Reducing the other to the same/sane

Abstract

I have been intrigued by my very different responses to two uses of the word method. The first, commonplace and currently popular, suggests that psychotherapists should have a number of methods at their disposal. This could be called the ballast argument. The second, from a statement by Laplanche, is that what Freud predominantly gave us was a method. I am rather disturbed by the former, but take the latter very seriously in my own practice. My sense of intrigue comes from the belief that both examples contain radically different notions of what psychotherapists are engaged in. The ballast argument enlists a technological approach, the application of knowledge, where one is engaged in a particular kind of behandlung (treatment); a kind of violence. But Freud's method is also a technology, so why should I favour that? Perhaps, because it is a method that opens up and contains particular kinds of spaces. I wish to explore these ideas by sharing some of the ideas that have been helpful to me in feeling and thinking through this issue over the years; in order to wonder about what kind of spaces are being offered by psychotherapists in these differing positions. What are psychotherapist's responsibilities in such spaces?