Principles and Practice of Psychotherapy

Society's stake in psychiatry is great. The very survival of social groups and nations depends upon their health resources. Psychiatry is concerned with emotional health, with the constructive uses and guidance of the fundamental forces within people—the forces of love, hate and fear. It is possible for love to be directed toward and cathected on destructive or constructive things. Hate can be both constructive and destructive. Fear can be harmful, as in the neuroses, or can be a factor in survival, keeping us concerned and alert as to the sources of destruction that threaten within ourselves and in our society and culture. The content of thought is forever changing. Think of the conceptions, objects and operations of physics, historically considered. What we identify with emotionally may be far more important than factual knowledge and reason for our success, our health and even our lives. A Hitler, moved by hate, fear and love of power, could destroy the foundations and fruits of centuries of achievement of western civilization—even his own civilization. Sado-masochism is important thus for society, as well as for the individual. Lao-tse, Socrates, Jesus, St. Francis, Gandhi, Schweitzer cultivated the constructive, the creative in man. They devoted their lives to the enhancement and promotion of Eros. The development of individual and social cooperation, with the preservation and enhancement of individuality and difference, is a problem for psychiatry, society, culture, civilization and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The health of the individual, the survival of civilization, depend on this.

Hence the importance of the contributions of basic thinkers to the motivations of men and the development of new methods and standards for constructive social relationships and cooperation.

Science and technology have changed the old absolutes of time and space, have almost conquered the elements and have learned to transmute them. Now is the time for science to turn