Like everywhere else in the world, we have our fair share of agony aunts, and indeed, as those who read Suhel Seth’s column in Graphiti every Sunday will tell you, even the occasional agony uncle! Go through these pages and you will see troubled teenagers baring their souls, unhappy wives complaining about husbands, confused adults confessing to practices that range from incest to adultery? and they all turn to the agony aunts for succour.

Obviously these agony aunts serve a purpose. Evidence of this can be seen in the torrents of mail sent by the emotionally desperate to these publications. But what exactly is this purpose? Could it be that these letter-writers seek the advice of an older and more experienced ‘aunt’ so that they may be guided in a direction that will steer them clear of pain or guilt or indecision? Unable to turn to parents, friends and counsellors, do they write instead to an agony aunt in the hope that she will provide them with a solution to their dilemmas?

Surely they cannot be na?ve enough to believe that on the basis of a short letter and without the benefit of any in-depth knowledge of the individual concerned or of the situation in question, an agony aunt can provide the guidance that they appear so desperately to need? Surely they must realise that whatever she says merely skims the surface of the problem? All she can do is provide a commonsensical solution to the problem, something that any other sensible person of their acquaintance could do equally well. Yet, they continue to write.

I have often wondered why. If there is no real hope of a solution, how can people bring themselves to write publicly of their most intimate problems? What makes them shed all their inhibitions in this mindless way?

I believe that I may have an explanation. What an agony aunt offers her ‘clientele’ is a cloak of anonymity. A faceless, unknown agony aunt to whom the troubled need not reveal their identity makes it possible for the lovelorn, the insecure, the incestuous, to unburden himself or herself and thereby find a measure of relief. The whole world may read of their problem, but in the knowledge that they can remain anonymous and untraceable, they are able to talk freely and frankly, no matter how horrific, nauseating or distressing their story be.

In the process of spelling out the details of their problem, these letters writers probably find a solution to it themselves. But more importantly, relief comes through the catharsis of confession.

What the writers of `agony’ letters seek is a sounding board on the one hand and a confessional on the other. This, I am convinced, is the reason for the flood of letters she receives. Could I be right?