There’s been a lot of talk about blogging vs. journalism in the past, discussing whether bloggers compete with journalists or not, and what kind of relationship there can be between the two.
Personally, I think the relationship between blogging and journalism is more or less a clear one, in that they complete each other, and can hold one another accountable.
Another interesting thought though is blogging vs. psychiatry.
A lot of people are using their blogs as a space to vent, unload and just get things off their chests. They talk about their everyday lives, their problems, their highs and lows, almost everything. And it makes them feel a lot better to be able to do that.
They also get genuine feedback from readers who comment more or less because they’ve started to care for this person in one way or another.
I can’t but compare this kind of blogging to a session with a psychiatrist, after all, he just asks you to talk about what’s annoying you, your life, …etc and he tries to analyze it and give you some feedback that could be of some help to you.
The difference is that with blogging you’re not limited to your one hour session, so you can say all you want to say, when you want to and just like you feel it. You’re also getting genuine feedback from people who care a lot more than your shrink does, because in the end he’s just doing it for money, they’re doing it because they want to.
And of course you’re saving yourself a lot of money.
I wonder if there are any psychiatrists out there who have thought of this and who have felt even a bit threatened by blogging.
Of course, blogging can’t solve everyone’s psychiatric problems, after all psychiatry is a science and takes years of studies and practice to perfect, it just has some therapeutic effects that could help some people with some specific problems out.
In fact, I don’t see why blogging can’t complement the work of psychiatrists in some cases and be one of the things that they advise some of their patients to use.
Of course I expect royalties for my idea from both the psychiatrists and blogging services 😉