Shrinks faced with magnifying crises

VIENNA, JULY 19: Psychiatrists already have a name for the psychiatric syndrome that leaves some cyberjunkies feeling isolated and disori...

VIENNA, JULY 19: Psychiatrists already have a name for the psychiatric syndrome that leaves some cyberjunkies feeling isolated and disoriented after a long day of net-surfing: Internet Dependency Syndrome.

Anyone who voluntarily spends more than 38 hours a week at the computer, said specialists at the second international psychotherapy conference in Vienna, probably has a problem.

And that8217;s just one of the new challenges facing psychotherapists on the threshold of the third millennium. What kind of self-image or identity will human clones have? What sort of self-image will we have when a changing world economy forces us to scratch out our living from an ever-changing series of jobs in a shadowy sub-economy?

Just as there are psychiatric disorders a-plenty, so are there plenty of different types of therapy 8212; some 600 in all. Psychologist Eva Jaeggi from Berlin8217;s Technical University estimates that three times more people turn to questionable spiritual therapists and feel-good healers than torepresentatives of the generally recognised schools of psychiatric thought.

Generally, those are people looking for guarantees and absolute certainty, not for ways to deal with life and uncertainty.

So many people are lined up at the world8217;s spiritual filling stations, hoping to talk or paint or dance out all their troubles, that the psychotherapists themselves need help 8212; their self-confidence has taken a beating.

Therapists probably can8217;t influence the course of world events, Swiss existence analyst Gian Condrau said during the five-day conference. In fact, he said, the whole conference 8212; an assembly of 4,500 experts from around the world 8212; would hardly make a ripple in the outside world. Psychologists from Yugoslavia and neighbouring countries admitted that the political steamrollers in the Balkans had rolled right over them during the Kosovo crisis. All they can do now, they said, is try to patch up the damage left by intolerance, prejudice and propaganda.

Story continues below this ad

8220;A psychotherapist8217;s job is to help apatient gain control of his personal psychological territory,8221; said Stephan Rudas, head of Vienna8217;s psycho-social service. Sticking with the military analogies, Congress President Alfred Pritz called psychotherapists a 8220;peace-keeping force for the spirit, a sort of personal liberation movement.8221;

In any event, psychotherapists 8212; 8220;mercenary sanitation workers cleaning up the world8217;s spiritual garbage,8221; as the Austrian magazine Profil called them 8212; have come a long way from the purely research-oriented work of psychotherapy8217;s founding father, Sigmund Freud.