This insistence on being in control of life is not the creation of any medical system or counseling organization. It is a culture-wide mandate, something medical and counseling practitioners are steeped and trained in along with the rest of us. It is really an addiction to competence that I am talking about, part of the inheritance from our hard-scrabble immigrant beginnings on this continent, rooted in self-reliance, mastery over the environment around us, autonomy.
