Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [396]
Odds and ends: In addition to all the above, a large selection of other brands of therapy is available, at least in America’s major cities and particularly in California. Some are strange but based on sound psychology; others are even stranger and based on pseudo-scientific or mystical ideas. All told, they are essentially trifling in their contribution to mental health treatment. A random sample:
Primal theory requires the client to engage in prolonged screaming in order to release infantile rage. The client is taught to do this at home when necessary.
Morita therapy, developed in Japan, is based on Zen principles and begins with four to seven days of total bed rest, isolation, and sensory deprivation. Thereafter, the patient is taught to accept his feelings and symptoms and to live actively in the present, directing his thinking away from himself and toward the world around him.
Ordeal therapy assigns the patient to a task or situation worse than the presenting problem, such as getting up in the middle of the night, every night, to exercise.
Paradoxical prescription, employed to break down powerful resistances, consists of telling the patient to keep on with his problem behavior or even to step it up. The permission to do the impermissible is supposed to defuse it, rob it of its perverse value, and lead to a breakthrough.
Positive psychology, discussed in an earlier chapter, is an umbrella term for a therapeutic regimen that, while not ignoring what is known about human suffering and disorders, stresses positive emotions, positive character traits, peak experiences, and an understanding of happiness. It has been widely publicized by its originator, Martin Seligman, but accounts for only a minuscule percentage of psychotherapy patients.
Hypnosis or, more precisely, post-hypnotic suggestion, sometimes helps people control their smoking or overeating, overcome stage fright, and deal temporarily with other undesirable traits.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): After several initial stages of preparation, the client focuses on the image of the cause of the disorder and moves his/her eyes back and forth following the therapist’s fingers as they move across his/her field of vision for twenty to thirty seconds or more. This is repeated a number of times during the session. It is supposed to eliminate the influence of the source of the image.
est (Erhard Seminars Training), popular in the 1970s, consisted of two weekends spent in a ballroom (at a cost of $250). Bathroom privileges were denied except at official breaks, and the audience was subjected to a day-long barrage of abuse by the leaders (“You are all assholes… You’re nothing but a goddamn machine”). When the clients were sufficiently exhausted and humiliated, the secret of life was revealed: You are a machine, cannot be anything but, and can be happy only by being what you are. Werner Erhard stopped holding sessions in 1991, but a firm called Landmark Forum continues to run est-type meetings.
Special-purpose workshops last half a day or all day, and sometimes for a whole weekend, with time out only for food, toilet use, and sleep. Lectures, group therapy, sensitivity training, and other activities are all used to deal with feelings and emotional symptoms stemming from a problem the attenders share: child abuse, incest, spousal abuse, fear of revealing oneself, and many others.
And all those others: What shall we call them? Well, let’s not call them anything but merely mention a few in passing: orgone therapy (in which the patient sits in a special box that supposedly collects a curative energy pervading the universe), dance therapy, past lives therapy, miracles therapy, healing through visionary