Where the power lies in the therapist-client relationship | Letters

Oliver Burkeman (Therapy Wars, The long read, 7 January) falls into the trap of polarising the wrong point about contemporary psychotherapy. Like any pioneer, Freud made many assumptions that have since turned out to be self-interested, culture-specific or just wrong. But to write him off as a charlatan is facile. What he revealed on behalf of clients then and now is the immense transformative value of being listened to: of having our emotional histories taken seriously, empathically inquired about and ascribed an appropriate level of relevance in the balance of who we are and who we are capable of becoming.

I too am sceptical about the claims made for traditional psychoanalysis, with its power-base located in the "expert" interpretations of the analyst. I have encountered former analysis clients who have retrospectively come to regard their analytic experience as exploitative, even abusive. But I am no more enamoured by the idea that reducing our emotional challenges to a series of left-brain box-ticking exercises is of lasting value either. A number of my clients have reported similar reactions to those of "Rachel" in Burkeman's article.