In the last week or so I have read a fair number of comments about Daphne Merkin's NY Times piece on her 40 years of psychotherapy and most of them, including my own first impression, have been at least somewhat critical of the process she has been engaged in. But in the past few days I have been thinking more about it and wondering why, given that she says she has benefitted from her treatment though she is not "cured", so many view a long experience in analysis as a failure.
What made me begin to rethink this is a conversation I had not long ao with an acquaintance who has been taking one or another antidepressant for at least 25 years. She was told by a psychiatrist at some point that she should think of her medication the way a diabetic thinks of insulin, something she will have to take for the rest of her life and she has never questioned that. There is no sense that her medication as "cured" her but she feels she benefits from it.
I know of many people like my acquaintance, people who have been and expect to remain on antidepressants for years on end. Yet no one says of them that their treatment is a failure for having gone on so many years.
So why is a period in analysis that lasts 20 years or more criticized for lasting so long while remaining on medications with questionable effectiveness is seen as good treatment?
My question on a rainy Monday morning.