No one claims that a sudden moment of clarity is all that most mentally-ill people need. But there are a lot of people who need, more than anything else, to tak

No one claims that a sudden moment of clarity is all that most mentally-ill people need. But there are a lot of people who need, more than anything else, to take a good hard look in the proverbial mirror. The effects of this have been noted throughout history, predating psychology as we know it but continuing even after the discovery of that science: it does not work for everyone, but it is too powerful a tool to ignore. That seems to have happened to the grandparent. What fixed him was not Linkin Park, but seeing the consequences of his malicious act. The music may very well have helped him get into the mindset that allowed to see himself in the mirror, but it was not the mirror itself. But are a couple of problems with the mirror. One is that if you truly need to change, then really SEEING yourself is a traumatic experience, and like any trauma, it requires further care to make sure that it doesn't raise issues of its own. There's no way around this: the traumatic aspect of the mirror is what makes it a powerful tool for personal change. Another problem is the nigh-infinite variety in human psychology: different people need different mirrors, and while it might be possible to classify them broadly, what works for one person still might not work for another. Put these together, and a major problem emerges with using the mirror therapeutically: namely, doing it in a humane manner. I truly don't think it's always possible to do this humanely; the grandparent's case had him seeing the consequences of his own act of cruelty, which implies that there was collateral damage. Another such case would be the reverse: someone who, like a puppy, can learn that biting hurts only by being bitten. That's someone who needs to experience a moment of cruelty from the opposite perspective, but that requires being cruel to the person. Clearly these are not cases where the mirror is humane. But there are still open questions. Knowing the trauma that the mirror causes, can bringing it about deliberately ever be humane, even when the subject is not committing or experiencing cruelty? In cases where it can't -which might be all cases- might it be worth doing anyway?