Psychotherapy and its Discontents: I Have Always Promised You a Rose Garden

“Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star...
'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?'—thus asks the last man, and
he blinks...'We have invented happiness'—say the last men, and they blink.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In the novel “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, the psychotherapist Dr. Fried
admits to her patient Deborah: “I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you
perfect justice [...] and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is so that you can be
free to fight for all of those things. The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being
free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose
garden world of perfection is a lie... and a bore, too!”. The psychotherapeutic goals of some
contemporary psychological treatments are very different from the ones mentioned by Dr. Fried,
by promising complete happiness, an increase of productivity, and the adaptation of individuals
to a society of tireless production and consumption. Psychotherapeutic practices are based on the
prescription of generalized therapeutic interventions such as practical behavioral skills and tools
reminiscent of a market mentality which are superficial, simplistic, impersonal, generalized, and
massified. Such aims of cure and therapeutic practices do not require the subjective implication
of clinicians nor patients in treatment. And most importantly, there is a denial of the
unconscious, as well as the need for personal meaning.

Health care, psychology, and psychotherapy exist within specific cultural, historical,
socio-economic and political conditions. Although these disciplines attempt to present
themselves as neutral and purely scientific they are moral discourses. Modern psychology started
during the industrial revolution and with the aid of statistics and controlled laboratorial
experiments it began to study, isolate, measure, catalog, categorize, and collect psychological,
demographic, and economic data. The measurement of individuals, their behavior and
psychological characteristics allowed the state and organizations to rank individuals according to

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several attributes such as intelligence, agreeableness, attitudes, openness, resilience, motivation,
conscientiousness, and personality. As psychology separated from philosophy and became an
independent discipline, the interest shifted from understanding human nature, the search for
meaning, and the attempt to find what the good life is, into the measurement, categorization,
ranking, surveillance, engineering, control, and pathologization of human life. This significant
shift became more explicit in 1913 when the father of behaviorism John Watson defined
psychology as “… a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal
is the prediction and control of behavior”. Following a positivistic and scientific approach to the
world, the goal of contemporary psychology is to discover universal laws of behavior, treatment,
and cure that can be applied to everyone at all circumstances. Hence the focus on quantitative
research, empiricism, and pragmatism with a dismissal of context, culture, interconnectedness,
and complexity in life. With the reduction of the subject to measurable quantitative external
behavior determined by the environment, or the view of subjects as cognitive modules that
process computational cognitions, psychology etymologically defined as the logos of the psyche
has in fact lost its soul.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Still Life with Roses (1882)

As psychology separated from philosophy and became an independent discipline, the

interest shifted from understanding human nature, the search for meaning, and the
attempt to find what the good life is, into the measurement, categorization, ranking,
surveillance, engineering, control, and pathologization of human life.

Capitalism is not only an economic system but also a discourse with specific types of
subjectivities, social bonds, and relationships, The world for capitalism is a concrete material
commodity defined by its monetary value in the market place. The well adapted individual to
capitalism considers the ethical good to be whatever is profitable; is focused on productivity and
achievement as life goals; has a happy, “go-getter”, and optimistic attitudes towards life; is
distrustful of secrets and values communication and transparency; values autonomy and
individualism over community life and solidarity; has a liquid self and is adaptable to the
changing markets; is not attached to ideals, place, and others; values hyper rationality; prioritizes
action over thinking, reflection, or contemplation; needs certainty and abhors uncertainty; values
materialistic realism over fantasy, myth, or narrative, etc. Relationships and social bonds in
capitalism are based on utilitarian ends to exploit value from others, or to compete with others
for status and existing resources. This view of subjectivity and relationships is in contrast with
the psychoanalytical notion of human nature defined by the unconscious, interdependency, the
infantile, the primacy of emotional life, desire, and fantasies.

For the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, lack (manque) is at the center of being. Not just a
lack for something, but a lack of being itself in a way that there is no ground for the subject to
stand on. And it is because we lack that we can desire, as desire is the consequence of being
lacking beings. Because we have an unconscious, we are divided subjects who will always feel
alienation, unease, doubt, angst, and something other inside ourselves which escapes and defies
the willful control and full understanding of the ego. Capitalism attempts to persuade us into
believing that the reason why we suffer is not because we ontologically lack and have an
unconscious, but because we are abnormal, defective, and haven’t found yet the right market
product or solution for our misery. Consequently, what capitalism promises us is to fill our lack

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and discontent by offering us the illusion of generalized, massified, and impersonal solutions to
our problems which can be bought in the marketplace.

How does psychotherapy consider questions of suffering and cure in times of

neoliberalism and capitalism? Precisely in the same way as any other products available in the
market with a promise of guaranteed results. Some psychotherapies in the 21st century are
aligned with the discourse of capitalism because they have adopted a market solution mentality
promising cure as complete happiness, productivity, and control, through the removal of
suffering, lack, and the unconscious. Some psychotherapists advertise their profile and services
to potential patients on psychotherapy online directories and websites. On such websites, most
psychotherapists state their therapeutic goals by promising to their potential patients: “you will
change your life”, “you will live a happy, healthy, and successful life”, “you will live life to the
fullest”, “you will achieve inner peace”, “you will learn new coping skills to cope more
effectively”, “you will live the life you have always been hoping for”, “you will achieve all of
your goals and dreams”, “you will envision a life free of the influence of symptoms and anxiety”,
“start you healing journey and change your life”, “you will become empowered”, “to embody
your true authentic nature”, “become in complete control of your life”, “stop procrastination and
become more productive”, etc. But how can one offer guarantees in psychotherapy? Moreover,
such promises are focused on strengthening the narcissistic ego ideal and its control, i.e., to
restore the ego as the master in its own house, and not so much on the exploration of the internal
world and meaning. However, the truth is that there are very few guarantees in psychotherapy
and in life.

