Why Might Freudian Therapy be a Waste of Time and Money

In his book Des Bienfaits de la Depression, Pierre Fédida wrote a chapter called 'Il Faut Etre Deux Pour Guérir' in which he explains why it is useful to talk when you are depressed.20 Patients usually believe that talking is not the solution but that the only way to cure is to bring back the lost person/situation whose absence initially caused the trauma. Psychological pain is a human particularity and therapy is meant to heal it. Fédida uses the example of drug addicts who go on detoxification. Addiction to drugs often reveals an alarming state of depression and the fact of undergoing treatment for drug addiction is the sign of distress and will to be saved. Freud used to underline how human beings have created for themselves an interior metaphorical discourse to express extremely violent issues such as love, hate, life, death, sexuality...21 Analytical cure sight-reads this metaphorical language.

Patients have the tendency to try and cure themselves alone but therapy helps substract the patient to his own influence, free his from his own desease. Therapy requires the participation of two actors and recovery cannot take place if the therapist does not understand his patient's psychology and resistance to healing.22 Freud focused on studying the opposition to healing and resistance to treatment when increasing his knowledge about unconscious forces. The therapist defines healing as the goal creating the patient's resistances. Thoses resistances to therapy can be explained as follows : the fact of being cured corresponds to a change of state. Negative reactions to treatment are thus explained by a fear of losing internal integrity and eventually disintegrating. The fear of modification is extremely strong.

In 1904, Freud...

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...Jacob : 2001)

FREUD, SIGMUND, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, (W.W. Norton & Company : New York – London), Standard Edition, 1949, vol. 23

MIJOLLA de, Alain, Dictionnaire International de la Psychanalyse, (Hachette Littératures : 2005)

ARTICLES

CASEMENT, Patrick, 'Beyond words – the role of psychoanalysis', The Psychologist, 2009, vol. 22, 5th May

LEVY, R. & ABLON, J., 'Talk therapy: Off the couch and into the lab', 2010

WAN, William, 'Freud coming into fashion in China, Treating China's syndromes', Washington Post, October 11th 2010

WEBSITES

ETHAN, 'Psychoanalysis: From Theory to Practice, Past to Present', Northwestern University http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/plaut.html

http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch13_therapies/psychoanalysis.html

http://www.apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysis/Low-Fee_Clinics.aspx

http://www.npap.org/intro/faqs.html