Page 47 - NAMAH-Jan-2023

Notes on counselling

Apropos Friendship

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
The gradual disappearance of friendship as an institution is disturbing. Yet it was inevitable unless
we shifted from the outer to the inner being. The friendship of the future would be based on soul-
camaraderie.. Mysticism adds another dimension by abandoning the friendship that is based on
self-love.

have become deeply disturbed to envisage
a friendless society. In fact, Baden Powell
conceived of the Boy Scouts movement by
working on the friendship fostered by the
gang spirit of children and adolescents!

Is this disappearing friendship an index of the
modern craze for cyberspace where private
and public spaces coalesce, allowing one
to drift without values and restraints in
uncharted territories where often artificial
One intriguing experience has been plaguing friends are cheer-leaders? I understood
me in my therapeutic space in recent years, this phenomenon when I was dealing
that most subjects from school toddlers to with older girls, who even after ceasing to
young adults reveal the absence of a best play the dreaded game Blue Whale (where they
friend. Sometimes children and adolescents succumbed to orders of killing themselves),
are more candid in declaring that they have could not get over their suicidal ideas. I
no friends at all. Obviously, they move in realised that if one has not organised one’s
groups in schools and playgrounds but they do personality around a central integrating
not relate to others or cannot share anything principle, one can easily be led astray to
deeply personal with others. And this trend nethermost zones of cyberspace where one
continues in most cases in later life too. I is totally isolated, desolate and friendless in

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