Word: masson
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...Masson readily admits that others have had this idea before him. In the early 1930s Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Freud's and an influential psychoanalyst, confessed his growing doubts about his profession to his diary, which has not yet been published in English. Masson quotes generously from this document, showing a poignant portrait of a man torn between increasingly rigid doctrine and what he saw with his senses: "We greet the patient in a friendly manner, make sure the transference will take, and while the patient lies there in misery, we sit comfortably in our armchair, quietly smoking...
Sure enough, Masson provides plenty of examples of abusive behavior on the part of psychotherapists, especially those who have access to patients in mental institutions. There is the case of John Rosen, whose "direct analysis" still receives attention in some textbooks even though he surrendered his medical license in 1983 rather than face charges by the Pennsylvania medical board. Rosen's specialty was the rough treatment of schizophrenics to gain their attention. And then there was D. Ewen Cameron (1901-67), a much lauded and honored psychiatrist who, at the behest of the CIA, used repeated electroshock treatments...
That is a slippery conclusion, in which Masson blames psychiatrists because they do not agree with him. Although the author's slash-and-burn style of argument can be entertaining, readers should keep their hands on their wallets. Assertions tend to be sold as established facts. Masson writes, for example, that before psychotherapy begins, a "moral judgment" must be made that potential patients "are not living well, or as well as other people, and are therefore in need of 'help.' We often claim that the people seeking psychotherapy make this moral judgment on their own, but this is almost never...
...Masson notes that people who have heard his ideas have asked with what he would replace psychotherapy. "In reply I would note that, as one feminist friend put it, nobody thinks of asking: What would you replace misogyny with? If something is bad, or flawed, or dangerous, it is enough if we expose it for what it is." This analogy does not work. If ill-treatment of women disappeared, the world would be a happier place; if psychotherapy in all its guises suddenly vanished, some severely deranged and dangerous folks would be walking about the streets. That would...
Ultimately, Against Therapy amounts to an impassioned diatribe against the very idea of society. Masson does not make this animus particularly clear, but it surfaces occasionally, particularly in his concluding chapter: "Historically therapists have never been in the forefront of the struggle for social change. It is not in the interest of the profession to create conditions that would lead to the dissolution of psychotherapy." This is dime-store utopianism: people would not be unhappy anymore if the world were nicer. And Masson bristles at the notion of control: "Once we give anybody the right to decide who or what...