Psychotherapy explained. The worried wealthy and the tranquilised poor have been mismanaged through the medium of expensive
psychoanalysis for the last three decades. Psychiatrists should confine themselves to the care of real not imagined mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder. Neurosis – a person suffering from an excess of life’s problems – does not need psychotherapeutic intervention. Neurotic symptoms – worrying, tiredness, irritability, insomnia, low mood etc., are normal but unpleasant states which can be seen in perspective as valuable aspects of normal everyday living. The number of North Americans seeking psychiatric help is extraordinary, do they really need thousands of psychotherapists to help them? Freud’s theories have been adopted throughout North America without question or close examination. Psychotherapists could be preying on the weak and the gullible, people at a low ebb, often promising pain free happiness. In fact most neurotic symptoms resolve themselves with time. Good diet and exercise is a better route to good mental health than
psychotherapy.
Therapy has replaced religion as the opium of the masses, distracting those in distress from resolving unhappiness by seeking support from friends and family or making radical life changes.
Psychotherapy depends on securing the confidence of the patient. The power imbalance between the
therapist and client renders it unethical often resulting in bullying the client by confronting them with their past.
The history of neurosis commenced with moral insanity, with women incarcerated in fashionable sanatoria until they matured. Freud developed his own unique treatment for moral insanity during the 1890’s, with the first case of psychotherapy recorded with Dora as published in 1905. Dora’s lack of sexual excitement at 14 years of age was described as hysterical behaviour, highly implausible yet accepted as one of Freud’s theories. The current criticism of Freud concentrates on his creation of a pseudoscience. There is no proof of the existence of Freud’s id, ego and super-ego or of the five psychosexual stages of child development. Feud dreamt these concepts his loyal followers did the rest. Middle aged Viennese women are not representative of modern people. Freudian therapy has declined, replaced by CBT cognitive behavioural therapy, behaviour and thought patterns are challenged and altered. CBT is brief, 16 sessions and is often practised by lay people. Therapy may be ineffective against social problems, a difficult personal history, genetic inheritance or all three.
In summary, a visit to a therapist may give a short term benefit, facilitating positive changes in a person’s lifestyle. People with serious mental disorders must have professional help. People with milder problems may learn to heal themselves without becoming therapy addicts.