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PARTISAN REVIEW
innumerable variants and permutations developing in the contempor–
ary atmosphere which sanction expressiveness, exalt self-realization,
and urge the exploration of human possibilities of all kinds. Countless
practitioners write handbooks; current ideas may be incorporated into
the thinking and practice of innumerable counselors and psychother–
apists of no definable ideological adherence whose training is contem–
porary and whose methods and theories are eclectic. Such people, often
highly gifted as therapists, may be well-read in Freud and classical
psychoanalysis, may have studied at the Menninger Clinic or Tavistock
or with Horney or other neo-Freudian teachers. They may have
participated in family or Gestalt therapy workshops, or in Esalen, T–
groups, may practice meditation, may have undergone Kleinian analy–
sis, read Albert Ellis on rational-emotive therapy, George Bach on
"fight" therapy, may do diagnostic testing, and might "go through
est."
Like their clients, these therapists provide a fascinating contem–
porary demonstration of the history of ideas.
Matthew Arnold was witty and mocked Dissenters,
T.
S. Eliot had
fun with Quakers and the Inner Light, and the French Catholic who
rejected Protestantism protested that he'd lost his faith not his reason .
Dr. Kovel, citing messianic tidings and Lourdes miracles, adopts a
similar tone toward the various alternatives to Freudian therapy. Such
responses are not adequate, although defenders of entrenched positions
usually employ them; few are likely to say or think "Not knowing
when the dawn will
cornel l
open every door." Instead, the variety of
contemporary therapies and the ambiguous character of the diseases to
be treated encourage an ironic attitude, knowledgeable but distant and
uncommitted. From that position, almost any therapy can appear
absurd. Contemporary neurosis, with its vague and almost symptom–
less states, its restlessness, dissatisfaction, anomie, and other features so
different from the dramatic conversion hysterias of the early days of
psychoanalysis, is so much harder to define, understand, or treat.
The number of people who are not actually ill in any previously
recognizable or measurable sense constitutes nowadays a sophisticated
new kind of critical mass. Resistant
to
most of the ancient consolations
of religion and culture, unable
to
find fulfillment in vocations, in
service, in domestic life, in love, and yet determined to be fulfilled,
these are the clients of the modern therapies. Their economic and social
lives permit a concern with nonmaterial satisfaction, and their willing–
ness to pursue unusual kinds of treatment is testimony both to their
unhappiness and to the failure of all the complex support networks
and traditional solutions which sustained people in the past. Thus, to
