On the Myth of Psychotherapy

Thomas Szasz famously argued that mental illness is a myth. Less famously, Szasz argued that since mental illness is a myth, so too is psychotherapy. Szasz's claim that mental illness is a myth has been much discussed, but much less attention has been paid to his claim that psychotherapy is a myth. In the first part of this essay, I critically examine Szasz's discussion of psychotherapy to uncover the strongest version of his case for thinking that it is a myth. As we'll see, this involves an understanding of psychotherapeutic interventions as treatments of psychopathological problems. In the rest of this essay, I turn to this directly and argue that psychotherapy has an important non-pathocentric dimension. I argue that we fail to appreciate the nature and variety of psychotherapy if we concentrate only on its pathocentric dimensions. Though I use Szasz as a stalking horse, the substantive topic is the nature of psychotherapy. This enquiry falls into the philosophy of psychotherapy as distinct from the philosophy of psychiatry and the philosophy of psychoanalysis.