Therapy is all talk

Tue, 06 Apr 1999 17:22:00 +0000

In 1994, freelance writer Ethan Watters and UC-Berkeley professor of
sociology and Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ofshe published "Making Monsters,"
a full-throttle attack on one of the most controversial issues in
psychology: recovered memory syndrome. In "Therapy's Delusions: The Myth of
the Unconscious and the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried" (Scribner), released this month, they take on a larger subject -- what they see as the fraud of talk therapy. Almost a century after
Freud told his first patient to lie down on the couch and start talking,
they say that psychotherapy doesn't work -- and never has.

Watters and Ofshe say the dozens of types of therapy practiced today all
share a "lineage of mistakes" dating back to Freud. Talk therapy's
fundamental belief is that we are all at the mercy of unconscious mental
forces outside of our awareness, which we cannot by ourselves name or tame.
Freud believed mental illnesses had developmental causes, most often
stemming from childhood. He believed that trained analysts could understand
these in a way that could ultimately tame them, bringing
self-understanding, an end to problem behaviors and -- the grandest claim -- a cure for major mental illnesses.

Salon.com > Joy Rothke

Therapy is all talk