In the early 1960s, three of the world's great pioneering psychotherapists were asked to take part in a unique experiment with 'Gloria', a neurotic, pathologically single woman in her thirties who felt crippled by her fear of love, loss and rejection. Carl Rogers, Frederick Perls and Albert Ellis agreed to be filmed in one-to-one sessions with the client, during which their different therapeutic approaches could be compared.
Rogers didn't offer any advice to Gloria; he just listened. After the course of therapy, she said he would make a wonderful father. In contrast, Perls challenged her, analysing every aspect of her body language and even mimicking the way she spoke. Gloria said he was offensive, but exciting.
Finally, Ellis demonstrated a method described as 'rational emotive behaviour therapy', which he created in 1955. His technique is based on the premise that people are disturbed only by their perception of what happens to them. Also important was Ellis's personal observation that, as he told me recently, 'all human beings are out of their fucking minds. Screwballs. Every single one of them'.
How we all love a bit of therapy. In the four decades since that experiment, the market is now worth billions across the globe. In Britain alone there are a quarter of a million people offering counselling services - a ten-fold increase in the past decade - in an industry worth an estimated £15bn a year. One in five British people has had therapy or is undergoing it.
In the next few weeks, the government is expected to announce plans to act on recommendations made by Lord Layard, a Downing Street adviser, for the creation of a network of 250 independent therapy treatment centres and the recruitment of 10,000 more NHS therapists. These would be in addition to the 25,000 present members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), the main professional body for the growing army of counsellors and psychotherapists who are working in the UK.
New Year is a time when many people turn their attention inward, making grand resolutions to give up alcohol, cigarettes or slothful living. Instead, I'm starting the year in therapy, more of which later. I'm not alone. In the past week, the BACP has received about 10,000 inquiries.
'It's the busiest time of the year for people going into therapy,' said Phillip Hodson, a fellow of BACP. 'People have re-met their families, putting them back in touch with old issues and conflicts.' But is so much introspection and self-reflection a good thing? Or is the therapy culture actually making us ill?
The recent publication of Shouldn't I Be Feeling Better By Now?, a collection of people's experiences in analysis, has reignited the 'cure or con' debate. It claims that about one in four clients either deteriorates in treatment or shows no signs of recovery.
Virginia Ironside, one of Britain's best-known agony aunts, revealed that she had spent £54,000 and hundreds of hours on the couch. Her conclusion? Therapy is fraud. 'I became sucked into the destructively seductive world, always hoping I might find understanding and peace through knowing myself better,' she wrote. 'But I can't help feeling angry at being manipulated when I was at my most vulnerable into investing so much money and time in therapists who, truthfully, only made me feel worse.'
I have always been sceptical about 'therapy junkies' who spout psycho-babble as a cure for life's everyday sorrows and adversities. I tended to dismiss them as self-indulgent and narcissistic, with too much time and money on their hands and few real problems. My scepticism was based partly on my own dabbling in therapy.
My most recent encounter was some two years ago. I was suffering from nothing particularly interesting or debilitating; just the usual mixture of anxiety and fear of failure, inadequacy, loneliness and commitment. In the middle of the fifth session, the therapist yawned. When I continued spilling out my troubles, she told me I was wallowing in self-pity. My 'problems' were, it must be said, pretty trivial when compared with the difficulties facing many - compared with my 93-year-old grandmother who, at my age, was raising nine children single-handedly in a cramped Glasgow tenement while her husband fought in the last war, I had it very, very easy. Still, it didn't stop me sobbing as I stormed out of her office in disgust.
My other memorable experience of therapy happened inadvertently when I was 25 and working during a summer break in a Priory hospital for those with mentally based health problems. When I wasn't facilitating a creative writing class with a motley crew of recovering alcoholics, anorexics and agoraphobics, I was learning about cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a short-term, goal-oriented treatment that teaches people to change the way they think and feel. (Despite his inauspicious start, Albert Ellis is now regarded as one of the founding fathers of CBT.) I devoured the CBT bible, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns MD. I applied its 'coping techniques' to my perfectionism, my 'all-or-nothing' thinking, my need for approval and recognition and, for a while, I thought it was a miracle cure.
