Psychiatry and Urban Anxieties

The article was a masterful exercise in subtle demeaning of the reality of psychic pain that many individuals suffer. I do not suggest that an individual who is psychotic and homeless living in downtown alleys is less in need or deserving of psychotherapy than the “wealthy Westside matrons who love their diamonds but not their husbands.” The pain of the psyche is just as real as the pain of cancer; yet it is treated in this article as if it is a luxury of the rich and a punishment of the poor.

C.G. Jung wrote, “The world today hangs by a thin thread and that thread is the human psyche.” Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, pain, depression, psychosis, meaninglessness are not only threats to the survival of the individual, but to the world as a whole. Rather than denigrate the needs of the middle and upper economic classes for psychotherapy, we need to pay attention to developing ways of providing treatment for those who are economically deprived. Since the 1960s there has been a steady erosion of the mental health service system in California; all of us are suffering the consequences.

JEANINE A. AUGER, PhD, President

C.G. Jung Institute, Los Angeles