Granta 174: Therapy

When Sigmund Freud died, Auden wrote ‘he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion.’ Something similar could be said for therapy today. We live in a therapeutic age. It is generally accepted that the world of subconsciousness plays into all of our thoughts and actions, and that, in the hands of experts, it can be directed along more fruitful pathways. But as a science and a practice, therapy has always been fraught with dilemmas and crises. It has been bound up with power and manipulation, though its finest practitioners and participants counter that it contributes to human liberation.

This issue of Granta explores all of these dimensions of therapy. We do so in a lay register, in the tradition of clear, literary writers about therapy and psychoanalysis, from (former Granta contributing editor) Janet Malcolm to Christopher Bollas, from Adam Phillips to Jacqueline Rose. Topics will include ‘celebrity’ therapists, therapists on trial, and the history of concepts like anxiety and transference, as well as new types of therapy such as EMDR.

One of the most common criticisms of much contemporary therapy is that it originated in quite specific contexts and classes and that it depoliticises its audience. In order to address this concern, the issue moves well outside therapy as it’s practiced the Anglosphere into how therapy works in societies like China, Argentina, Albania, and beyond.

Author Biography

Thomas Meaney is the editor of Granta. He has reported for the New Yorker and Harper’s magazine, and contributes regularly to the London Review of Books. In 2022, he received the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.