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Langs, Robert, Madness and Cure New Jersey: New Concept Press, 1985.
IN Madness and Cure, ROBERT LANGS PRESENTS the reader with an empirically-based companion volume to his last book, The Psychotherapeutic Conspiracy. (Langs, 1982a) Both books are attempts to illustrate Langs' concept of therapeutic collusion, the Conspiracy volume on a macro- or sociological level, and the Madness volume on the level of micro- or individual analysis.
In Madness and Cure, Langs asks why patients claim cure in therapies that neither confront nor interpret the symbolism of unconscious mental processes. Freud demonstrated very clearly that unraveling the unconscious meaning of various emotional disorders was the soundest basis for the cure of emotionally-founded disorders. Langs demonstrates how cure is claimed and sought in psychotherapies that provide gratification through avoidance of anxiety that would otherwise trigger the disturbing meanings of the patient's illness. In a similar vein, the patient's efforts and need to cure the therapist serve to keep the patient in a collusive therapy. The therapist's lack of suitable boundaries is often a significant factor in therapies that encourage action-discharge modes of cure instead of genuine insight and working through methods. This lack of boundaries may signal to the patient that the therapist needs his or her help.
In one rather sad case, the former patient of a therapist who had attempted to seduce her after having had sexual affairs with two of her friends, also patients of this therapist, was turned away by members of her therapy group. She was reprimanded by the group for threatening to report the therapist to his professional organization for improper and unethical conduct. It turns out that she did not make the report, evidently going along with the other