" also carries a subtle moral charge. If depression and anxiety are partly patterns of attention, rumination, and avoidance, then leaving those patterns untouched risks returning to the same grooves when the pharmacological scaffolding is removed.
Contextually, this tracks with Goleman's broader brand: emotional intelligence, attention as a scarce resource, mindfulness as an upgrade to cognition. He is arguing for an ecosystem approach - therapy, skills-building, habit change, social support - while pushing back against a medical model that can unintentionally encourage outsourcing the self.
The subtext is pragmatic, not puritanical: medication can be lifesaving, but it may function like a cast. A cast stabilizes; it doesn't strengthen. Goleman wants people to leave treatment with capacities, not just prescriptions.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mental Health |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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