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Jürgen Reeder has written this book as a reaction to the Swedish government's radical change of policy in relation to psychoanalysis. Reeder fears that it might mean the end of psychoanalysis in Sweden.
In the first half of the book Jürgen Reeder describes briefly and clearly the essential parts of psychoanalytic practice. He begins with a chapter on life problems, that are not psychiatric symptoms, but which psychiatrists treat psychopharmacologically on the basis of diagnoses according to DSM-III. Jürgen Reeder demonstrates the degree to which DSM-III supports a medicine industry that not only produces medicine for regular diseases but also describes symptoms in a way that fits the pharmacological industry! He describes in detail how DSM-III has become the foundation of modern psychiatry.
The tense relationship between psychoanalysis and psychiatry is discussed in detail in this book. Reeder writes: “Our culture is imbued with a medicinal way of understanding life”, (p. 20). However, existential life problems are better met with understanding than with behaviour therapy, which is what is currently offered.
The book reveals that Sweden's highly praised welfare policy has a shadier aspect in the form of paternalism, bureaucracy and control, which has had a severe impact on psychoanalysis. Jürgen Reeder (2001, 2006) has elaborated on these problems in his previous books, Hate and Love in Psychoanalytic Institutions and Psychoanalysis in the Welfare State.
Chapter 3 describes the government's involvement in psychotherapy training. This started in about 1979 after which there followed an uninterrupted series of regulations, laws, reports, etc. In 2008 a system of quality assessment was introduced, which proved to be mainly to ascertain whether psychotherapy training met conditions which would allow trainees to be assessed by examination.
Jürgen Reeder writes that the term ‘evidence’ has become a means for the politicians to win legitimacy for their political position. The e