Cinmiles writes:

> This field has gone far awry from
> Freud's hopes for it, so in essence the field is done by medical doctors who
> confuse Thorazine with therapy, and do not follow Freud's dictum that
> analysis should only be done on "clients" who are healthy and wish for
> personal inlightenment, as opposed to "patients" who need medical healing.
>
Yes, indeed! As long as "patients" are treated by psychoanalysts as
sufferers of diagnosable mental illnesses, than my criticism about the
lack of scientific verification is relevant. Personal testimonials would
not qualify as such scientific verification.

If clients contract for help with their personal development, and no
claim of treatment is made, then testimonials are fine. There is no more
need for research than there would be for people following the
recommendations of a religious leader.

However, there is little money and little prestige to be made from
offering "enlightenment". Thus, psychoanalysts are trained as if they
were mental health professionals, using psychiatric jargon ("borderline
personality disorder", for example), trying to get as much medical
insurance reimbursement as possible, and making claims for
psychoanalysis as a therapy for mental illness. sometimes directly,
sometimes only implying it as curative. As Cinmiles points out,
psychoanalysis was not developed by its founders for treating mental
illness. Since it has no scientific basis to claim that it is a therapy
for treating mental illness, it is easily attacked by mainstream
practitioners. Psychoanalysts resort to misleading descriptions of their
"treatment" when attempting to get insurance reimbursement.

All of this is cheapening psychoanalysis, and ultimately killing it.

Howard D. Eisman, Ph.D.