Suffering and Psychotherapy1

ONE OF THE GREAT FAILINGS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, particularly intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy (including psychoanalysis), is its inability to significantly alleviate the patient's suffering in a short period of time. Indeed, the prolongation of suffering has traditionally been extolled as a virtue on theoretical and technical grounds, and therapists have been warned that the premature cessation of suffering impedes therapeutic progress, thus making potentially greater gains impossible. The issue is less salient in brief or time-limited psychotherapy, the various forms of "supportive" psychotherapy, behavior modification, and other contemporary approaches that deviate from the classical psychoanalytic model, but the dictum has been tacitly accepted that the psychotherapist cannot expeditiously alleviate the patient's turmoil which frequently is the force propelling him in the direction of enlisting the help of a professional helper. to be sure, the trained psychotherapist has learned that he cannot work miracles, and that on many grounds he cannot meet the patient's magical expectations of rescue and help. Furthermore, it is obvious that the patient's current turmoil typically has a long history and that decades of maladaptive learning cannot be undone in a few sessions. However, if we are honest with ourselves, we are forced to admit that in the short run we are incapable of putting an end to the patient's suffering and discomfort; and that we cannot effectively stem the tide of the forces confronting us. In fact, it can be stated that there exists an inverse relationship between the ambitiousness of a psychotherapy and its ability to provide solace, psychoanalysis being in the forefront of the psychotherapies that make a virtue of suffering.

To take a closer look at the therapist's ability to provide rapid relief, it is clear that apart from psychoactive drugs, the major