Therapy, as opposed to analysis, is a whole construct of myth, beautiful and creative.
If I had a whole other life, I'd be a psychiatrist.
In general, certain conclusions are possible from these data. They fail to prove that psychotherapy, Freudian or otherwise, facilitates the recovery of neurotic patients.
Freudian therapists do a lot of listening and very little persuading, and that was one of the reasons I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up, and you couldn't give homework to clients. While I was still an analyst, I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit psychoanalysis after practicing it for six years.
I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it. Then I found that it intensively went into every irrelevancy under the sun - and that it didn't work. People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.
I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.
I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.
There is no standard 'therapeutic process,' since there are so many different schools of therapy.
In London, it's quite a rarefied activity to be on an analyst's couch.
Far from the stereotype that psychodynamic treatments are appropriate only for the 'worried well,' a growing body of evidence points to their efficacy in dealing with the most pressing mental health problems of our time.
My grandmother was a psychiatrist and had shelves full of medical books - I was constantly sneaking looks at some of those. I was fascinated by the descriptions of illnesses and diseases.
Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.
My parents are psychologists. My father is a specialist with schizophrenia and my mother works with mostly children.
Psychoanalysis is out, under a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely with the moral faculty in man.
An essential question regarding treatment is whether psychodynamic therapy is effective for specific disorders.
I'm all for 'tools,' not 'schools,' of therapy. To me, the schools of therapy compete much like religions, or even cults, all claiming to know the cause and to have the best method for treating people.
Psychotherapy works, and some types of therapy have been shown to be much more effective than antidepressants over the long run.
