Two Different Views of Psychotherapy

by Joseph Shaub

As they used to tell us in high school, “compare and contrast” these two views from the bench about psychotherapy. 

First was a statement from a federal judge which was quoted Justice Trobriner of the California Supreme Court in the 1970 case In re Lifschutz, 

“The psychiatric patient confides more utterly than anyone else in the world.  He exposes to the therapist not only what his words directly express; he lays bare his entire self, his dreams, his fantasies, his sins, and his shame.  Most patients who undergo psychotherapy know that his is what will be expected of them, and that they cannot get help except on that conditions...It would be too much to expect them to do so if they knew that all they say – and all that the psychiatrist learns from what they say – may be revealed to the whole world from a witness stand.” 

Next, are the comments of Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court in his dissenting opinion in the 1996 case, Jafee v. Redmond, 

“When is it, one must wonder, that the psychotherapist came to play such an indispensable role in the maintenance of the citizenry’s mental health?  For most of history, men and women have worked out their difficulties by talking to, (among others) parents, siblings, best friends and bartenders - none of whom was awarded a privilege against testifying in court.  Ask the average citizen: Would your mental health be more significantly impaired by preventing you from seeing a psychotherapist, or by preventing you from getting advice from your mom?  I have little doubt what the answer would be.  Yet there is no mother-child privilege.”

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