Sadism Therapy

Dear Dr. Zev,
 
I’ve been seeing a therapist for the past few months and I’m questioning whether I should continue with him. At first he seemed to be very supportive, but once I became comfortable and familiar with him he changed his whole approach. Lately he has been treating me in ways that make me question whether he is the right therapist for me.
 
My therapist has become very provocative and sarcastic with me. Sometimes he goads me by purposely twisting and exaggerating what I’m saying. When I confront him with this he denies it with a slight smile. I feel that my therapist is intentionally trying to make me angry at him. I told him this but he just used what I said to incite me even more. I told him that I don’t like this type of treatment but he has continued to tease me and insult me anyway. He says that this is a legitimate therapeutic approach called modern psychoanalysis which was founded by a psychiatrist named Hyman Spotnitz, M.D. What should I do? My therapist came highly recommended and is sometimes still very nice and helpful to me.  Could it be that I need this kind of challenging and provocative therapy? The problem is that it makes me feel very angry and powerless. Please write back soon. I really need your advice.
 
Yours Truly,
Gabriel
 
Dear Gabriel,
 
Thank you for your letter. I am familiar with the method that your therapist is using with you. It is based on the belief that depression is caused by anger that is turned against the self. Dr. Spotnitz advocated that a modern psychoanalyst should make himself a target for his patient’s aggression so that the patient’s repressed aggression will come out on the analyst and not on himself. This is supposed to provide the person with a cathartic relief from his depressive mood.
 
Here’s what’s wrong with this approach:
 
1. It isn’t true that depression is simply anger turned against the self.
 
2. A therapist is supposed to model traits such as patience, tolerance, and other torah-based personality characteristics and not act in a sarcastic and manipulative way.
 
3. People who have been victimized don’t feel safe enough to ventilate their anger toward an authority figure such as a therapist. This results in the person feeling even worse about his passivity and the new victim role he has assumed in relation to his therapist. In this case, his anger towards himself becomes reinforced and strengthened rather than diminished.
 
4. I’ve seen this approach cause some people who had no history of violence to crack and become violent towards their therapists. In one case, I met a young man who destroyed the furniture in his therapist’s office before the therapist called the police and had him involuntarily hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. In another case, someone went home after a modern psychoanalytic session and became violent with his own family.
 
5. Modern psychoanalysis attracts therapists who have a sadistic part to them and enjoy taking on the role of provoking, needling, and inciting their patients. Dr. Spotnitz advocated that the therapist should be more of a real person with his patients than Freud did. The problem with this is that the real personalities of these therapists are very sadistic, and they are indulging their own sadistic needs at the expense of their patients. This method also allows the therapist to feel justified in taking harmful short-cuts like not listening to his patient’s pain
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6. It is impossible for this method to work because there is no source for it in the Torah. Rabbi Luzzato the author of the classic Jewish ethical work, The Path of the Just said that “Only teachings that are based on the Torah have the power to cure human problems…”
 
7. What would be preferable would be a therapist who could show the person his good and special qualities which haven’t yet been integrated into his conscious experience of himself; and to simultaneously sensitize him to how he is making himself depressed by the types of thoughts and fantasies he indulges in.
 
8. According to Rabbi Shalom Arush the root cause of depression is a form of arrogance that Hashem is not making the person’s life go the way he wants it to go. Depressed people are often resistant to this idea claiming that truly arrogant people are much more prideful and outwardly boastful than they are. The truth is that most forms of arrogance are not this way; arrogance is more commonly  found in the “quiet” claims of entitlement that the person harbors towards life. He may appear outwardly modest and even humble but is nevertheless incapable of appreciating what he has. 
 
For all of these reasons, Gabriel, I strongly recommend that you terminate your present “therapy” and find a person of faith with whom you can have a real personal encounter. You will certainly heal from your present difficulties once you see them within the context of emuna.
 
With blessings,
Dr. Zev Ballen