Where the power lies in the therapist-client relationship | Letters

Oliver Burkeman (Therapy Wars, The long read, 7 January) falls into the trap of polarising the wrong point about contemporary psychotherapy. Like any pioneer, Freud made many assumptions that have since turned out to be self-interested, culture-specific or just wrong. But to write him off as a charlatan is facile. What he revealed on behalf of clients then and now is the immense transformative value of being listened to: of having our emotional histories taken seriously, empathically inquired ab