ACTIVE ANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MENTAL HEALTH

I show some information about the active analytic psychotherapy in simple ways to be easy to any reader understand it quickly.

Active analytic psychotherapy places the psychotherapist in the role of making the patient see his suppressed complexes through direct and purposeful interpretations. While Freud expected most enlightenment to come from his patients, Stekel found this stance to be passive and called for a more active role on the part of the analyst.

The active role was considered essential because it would shorten treatment and require that the treating physician take greater responsibility for the “cure.”

According to Stekel, the analyst was to be capable of great powers of intuition, involving direct dream analysis without assistance from

the patient. Stekel believed “it is not the method but the physician that cures.”

The thrust of Stekel’s Active Analytic Psychotherapy was to offer quickly and efficiently the findings of psychoanalysis to more and more people, so that they could indeed go on with living their lives.

Stekel referred to himself as a practical man whose treatment model was an outcome of this trait: “Freud asks himself what a case offers for science. I ask myself what science can offer for the case.” Stekel felt that the responsibility of the analyst was to educate the public by reaching as many people as possible. He is said to have treated over ten thousand patients in thirty-five years — as opposed to a Freudian analyst who would treat about 180 in thirty-five years.

Stekel was astutely aware of the role of social forces in shaping “par-apathies (his term for neuroses).

His distinction between object-sick and subject-sick patients

Intentionally moves away from a strict and unyielding focus on the intrapsychic conflicts of the person toward an awareness of the role that institutions, morality, religion, and the family (objects) play in shaping par apathy.