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Alex Nabaum (from The Wall Street Journal).

Some psychotherapies in the 21st century are aligned with the discourse of capitalism
because they have adopted a market solution mentality promising cure as complete
happiness, productivity, and control, through the removal of suffering, lack, and the
unconscious.

Have psychotherapists become technicians rather than the experts of the soul? A
psychotherapist once told me, “I have a toolbelt with a set of tools that I use to solve any
diagnoses that my clients bring me. I have tools to cure anxiety, depression, ADHD, you name
it!”. Advice such as “Practice mindfulness three times a week”, “Develop a good sleep hygiene”,
“Do your daily journaling”, “Meditate once a day”, “Go for long walks”, “Go to the gym three

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times a week”, “Practice healthy anger”, are some of the usual treatment prescriptions offered by
some of today’s psychotherapists. While some of these skills and activities can be helpful to
some extent, it is easy to see how they have very little to do with any psychological principles.
Moreover, they are concrete, superficial, simplistic, generalist and impersonal, and do not foster
personal exploration nor questioning of self and symptoms. Also, they do not focus on the
relationship between psychotherapist and patient. In fact, the subjectivity of the psychotherapist
such as personal history, bias, expectations, emotions, countertransference, stereotypes, conflicts,
etc. is often perceived as an extraneous variable which could negatively interfere with treatment
and ideally should be removed out of the treatment. The ideal therapeutic work alliance for the
“toolbelt fixing mentality” and “guaranteed results” psychotherapies would be between a dead
psychotherapist who follows and applies standardized treatment plans provided by protocols and
guidelines, and a dead patient who remains a passive and docile recipient of the
psychotherapist’s knowledge and expertise.

It is understandable that psychotherapists live in a competitive economy. As Max Webber

stated, when one is living in capitalism one needs to comply with the capitalistic ethic.
Moreover, the competition for attracting patients is fierce: Fellow clinicians, other mental health
disciplines, the medicalization of mental health care, life coaches, large corporations that mass
recruit psychotherapists to offer psychotherapy on a as needed basis (the uberization of
psychotherapy), and more recently AI chat bots, apps, and scripts that provide free or cheaper
psychotherapy. Perhaps under Spencer’s rule of “the survival of the fittest”, psychotherapists are
under the pressure to adapt their promises of cure and psychotherapeutic methods to the demands
and standards of the market, promising patients to be better adapted to a capitalistic and
competitive society by becoming happier, functional, more individualistic, and more productive.
How many patients would a psychotherapist attract by describing the treatment goals as Freud
once stated, as to achieve ordinary unhappiness, meaning the transformation of neurotic misery
into ordinary unhappiness? Certainly none. Nevertheless, the problem with psychotherapeutic
promises of turning life into a rose garden devoid of suffering is that it often results into
unfulfilled promises, causing further disappointment and frustration. When treatment fails
clinicians blame patients by categorizing them as defiant or treatment resistant. And patients
become upset and disillusioned and continue the search for a different psychotherapist or

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impersonal solution, only for the same cycle to be repeated ad aeternum. No wonder that
depression, states of emptiness, and burnout are some of today’s dominant mental health
problems.

The Therapist, 1937 by Rene Magritte

The ideal therapeutic work alliance for the “toolbelt fixing mentality” and
“guaranteed results” psychotherapies would be between a dead psychotherapist who

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follows and applies standardized treatment plans provided by protocols and guidelines,
and a dead patient who remains a passive and docile recipient of the psychotherapist’s
knowledge and expertise.

Contemporary psychology and psychotherapies are aligned with a neoliberal and

capitalistic view of self as hyper rational, objective, measurable, concrete, exteriorized,
individualistic, mechanical, predictable, and controllable. It is important for the psychological
sciences to maintain a subversive, disruptive, and critical stance towards dominant and
hegemonic discourses in society with its demands for keeping the status quo and adaptation.
Contemporary psychotherapies present as natural and scientific, however they clearly have
values such as clarity, activity, speed, concreteness, solutions, practicality, realism, efficiency,
systematization, functioning, adaptation, and parsimony. Under this view, the psychotherapy
process appears to be a mathematical, instrumental, efficient, predictable, painless, cost-
effective, and uncomplicated removal of symptoms and installment of happiness and
productivity. Perhaps psychology and psychotherapies could retain something more from
philosophy and other disciplines from the humanities, in helping us to understand that life is
indeed tragic. Cushman & Gilford argue that psychotherapies should adopt a hermeneutic
perspective and understand humans as moral and historical beings, rather than computational
machines that can be optimized and upgraded through therapeutic technical procedures. This
hermeneutic perspective would foster a genuine conversation between clinicians and patients,
encouraging a moral discourse that would encourage an encounter with mortality and an
examination of the moral trajectory of one’s life. Hopefully such approach would bring a re
enchantment to psychology and psychotherapies, allowing us include mystery, meaning,
uncertainty, the unconscious, complexity, and depth back into our psyches.

Note: Psychology and psychotherapy is a diverse field of theories and practices. This critique is
more or less applicable to the different models and theories.

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References:
Cushman, P., & Gilford, P. (2000). Will Managed Care Change Our Way of Being?. The
American psychologist, 55(9), 985–996

Green, H. (1964). I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Signet: New York.

Lacan, J (1998). The Seminar Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the
Technique of
Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roberts, R. (2015). Psychology and Capitalism: The Manipulation of the Mind. Zero Books, Uk.

Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology As The Behaviorist Views It. Psychological Review, 20(2),
158–177.