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65 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
There are many surprises in reading Gaslighting., January 27, 2001
This review is from: Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis (Hardcover)
In this work, Dorpat sets out to rescue psychoanalysis and psychotherapy from the temptation to take covert control over the patient's mental life. Most often, such domination enters the consulting room unrecognized. There are, of course, some psychotherapeutic systems, such as behavior modification, in which control and shaping behavior are not bad words, but avowed objects. However, in psychoanalytic therapies, freedom of thought is a most valued element. Yet even in the analytic therapies, Dorpat demonstrates how subtly, yet powerfully, covert control and indoctrination do occur - and how commonly. The author's deep conviction and concern are apparent in his writing, and the book delivers a caveat for even the most seasoned psychoanalysts. Part of his thesis is that the essence of psychoanalysis is its method. It is a beautiful method, making it possible for patients to have the freedom to discover and get to know their inner world of experience, so that they can understand how they construct their reality and who they really are. All methods of control and domination are antithetical to that essence. Moreover, the exercise of power and indoctrination is a violation of an individual's personal dignity and humanity, whether in psychotherapy or in everyday life. As such an exercise of power enters therapeutic work, the patient becomes compliant to being controlled and loses touch with the creativity of the dreaming mind. The first part of this book defines the field of inquiry; which is the covert influence on and control of other people's mental lives, often carried out unconsciously. This list includes gas lighting, which induces self-doubt through shame, guilt, and fear, and substitutes the views of the gas lighter for those of the victim; brainwashing, which is similar; and methods such as questioning, intimidation, confrontation, indoctrination, and behavior modification. Most of these techniques have the intended effect of gaining control over the patient's mind, Dorpat writes, and are abusive, antitherapeutic, and contrary to the spirit of psychoanalysis. His evidence makes it apparent just how commonplace and serious they are. In Chapter Two, Dorpat details the intrusion of gas lighting into psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and its grave effects in restricting patients' capacity to think and in bringing about depresses moods and even suicidal depression. Dorpat introduces the reader to gas lighting in its sinister, deliberate forms, in cults and totalitarian regimes. Dorpat shows the parallel between the cult's brainwashing techniques on the one hand, and pressures too often imposed in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, on the other. He describes actual cults that have sprung up among therapists and analysts, groups known to have violated personal and sexual boundaries of patients and colleagues. The second section of the book contains its main thrust: the many ways that psychotherapy has succumbed. Dorpat's thorough review of relevant literature and of his own original studies sets the stage for the presentation of his evidence about brainwashing in the consulting room. His material is convincing, and it has the effect of making readers more conscious of pitfalls of control in their own practices and teaching of analysis. There are many surprises in reading Gas lighting. One discovers that there are a lot of opportunities to commit a breach of the patient's freedom of thought, even with the most constructive intentions. The elementary prototype of such a breach described by Dorpat is the analyst who offers interpretation, often on scanty evidence, and, if the patient does not accept it, regards the patient's objection as "resistance", after which the analyst spends the rest of the hour attempting to overcome this resistance. The methods of overcoming it are very often some form of gas lighting, i.e., getting such patients to doubt their ability to understand what is, after all, unconscious, so that they submit to the analyst's "insight", although that insight is often based on conjecture. Dorpat lovingly describes the heart of psychoanalytic work , as he conceptualized it, as fostering the analysand's freedom to know his or her own thoughts and have free association, with an emphasis on freedom. The author is able to demonstrate the immediate and long range effects of breaches of the patient's freedom of thought and of trust in the patient's own mental activity. The effect, which he demonstrates through vignettes, is that those breaches shut down the patient's creative thinking and bring about mechanical and depressed responses, which fail to advance the analysis. The very last chapter is especially noteworthy. Dorpat reminds the reader of the kind of give and take that makes up the psychoanalytic process. It is one in which openness and safety engenders the appearance of primary process derivatives or thoughts arising from the dreaming part of the mind as responses to interpretations. These expressions, when understood, inform the analytic couple of the deeper effects of an interpretation, regardless of what verbal statement the patient might have made upon hearing it. Dorpat suggests that this is a criterion for freedom rather than control; responses that are primary process derivatives provide evidence that psychoanalysis is taking place, rather that creation of a cul-de-sac caused by gas lighting. The author painstakingly and vividly portrays damage to the psychoanalytic method caused by covert control and indoctrination , especially gas lighting , which discredits the patient's mental capacities and constricts his or her ability to think freely. Yet such modalities are tempting because of the analyst's desire for security and effectiveness; and they are so easy to rationalize or overlook. Dorpat's work stands as a reminder of the vital importance to analytic work of a free and open channel of exploration into the deepest recesses of the psyche.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The book about lemon therapists., December 27, 2003
