Behavior: A Madness in Their Method

Therapists can overwhelm patients with their own disturbances

Everyone knows that a good deal of psychotherapy does not seem to go well. What everyone does not know, says Psychoanalyst Robert Langs, is that a common factor in failed therapies is the "madness" of the therapists. Skewed treatments, he writes in a new book titled Madness and Cure (Newconcept Press; $36), can bring some measure of relief to the disturbed and often seem to effect a cure, but they can also end in "incalculable harm" to patients.

Langs, 57, the author of 20 books in the field and program director of the Psychotherapy Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New...

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