Date: Sat, 09 May 1998 07:54:34 +0100
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-PSY: Freud and empowerment


I can see that *at best* the approach I favour can be criticised as an
individualistic one which enables people to recover from dysfunction and
adapt to late 20th century capitalist life as an individual.

The sort of method Ilan has described on these lists is also necessarily
delivered to and for an individual. 

Freud's work is also criticised from the political left as being for the
individual alone. 

But is the difference that whereas psycho-educative approaches do at least
help the individual survive as an individual, the individualist approach of
Freud is the goal to -

convert neurosis into ordinary human unhappiness. 

(Have I got the Freud quote right?)

And do others with psychodynamic allegiances accept that that type of
therapy is at best a mourning process which reconciles the individual to
capitalist society as a passive entity not an active agent?

Does psychotherapy with Freudian roots merely convert melancholia into
mourning but keeps the individual passively and introspectively preoccupied
with this for years at a time?

Chris Burford

London.



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