The clientele of psychoanalysts are, largely, liberal members of the middle and upper-middle classes, for whom religion has ceased to play an effective role, and who have no passionately held political convictions. For them no god, emperor, pope, rabbi, or charismatic political leader fills the void. The psychoanalyst becomes a mixture of guru, scientist, father, priest, or rabbi; he does not demand hard tasks, he is friendly, he dissolves all the real problems of life—social, economic, political, religious, moral, philosophical—into psychological ones. Thus he reduces them to the status of
...more
