Optimism and the Self: From Mind-Cure to Psychotherapy

In his history of the first hundred years of psychotherapy, Robin. L. Cautin describes psychotherapy as ‘the treatment of emotional or physical ills by psychological means, implying a belief in the influence of the mind on the mind and of the mind on the body’.1 This is the broad definition I shall follow here, encompassing as it does the full range of psychological therapies that are promoted today. It has the advantage of including everything from full-blown psychoanalysis, which is the most open-ended and time-intensive form of therapy, to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), aimed at changing specific attitudes or behaviours within a relatively short space of time. It also has the advantage of allowing us to side-step the often fine distinctions between different forms of therapy (for example, between psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy) and to focus instead on certain elements that are common to all or most of them.2 In this way, we can avoid being too distracted by the specific theoretical or clinical orientations of these many different practitioners, whether they describe themselves as analysts, therapists or counsellors, and to focus instead on therapy as an institution and on the role it plays in the promotion of optimism.