Preserving Our Humanity as Therapists

Psychotherapists have traditionally embraced core values and beliefs that differ significantly from many values and beliefs that pervade contemporary, commercially oriented Western cultures. With their clients, therapists often question or challenge the culture’s materialism, consumerism, appeals to vanity and greed, disdain of dependency and vulnerability, and abetment of narcissistic entitlement. Currently, however, psychotherapy is being reshaped by descriptive psychiatric diagnosis, pressures from powerful corporate interests, and antagonism from influential academic psychologists and is threatened with becoming the servant of the surrounding culture rather than its participant/observer and critic. The author notes symptoms of this trend and offers ideas about reversing it.