ABSTRACT
From the very beginning, depth psychology has been exposed to attacks. It is especially the political Left that criticizes it, accusing it of tinkering with individuals while neglecting the real causes of psychic disorders which are inherent in the societal system. Likewise, when psychotherapy as a whole is conceived after the model of medicine and thinks of itself mainly as a healing and curing profession, it inherits the hostile position that medicine holds towards illness. A standpoint which continues the hostility of the patient toward his disturbance is of course not in accordance with the principle of depth psychology. Psychological theory excludes from itself, from its own attitude, the very modes that as psychotherapy it practices and aims at in the consulting room. Symbolic thinking is something that the patient is supposed to develop, but our theory balks at it as at “inferior thinking.”.
