Introduction

Should psychotherapy be considered a medical practice? Jung certainly regarded it as such, but the following description (made in another context) would apply also to analytical practice. Wampold (2007: 861) contends that psychotherapy is ‘a cultural healing practice, more in line with religious and indigenous healing practices than with medical treatments.’ He calls for viewing psychotherapies as ‘elaborate rituals, with complex explanatory systems’, where particular ‘theories and consequent treatments constitute convincing narratives that persuasively influence patients’. Psychotherapies are ‘embedded in and . . . emerge from the cultural landscape, for the explanations involved would resonate with the psychotherapy community . . . and be acceptable to patients’ (Wampold 2007: 864).