OK, I admit it, I watch X Factor, yes BBC 4 is more "improving", but X Factor is easier on the mind, and makes for better family viewing.
As the hopefuls have been whittled down from thousands to the last twelve I am really aware how strongly they believe that fame and fortune are their only paths to happiness. And in so believing, the way in which they have handed over responsibility for their happiness to four celebrities and the public. As if happiness has to be given to them, and is not something they can find within themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I know what it is to want something really badly and how devastating it is when you don't make it. I'm also well aware that money is generally a good thing and that a job in McDonalds and a crummy bedsit, do not a fulfilling life make.
But, I also believe that we all derive our attitude to life from our experience of it. If you have no inner sense of potential, it cannot be given to you.
As children we are nourished and looked after, our parents keep us from harm and show us that we are loved and lovable, they give us the foundations from which to explore the world, and to find out what makes our hearts soar. Sometimes these needs are not met; sometimes food has other meanings, being loved is conditional, exploration is forced upon us or warned against, sometimes our heart is not shown how to soar; when this happens we grow up thwarted and our real self gets hidden. I look at X Factor and see people already struggling with who they are.
I look at Cher with her under nourished body and doll like make up and wonder what she is hiding from. I look at Mary and wonder what food represents for her, and if it comforts her in ways that she can't herself. I see Rebecca styled into an identikit pop star, and wonder what happened to her own beautiful and classy style at the auditions.
Each Saturday, as the final acts do their very best to be good enough, to be allowed entry to the privileged club that the judges already inhabit I worry that their sense of self is too much derived from what others think. Whilst the dangers of this are obvious for the rejected acts, the winner also will find that when the furore of their success dies down, they are still the same person, and nothing fundamentally has changed.
As Carl Rogers says "the real self is something which is comfortably discovered in one's own experiences, not something imposed upon it"
Counselling is about finding this self when it has been lost, and I hope that all the final acts have the support they will need, whichever way the phone vote goes.
Johanna Sartori is a counsellor and psychotherapist working in Twickenham. Go to - www.johannasartori.co.uk
