The New Therapies

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been strongly challenged in recent years by the emergence of the behavioral therapies. I believe that it has successfully withstood this challenge, and has been able to incorporate some of their contributions, even as enlightened behavior therapists are beginning to realize that they cannot discard the values that psychodynamic understanding brings to the therapy of mental and emotional disorders.

The past couple of decades, however, have also witnessed an extraordinary and unprecedented efflorescence of another group of psychotherapies, which have focussed on techniques of “expanding consciousness,” achieving “peak experiences,” discovering the “true self,” recognizing “eternal verities,” and “merging with the cosmos” via transcendental experiences. Although some of these new therapies have more substance than others, most of them are throwbacks to the magical, religious, and inspirational patterns of the faith healers and medicine men of the prescientific era of psychotherapy. Many of them are designed to facilitate emotional abreaction in one way or another on the simplistic assumption that this in itself is curative. Others combine emotional release techniques with varied patterns of body touching, massaging, or manipulation. Still others focus on various ways of achieving emotional and/or muscular relaxation or control; while the remainder are frankly religious or inspirational, led by an assortment of babas, gurus, lamas, faith healers, and ordinary charlatans.

The fact that thousands of people are drawn to these therapies which reject cognitive understanding, emphasize self-acceptance rather than self-change, promise quick magical cures without the need for dealing with the painful realities of life, and offer instant (albeit synthetic) intimacy, must give us pause. It is not enough to recognize that the popularity of these therapies is, at least in part, a reflection of the rampant anti-intellectualism, anti-scientism, and alie