In his book Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes - " One of "the more common illusions of Freudian orthodoxy," to quote late Emil A. Gutheil, "is that the durability of results corresponds to the length of therapy" ".
Freudian psychotherapy, or psychoanalysis, is the typical psychotherapy you see in movies, (and sometimes even in real life, if you had ever been to psychotherapy). Doctor sitting on a comfortable chair, with a notepad on his lap and a pen in his fingers. The patient sitting or lying on a sofa comfortably. A soft glow in the room. The doctor listens closely as the patient continues to narrate his/her past experiences as the camera comes closer for a close-up shot; then transitioning into the cinematic backstory of the patient. The general cinematic shot.
Freudian psychotherapy holds the view that by repeated sessions with the patient, the psychoanalyst (the doctor) will be able to peel away each layer of the patient's psyche. With each session, the psychoanalyst will go back further into the past of the patient and try to extract meaningful symbols from there and try to reconstruct how past events stored in the subconscious or unconscious memory are affecting the patient in the present. In short, you can imagine this as what happened in the Bhool Bhulaiyaa film. Why did Avanti impersonate the dead dancer Manjulika? Go deep into the psyche and you will find her troubled childhood was the reason for that. That is Freudian psychoanalysis.
However, Freudian psychotherapy is not the only method of psychoanalysis, there is the Jungian method, Adlerian method, and many others. And Viktor Frankl in his books speaks about one such alternate method. In the quote, that I began this blog with, he points out the apparent flaw of the Freudian method is that it is too much dependent on the psychoanalysis and not the patient itself. The longer you stick with the psychotherapy, the better your past can be understood by the psychotherapist, and the better you can be treated. Thus, More Time = Better Results (according to the Freudian method). But, that is not always the case.
In the Bollywood classic Aanand, there is a dialogue, "Babumoshai, Zindagi badi honi chahiye, Lambi nahi" which in English roughly translates to "Sir, life needs to be big, not long." We all have listened to this line at some point I am sure. A simple axiom for life. Things need not be grand to have depth. What this line of dialogue achieves is the same as what Viktor means in his quoted lines.
There is an illusion that fighting longer with a trauma might solve it better. That the length of time spent on solving a problem will be proportional to how well the problem is solved. And with this Freudian mindset, patients are never satisfied with a simple answer. That a complex problem can have a simple answer is often unthinkable to many. And in this process of trying to symbolize and decode the past, often an apparently simple solution is overlooked by Freudian psychoanalysts. Maybe the person having anger issues with his boss is because he had an abusive father in his childhood and now as his boss is a father/authoritarian figure, he is getting angry at him; OR the simple answer may be that his/her boss is really an asshole.
Another problem with the Freudian method is that it focuses on too much of the "Why" part of the question. "Why is my patient afraid of XYZ?" As with each session the patient goes deeper and deeper into his/her past the answer to this 'why' comes out. Maybe something happened in childhood. Maybe something happened in school. Maybe he/she had long time contact with a family member who had the fear of XYZ. These are the Whys. Surely this method brings out the Truth. But of what value is Truth if it does not have the capacity to change anything. (Is there any inherent value to Truth at all? Yes, there is inherent value to Truth, but just as sometimes quadratic equations have imaginary solutions of no real use, in the same way sometimes Truth has metaphorical/symbolic value, but not a real one.)
We recently had the poem Rashmirathi by Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' in our syllabus. The 3rd Canto specifically. The whole poem is about the life of Karna, but the 3rd Canto is specifically about the part where Krishna reveals to Karna that he is the eldest son of Kunti, thus if he battles from the side of Duryodhan, he will be killing his own brothers, and also tells him that if he switches team, he can lead the Pandavs in the war, become the eldest king after the war, and also have Draupadi as his wife. We all know what Karna answered. All that Krishna told him, was the Truth. But of what value was Truth to him at that point?
Freudian psychoanalysis brings out the True reason why the patient has fear of XYZ. But, is that all to the patient? Even when the patient knows the answer to the 'why', what about the 'how' part? "How am I going to overcome the fear of XYZ?" Some people are satisfied to hear their 'Why' answered only. They know how to solve their problem, but they just want to know what is causing that problem too. However, some patients, know what is causing the problem, they just want to know what to do with it now.
In the book, Viktor writes about an old WW2 war veteran who had come to consult him as his psychiatrist. The veteran had lost everything in the war, his friends, his house, his relatives, and now recently his wife died too. The patient wants to know how to handle his grief now. Freudian psychoanalysis is of no use here. We know Why the patient is in pain, we need to figure out How to reduce/stop that pain. With respect to this situation, Viktor writes "More and more, a psychiatrist is approached today by patients who confront him with human problems rather than neurotic symptoms. Some of the people who nowadays call on a psychiatrist would have seen a pastor, priest, or rabbi in former days." The questions in modern patients have shifted from "I am having weird dreams/irrational fears" to "I am having suicidal tendencies". This new generation of patients, with all the information available freely on the internet, mostly knows the "Why" to other problem, they want to know "How" to solve them. But what help could Viktor offer to the war veteran? His wife is dead. He has to deal with the depth of death; that is not the job of an antidepressant to solve, it can help him to solve it, but the job is his own to deal with it, be it through existentialism, ignorance, or through belief in God.
"Babumoshai, Zindagi badi honi chahiye, Lambi nahi"
What then is the solution to all this? Well, as said earlier, sometimes it is hard to believe complex problems can have simple answers. But one of the answers that solves these kinda "how to solve the problem" problems, and is simple in nature, is hidden in this beautiful dialogue of Anand.
The average life expectancy in India, as of 2019, is 70 years, of which, if you are reading this blog, I am assuming, you are around 20 yrs old, so you have 50 more years to live. 50 more years, in a Darwinian way, to live than the required biological age for the survival of our species! Neanderthals used to live only about 20 years, that's enough years to eat, hunt some animals, do some cave art, have sex to ensure the species continues, and die of some random disease like diarrhea maybe. With modern medicine, we have made zindagi lambi, but zindagi badi hume khud banani paregi. We can dig for the Truth, the "why", but the "how" has to be found by us. And honestly speaking, some "how" are impossible to find like the old war veteran can never find the answer to "how to bring back my dead wife". What he can find, and that is what Viktor suggested, is to find the "how to keep her memory alive". The veteran later went on to support other war veterans in memory of his wife who had supported him.
If problems become unsolvable, try leaving the problem for some time. Try other things. Make life big. Try new things. If dealing with old problems is getting on your nerve, try finding new problems to deal with. However, this is not to say to flee away from every problem you encounter, some problems are worth dealing with, those are the problems that will actually make the life big, or to stop finding the Truth about the cause of your problems, as some Truths are worth finding for. This is to say that chose only those problems to solve and only those truths to find which make this lambi zindagi into a badi zindagi.
P.S - If you are too lost in all the jargon that I wrote, all I meant was, some problems can be sidetracked, not all problems in your life are worth solving or spending time on, so identify and avoid those ones to save time; then used the saved time to do things that are actually worth doing.
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