The Case Against Therapy

We've never had so much help. We've never been in more anguish. That's the paradox. Mental illness is (mercifully) no longer stigmatised. We're far more open than our grandparents were. Way more of us are seeking help. Why, then, are we being continually told that 'current levels of good mental health are disturbingly low'? If so many people are in therapy, why do we still have a mental health epidemic?Cynics puncture the paradox by denying the reality of mental illness. The diagnoses are dubious, they say; sensitivity is masquerading as suffering . . . But it's not the suffering which is suspect. It's the treatment. Yet while many books have questioned the efficacy of pharmacological interventions, strangely, the talking cure remains a sacred cow. What if therapy's not only failing to resolve the crisis but making it worse?What is it about therapy that's exacerbating our problems? When the difference between True and False, Right and Wrong, Up and Down, becomes a matter of varying viewpoints, we are witnessing the triumph of the therapeutic. But is in fact psychology, from its Freudian inception and across its many contemporary modalities, marked by a chilling nihilism that is ultimately bad for our health? Therapized answers exactly this.

James Mumford