In the ancient world, the philosopher was a physician of the soul who, employing the healing word (iatroi /ogoi), offered counsel to persons perplexed by problems in living. After the triumph of Christianity, the priest as confessor-counselor replaced the philosopher as rhetorician of consolation. With the birth of psychiatry, and especially since the Freudian revolution, we call helping persons with words "psychotherapy." I shall try to show that without a decisive separation of rhetorical healing from medical healing, psychotherapy as the secular cure of souls is doomed to extinction.
The major emphasis in contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy is on the early and consistent interpretation of the transference. A growing attention to countertransference analysis, to the risk of "indoctrinating" patients, to character analysis, to the analysis of unconscious meanings in the "here and now" also are dominant trends. Significant controversies continue regarding the importance of the "real" relationship, the therapeutic versus the resistant aspects of regression, the role of empathy, and the relation of historical to narrative truth.
Panel 02 from the Evolution of Psychotherapy 1995 - History of Psychotherapy
Featuring Erving Polster, Ph.D.; Ernest Rossi, Ph.D.; Margaret Singer, Ph.D.; and Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Moderated by Janet Edgette, PsyD.
Panel 10 from the Evolution of Psychotherapy 1995 - Philosophical Issues and Psychotherapy
Featuring Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D.; Thomas Szasz, M.D.; Paul Watzlawick, Ph.D.; and Irvin Yalom, M.D.
Moderated by Carol Kershaw, EdD.
Panel 16 from the Evolution of Psychotherapy 1995 - Key Ethical Considerations
Featuring Cloe Madanes, Lic. Psychol.; Margaret Singer, Ph.D.; Thomas Szasz, M.D.; and Jeffrey K. Zeig, Ph.D.
Moderated by Bernhard Trenkle, Dipl. Psych.
Szasz considers the role of responsibility in religion, civil and criminal law, medicine and the mental health professions; the differences among existential responsibility, moral blameworthiness and legal accountability; that connections between (mental) competence and responsibility; and relates all of the above to problems in psychotherapeutic theory and practice.