The Relation of Theory to Therapy: An Alternative Vision

I was asked to write a book review of Lawrence Friedman's The Anatomy of Psychotherapy (Wallerstein, 1990) before being invited to participate in the series of commentaries on the book for this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. A major part of that review, and about half of its length, was my effort to convey my understanding of Friedman's conception of the nature of the psychotherapy enterprise, elaborated through his exploration of the meaning and uses of theory in its forever dialectical interplay with the meanings and processes of therapy. I can best portray my own alternative vision of the relation of theory to therapy by first quoting that (long) section of that review, my summary of Friedman's central thesis, as well as of his method, before counterposing my own views on this central and chronically unresolved concern of our discipline, how the theory and the therapy relate to each other.

I said in that review:

The author's starting point is theory. The main point, stated most simply, is that theory is neat whereas therapy, being of the real world, is messy. Theory calms the therapist's anxieties while it expresses his desires, i.e., his world view and value systems that have led to his particular theoretical allegiance. In this sense