Is therapy the new confession? (12th April 1997)

Is therapy the new confession? 

"Sigmund Freud, who started the whole thing off just over a hundred years ago, himself recognised the analogy, describing the analyst as 'a father confessor, who gives absolution, as it were, by a continuance of his sympathy and respect after the confession has been made.' By depression I mean a degree of unhappiness unwarranted by the objective aspects of one's life. For most people, to admit that they are sufficiently depressed in that sense, and in need of professional help is the essential 'act of contrition', for there is a taboo in our society on admitting that one is unhappy. Just articulating all one's bottled up misery to another human being in a privileged, confidential context can be an enormous relief. The therapist's job consists mainly of listening sympathetically to patients and helping them to recover their self-esteem. Cognitive behaviour therapy aims to get the subject to see that she is interpreting the facts of his/her situation in an unnecessarily negative way. The effectiveness of psychotherapy depends crucially on the skill and sensitivity of the therapist." 

I'm sitting outside room looking at back of men's heads, I'm looking at the back of my head too, I'm distanced from myself and watching myself in that room watching the girl. That's the only way it works. Like Herman in Despair. Pain is accumulating all the time, all Sarah did was to clear the backlog. I'd got silted up and bob was the final blow, I flooded. Part 2 of my life, start from scratch, though the water in the river still comes from the same source. 

"Creative people often find it difficult to comply with the demands of a prosaic world. The artistically gifted are frequently so dedicated to their vocation, whether it is music, visual arts or writing, that they can appear self-absorbed, impulsive, impatient and intolerant. Even in my medical lifetime there was a sub-group whom psychiatrists labelled creative sociopaths---a term now abandoned." 

He wears it with pride. Anything they attack him for, he wears it with pride.