Cultural Aspects of Psychoanalysis and the Alternative Therapies

It is a well-known fact that in the last two decades, psychiatry has been troubled by a rapidly growing number of therapeutic approaches. Whereas a psychodynamic approach based on psychoanalytic theory had dominated the field of teaching and practice in the years following World War II, more recently the preeminence of psychoanalysis has been weakened by the increasing importance given to biological, behavioral, and sociocultural factors in diagnosis and treatment. More relevant to my thesis for today, the psychodynamic approach itself has been fragmented by a group of so-called “alternative therapies,” all claiming to be effective in producing personality change. The resulting “babble of tongues” has been confusing to the public, to potential patients, and — let us acknowledge it — even to some therapists. In fact, the profusion of different schools of therapy has led to such a state of disarray that the American Psychiatric Association has established a Commission on Psychiatric Therapies to review the research data relevant to the merits of one versus another of these therapies.

We are all awaiting the Commission's report on its difficult survey, hoping that it will have been able to introduce some order into the current scrapheap of therapies, distinguishing what techniques are helpful for what kinds of conditions or patients. In the meantime, I think it is possible to look at the multiplicity of therapies from a different angle of vision. I would like to ask the question, is there anything in the culture of our times — in its Ethos or