\n<\/p>\n
Prof Raymond <\/strong>Tallis\u2019s excellent review of Mark Solms\u2019s book The\u00a0Only Cure (12 January) underplays the lack of curiosity that is so striking in psychotherapy. The field\u2019s insistence that \u201cit works\u201d and \u201cresearch can\u2019t be done\u201d is counterintuitive, given its positioning as interested in people.<\/p>\n Creativity and imagination, as found in active scientific fields, would suggest designing trials of psychodynamic psychotherapy versus talking to an untrained person; or therapy versus a weekly gym membership; or long versus short therapy; or therapy versus an evening education class; or therapy versus waiting list (a classic test of interventions); or therapy versus cash transfer in this age of universal basic income and financial strain. Generating these ideas is not hard. Implementing them requires discipline.<\/p>\n Curiosity, creativity and discipline on a base of knowledge are the underpinnings of science, and eminently applicable to psychology. Sadly, psychodynamic psychologists do not seem interested in exploring uncertainties and generating knowledge. A meta-question is whether this uninterest is due to selection or training.<\/p>\n Listening to psychodynamic psychotherapists does remind me of Ambrose Bierce\u2019s definition of faith: \u201cBelief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.\u201d Prof Tallis\u2019s book review raises important questions about whether modern neuroscience has vindicated Sigmund Freud. But the debate itself reveals something troubling: we\u2019re still asking the wrong questions about mental health treatment.<\/p>\n As someone who has spent more than 50 years applying Adlerian psychology in therapeutic settings, I find the entire discussion oddly beside the point. Whether brain imaging confirms Freudian hypotheses or psychoanalysis meets clinical trial criteria doesn\u2019t address the fundamental question: does this approach help people live more fulfilling, socially connected\u00a0lives?<\/p>\n Solms argues for \u201cthe longstanding and profound effects of early-life experiences\u201d that keep people \u201cunder the intoxicating influence of contextually inappropriate emotions\u201d. This deterministic framework positions individuals as passive victims of their buried past. Yet Alfred Adler recognised a century ago that we are not prisoners of early experiences but active interpreters of them, capable of reconstructing meaning through insight and choice.<\/p>\n What\u2019s most striking about Solms\u2019s defence is what\u2019s absent: any consideration of community, social contribution, or cooperative relationships. The focus remains relentlessly introspective \u2013 internal drives, buried conflicts, aggressive impulses. This is possessive individualism, to use Canadian historian CB Macpherson\u2019s term: the atomised self wrestling with internal demons rather than a social being finding meaning through connection and contribution to others.<\/p>\n The question isn\u2019t whether neuroscience has proved Freud right, but why we keep trying to salvage a system that pathologises human nature when we have approaches that encourage human potential. Almost 90 years since Freud\u2019s death and a century since Adler\u2019s split from him, perhaps it\u2019s time to move on. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prof Raymond Tallis\u2019s excellent review of Mark Solms\u2019s book The\u00a0Only Cure (12 January) underplays the lack of curiosity that is so striking in psychotherapy. The field\u2019s insistence that \u201cit works\u201d and \u201cresearch can\u2019t be done\u201d is counterintuitive, given its positioning as interested in people. Creativity and imagination, as found in active scientific fields, would suggest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6112,22408,1226,22409,2685,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-42549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-freud","9":"tag-psychotherapists","10":"tag-questions","11":"tag-sigmund","12":"tag-started","13":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Dr James Taylor<\/strong>
Galashiels, Scottish Borders<\/em><\/p>\n
Grendon Haines<\/strong>
Montreal, Quebec, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n