This review is from: Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis (Hardcover)
If you have concerns about therapy this book may help you to recognize if a particular therapist is not good for you. And if you no longer trust therapists, this may restore your confidence. Believe it or not, mind control techniques are used by SOME therapists, it is not appropriate and it is NOT therapy! This book examines therapists who do not understand the patient, therapists themselves who are extremely invested in their own rigid perceptions due to subconscious motives. These therapists can cement dependency into a patient to continue treatment and even incapacitate a clients correct judgment to find a better therapist. Real, competent therapy does not restrict and confine the mind. This book exposes a bad therapist for what one is. A bad therapist is one without the expertise to treat a particular person, but rather than referring a client to another therapist, they instead control, destabilize, and eventually make a naive client conform to be a patient that fits their expertise!
My personal experience is described perfectly by Dorpat: the therapist my very dysfunctional parents sent me to early in adolescence. Even though I was the sane one in the family, that therapist wrongly believed the parents, failed to grasp the truth of the situation, and proceeded to break down my healthy and very appropriate defenses (called it "resistance"), and invited self-doubt, fear and uncertainty to invade (called it improvement). The effects of his incapacitating "anti-therapy" gave my sadistic and dominating parents even more freedom to control, shame and intimidate me. That therapist's work really did turn me into a patient, and I became the defenseless work slave on a farm which was exactly what my sadistic parents wanted. My peers at school that I should have gained strength from distanced themselves from me, that therapist was setting me up to be his life-long meal-ticket. Not realizing the true cause of my difficulties, I returned to that monster over and over! When I finally decided leave years later because inside I felt like an empty void due his "therapy", he asked me if I was "cured"!
Much later I found a real therapist and recovered my "self" from that truly incompetent and manipulative therapist, never mind the parents. During that time, this book was vindication and put me far ahead in describing what was going on then - it was twisted un-therapy! Incompetent professionals (of all types) can be very good at covering up their flawed work and keeping the victim from recognizing the truth while continuing to benefit financially. And also tragically, victims are likely to be victimized again by other incompetents and opportunists. Among the examples Dorpat examines are two cases from Freud which are real horror stories of failed therapy. So Freud wasn't perfect. But Dorpat shows that the pattern of the failed therapy has been consistent from the beginning.
That said, I found the writing style to be well flowing and reasonably well organized. The book includes many references to other writers on the subject. There seems to be some repetition of ideas, but I found in this case it was actually good for understanding the concepts and seeing the theme as a whole. To compliment this book, I recommend reading about "countertransference" and "narcissism".
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for anyone involved in therapy., December 24, 2004
This review is from: Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis (Hardcover)
This is the most insightful book on psychoanalytic theory I have ever read. There is a modern tragedy occurring in psychotherapeutic offices throughout the land. Many patients are being treated as sick and diseased human beings who are for all practical purposes irretrievably abnormal. The thesis of this work is that psychotherapy can only be successful when the patient is treated as an equal. This is a very profound statement.
Many patients enter treatment with the unconscious belief that they are flawed, that their perceptions are grossly distorted, and in fact the therapists are happy to confirm this by enforcing their rigid theories of the patients unconscious on the patient. The therapist claims access to a completely undistorted view of reality that the patient is lacking (thus "flawed").
Dorpat astutely recognizes the importance of Weiss proposal that "psychopathology stems from unconscious pathogenic beliefs of the dangers if the patient were to pursue certain important goals."
This is an amazing work that should be of central importance to anyone involved in any way with psychotherapy (students, teachers, therapists, patients, etc.).
The cover of the book touched me only after I had read it. A person on the cover is depicted as being choked by a hateful, angry person, and this is exactly what happens all too often in psychotherapy (though unconsciously).
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