The Times of London
August 1, 1997
Shrinks suffer an anxiety crisis
Tunku Varadarajan
SUFFERING from acute "shrink
fatigue", New Yorkers are turning away from psychiatrists
to a stylish new source of therapy--the "philosophical
counselor".
Bearing the message that
Plato is better than Prozac, philosophers have taken
on lucrative burden of healing the city's angst. Someone
going through a mid-life crisis, they argue, is not
suffering from a pathology but a "crisis of values".
Led by Lou Marinoff, a professor
of philosophy at New York's City College, the boom is
causing shrinks to panic. Many are cutting their formidable
fees to compete with those who spout Heidegger and Hobbes.
Speaking to the New York
Observer, Professor Marinoff cited a recent case where
he treated a woman who complained that her dead brother's
sprit was troubling her. "Psychotherapists would
say she is recreating the guilt triggered by her brother's
death. But it may be possible, according to some philosophical
systems, that there was something there. I am there
to help the client understand her belief system."
Marital problems are another
are where the philosophers believe they have an edge
over the Freudian "couch men".
"We would have to talk
about what is expected from one another in marriage,
what duties and rights are," he said.
In the new movement's "bible",
Essays on Philosophical Counseling, the work
of Immanuel Kant bobs up in the chapter on marital counseling;
the gloomy Dane. Soren Kierkegaard, appears in the section
on coping with death; and Socratic dialogues are portrayed
as tools with which to handle drug addicts.
