Is Therapy the New 21st Century "Punishment?"

Dr. Helen at http://drhelen.blogspot.com/ has again come up with an interesting post.

In response to her post, I made the following comment:

Sadly, this is not a twenty-first century phenomenon...we can go back to the seventies when the military was dealing with troops returning from Vietnam with drug problems.It was pretty much understood that drug problems were forced on people, and the individual really had no chance of not getting involved. Rather than court-martial and kick them out of the service, regardless of whether they served in Vietnam or not, it was decided to send them into rehab with the possibility of turning them around and placing them back in the ranks.

Too many of them were not returned to active duty, but were given a general discharge, that did not infer any laws having been broken.

So, we must be seeing some evolutionary progression here, but I just don't see it...

It is commonly understood that the field of psychology is humanistic in reference. It was Christians who originally established prisons for the benefit of rehabilitating criminals and returning them to society as contributors.

We don't have to look far to learn that prisons are "dehumanizing" and do nothing to rehabilitate criminals. Sadly, we have lost the Christian perspective, and have allowed our penal institutions to become holding pens, for those we do not want living next door to us.

The "human" thing to do for these criminals would be to not incarcerate them, but to place them in therapy, because therapists, without the benefit of God or Scripture are better able to place the person's life in perspective.

So, why don't we all just get in a circle, for a group hug, and sing Kumbaya, until all the world is at peace. There really is no evil in the world, only misdirected people who believe there are immutable laws.