But, typically, I went too far. I thought all I needed was a positive mental attitude and a bit of perseverance to achieve success, to become a 'somebody'. I can still be a contender, I thought, deciding at 25 that I was going to become an athlete or a famous cellist. Since I had neither run nor played the cello since I was 15, it was pretty obvious to everyone (apart from me) that both these projects were doomed from day one. But it took a few years of obsessive running (but never winning) and cello recitals (but never getting a standing ovation, even from friends) to bring me to the awareness that a positive mental attitude isn't all it's cracked up to be.
So I abandoned the struggle to be 'someone' and relied instead on good books, good music, good films, good friendships and good wine to get through life. But then, four months ago, I found myself sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow in tears. It was the third time in 10 days that I had missed a flight. A few days earlier, I had narrowly escaped losing my driving licence for repeated speeding offences, and I had only recently noticed that I was the only woman I knew who was in her mid-thirties and had neither a cat, nor a partner, nor a mortgage. Much more worrying was the sudden realisation that I had been repeating a self-defeating pattern of falling in love only with men who were already in committed relationships and unavailable.
Freudians would put this down to guilt over unresolved feelings for my father. But since this is too disturbing to contemplate, I prefer to see it as a method of self-protection. It is much safer and less fraught with risk and disappointment to fall for someone who you know from the outset you can never really have.
Anyway, a good friend, and veteran of the couch, gave me the number of a respected psychoanalyst. I had a consultation and joined his waiting list. While I waited, I thought long and hard about the pros and cons. I also stumbled across an essay by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik about his experiences in analysis. During six years of twice- or thrice-weekly sessions, he learnt three memorable truths. The first was that the hard-fought struggle for the perfect world was a waste of time because 'no one really cares that much. People have troubles of their own'.
The second was that he should stop agonising and have a child because, although children try their parents' patience, they also, at the age of around three, make surprising mistakes in language that can provide great anecdotes at dinner parties. Finally, he learnt that, in retrospect, life has many worthwhile aspects. Gopnik acknowledged that his great-aunt Hannah could have told him these things, but on reflection he said that his years in therapy had been worthwhile.
Despite my reservations, last Friday I had my first session of intensive psychoanalysis. Commitment is not my strength, but I will go three times a week for at least a year.
What do I hope to achieve? Freedom from my fears? A cure for all my troubles? A recipe for happiness and a life of eternal sunshine? Not quite. Troubles are part of what it means to be alive; sadness is part of what it means to be happy. I also know that love makes the world go round, but that the opportunities to find it are relatively rare. In therapy, I would like to explore my fear of love, loss and rejection, so that the next time the chance for real love comes my way I won't let it pass me by.
Me and my therapist
Kathy Burke
The actress was surprised to find herself turning to therapy because she 'doesn't do touchy-feely'. She had 'the 30 quid an hour kind' for four months. 'I'd always been dead against therapy. From a very young age I'd learnt to put on a brave face because of losing my mum. I'd always make jokes if anybody tried to throw sympathy at me. The therapist showed me to be sad sometimes, and for other people to see that.'
Nick Hornby
Hornby's late twenties and early thirties were a low point, when he gave up teaching for a writing career. He struggled and ended up depressed and in therapy. 'That was the time I was most frightened about life. Therapy helped, because I don't think I'd have been able to write my first book without it.'
Clive Stafford Smith
The human rights lawyer, who recently described himself as 'nauseatingly happy', had therapy to try to save his first marriage. 'British people tend to think therapy is for loopy Californians, but this is often wrong. Unfortunately the philosophical differences between Cristiana and I were too wide for anyone to bridge, but it was well worth the effort.'
