Granta 174: Therapy

When Sigmund Freud died, Auden wrote ‘he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion.’ Something similar could be said for therapy today. We live in a therapeutic age. It is generally accepted that the world of subconsciousness plays into all of our thoughts and actions, and that, in the hands of experts, it can be directed along more fruitful pathways. But as a science and a practice, therapy has always been fraught with dilemmas and crises. It has been bound up with power and man…