In the last chapterI outlined the physical components of fear disorders.
Now, before we look at the psychological components, I need to define a
few terms. Actually, a lot of terms.
If you thought medical concepts were confusing, you ain’t seen
nothing yet. Doctors have only to name things that are invisible to the
naked eye; psychologists have to name things that don’t even exist at all,
except in people’s imaginations. How can you expect us to agree on what
to call them? Needless to say, competing views create confusion.
There are two grand traditions in clinical psychology: psychoanalysis
and behaviorism. Each has its own language and its own way of doing
things. In the 1970s the two approaches went to war. The battleground
was the treatment of fear disorders.
Psychoanalysis started about 100 years ago when Freud discovered
the unconscious. Before that, life was pretty much what people said it was.
Afterward, everything had a manifest content—what they said—and a
latent content, what it really meant. Freud, almost single-handedly, added
Chapter 5
Storming the Tower of Psychobabble
93
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