The power of the unconscious

The power of the unconscious

A captivating book about the history of psychotherapy and the people who shaped it.

Sigmund Freud, the master of psychoanalysis, smoked up to 20 cigars a day – even after he was diagnosed with palate cancer and had to wear a prosthetic jaw in order to be able to speak and chew. He feared he wouldn’t be able to think otherwise. Wilhelm Reich, sex researcher and founder of body therapies, was not only a controversial diagnostician, but also a convinced communist. And CG Jung, father of analytical psychology, believed in parapsychological phenomena. They all come to life in this book – just like Alfred Adler (Individual Psychology), Fritz Perls (Gestalt Therapy), Aaron Beck (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and many more. There were women in the illustrious circles, but they only played a supporting role, as was usual at that time.

The author Steve Ayan is a journalist and trained psychologist. This allows him to explain in depth and understandably the various directions that branched off from Freudian psychoanalysis. Each procedure emphasizes one of the three main factors of the therapeutic process: having new positive experiences, gaining insight, and practicing alternative behavior. And each procedure takes a different path.

According to Ayan, the early days of psychotherapy also include Rudolf Steiner (anthroposophy), Karl Popper (critical rationalism) and the Socialist Patient Collective, from which the RAF emerged. The book is impressively human. These biographical passages are written in an almost literary way. It becomes clear again and again that the creators of the various therapies, with their very different lives and temperaments, ultimately tried to solve their own problems. By the way: most of them were Jews. They had already suffered from anti-Semitism before the Nazi regime – that too becomes frighteningly clear in this book.

But what is the best therapy? Research shows something astonishing: Half of the benefit always comes from the feeling of being in good hands and being able to speak without shame. Uta Altmann

Steve Ayan
Soul magic
From Vienna into the world – the century of psychology

dtv, 400 p., € 26,–
ISBN 978-3-423-28440-0

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