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Freudianism sits alongside Marxism and Darwinism in the pantheon of modern theories held to be so revelatory that they not only gained the adherence of Western intelligentsia but shaped the broader culture. During the first half of the twentieth century, an air of intrigue and mystery hovered around Freud’s newly anointed practitioners. Psychotherapists occupied a strange universe, speaking in a language so incomprehensible but seemingly authoritative that it alternately awed and scared the average man on the street.
Psychotherapy is no longer an intellectual movement today as it once was. But in the form of modern professional “caring,” it has assumed a new role, which is to provide a peculiar sort of substitute friendship — what we might call “artificial friendship” — for lonely people in a lonely age.
-- Ronald W. Dworkin, "Psychotherapy and the Pursuit of Happiness" in The New Atlantis
If I had the money to pay for 'artificial friendships', I think I would have to go with the high-end escort. Though, if I still had plenty of money to spend, I suppose there might be something to be said for a psychotherapist, someone with whom I can sort out my feelings and worries - a conversational partner versed in the studies of the emotions and in coping with life-problems. I don't know. It's kind of hard to say. If I had that kind of money, I suspect I wouldn't have so many deeply personal problems, at least not of the kind that one talks about with a therapist. I have a money problem more than anything.
Psychotherapy is no longer an intellectual movement today as it once was. But in the form of modern professional “caring,” it has assumed a new role, which is to provide a peculiar sort of substitute friendship — what we might call “artificial friendship” — for lonely people in a lonely age.
-- Ronald W. Dworkin, "Psychotherapy and the Pursuit of Happiness" in The New Atlantis
If I had the money to pay for 'artificial friendships', I think I would have to go with the high-end escort. Though, if I still had plenty of money to spend, I suppose there might be something to be said for a psychotherapist, someone with whom I can sort out my feelings and worries - a conversational partner versed in the studies of the emotions and in coping with life-problems. I don't know. It's kind of hard to say. If I had that kind of money, I suspect I wouldn't have so many deeply personal problems, at least not of the kind that one talks about with a therapist. I have a money problem more than anything.
