The therapy myth

Psychotherapy's founders were wrong about human nature and the causes of mental illness. Modern therapy culture continues to promote pernicious myths about mental health.

Written by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard.

”In some sense, we are all Freudians, whether we want to be or not.”

— Harold Bloom

From “Ordinary People” to “Good Will Hunting,” from “Law and Order” to “Shrinking,” from Woody Allen to Prince Harry, from the chatter at cocktail parties to the advertisements on popular podcasts, therapy pervades modern culture. And with it, a myth—the psychotherapy myth. Like other myths, the psychotherapy myth is not the product of one or even a few geniuses, though Sigmund Freud may be its Homer and its Hesiod. It lingers over our culture like smog in a city. We breathe it from birth. It is so pervasive that we hardly notice it. Indeed, many who have absorbed it and whose world views are shaped by it would not explicitly endorse it—and may even explicitly reject it.

The chief content of this myth is that people often cannot process or work through adverse events and traumas—abuses, breakups, firings, humiliations—and sometimes even repress the memories because they are too painful for the mind to assimilate. But repressed or poorly processed traumas do not heal like a scrape or a scratch; rather, they fester like an infected wound spreading its pathogens through the body. Time alone does not heal psychic injuries.

That is the bad news.