After slogging through Freud's main concepts and principles, my students have sometimes asked me (in a somewhat exasperated tone) why he became so popular in the US. I have never been able to give them an answer that satisfied me. But a recent article by Eric Caplan (1998) has provided a plausible answer that might even have the added advantage of being correct. I thought I would share it with you. The article also helped me to better understand the emergence and rapid rise of psychotherapy in the US. Since the scientific merit of psychotherapy has been a topic discussed in depth on this list, I thought that some of you might like to hear Caplan's ideas about why psychotherapy became so popular so quickly in the US. Caplan argued that a proto-psychotherapeutic program called the "Emmanuel Movement," founded in Boston in the first decade of the 20th century, was the primary impetus for the rapid rise of psychotherapy after this time. This movement began as: "a local cooperative venture between Boston physicians and Episcopalian ministers ... [which] began as an experiment in public health that aimed to provide impoverished victims of neurasthenia and other functional nervous disorders with a "fusion of religious faith and scientific knowledge." (p. 290) The movement got its name from its association with the Emmanuel Church. The program was started in 1906 by Elwood Worcester (the chief rector of the Church) and Samuel McComb (Worcester's assistant) with the help of neurologists (such as J. J. Putnam) and other physicians. Worcester claimed that the movement was born from a suggestion made to him by S. Weir Mitchell that there be a ministerial/medical alliance for promoting psychotherapy. The therapeutic program's main goal was the treatment of "functional" (nonorganic) disorders with a combination of religious guidance and health-related advice based in the research findings of medicine and academic psychology. The program was an instant success and, because of a great deal of favorable publicity and proselytizing, it quickly spread to several urban churches in the eastern and midwestern US. Within two years, however, the Emmanuel Movement had been ravaged by attacks from physicians on the one hand, who saw it as an encroachment by nonmedical practitioners into a potentially lucrative health-related market, and from clerics on the other hand, who saw the movement's leaders as promoting religion for its health benefits. Although it did not last long, Caplan argued that the Emmanuel Movement initiated an explosion of interest in psychotherapy: "More than any other single factor, the Emmanuel Movement not only raised the American public's awareness of psychotherapy but also compelled the American medical profession to enter a field that it had long neglected" (p. 290; on p. 292, he repeated this sentence verbatim). In fact, the Emmanuel Movement made psychotherapy almost a household word among many Americans. As for American physicians, although "mental healing" had had a very bad reputation (because of movements such as Christian Science and New Thought), the Emmanuel Movement was to change all that. Before the movement, neurologists and others treating "mental disorders" (I know this term is anachronistic here) accepted a somatic approach to the treatment of functional disorders. For these medical practitioners: "what came to be known as psychotherapy seemed at best superfluous and at worse thoroughly misguided. The overwhelming majority of American physicians, regardless of their school or specialty, had ceased even to consider the possibility that psychological factors might play a role in exciting, maintaining, or treating mental and nervous disorders. (p. 291) But, according to Caplan, the economic potential of talking therapy made evident by the success of the Emmanuel Movement, as well as its apparent territorial encroachment on what soon was perceived to be a medical specialty, moved physicians to take a long hard look at how mental healing might be given a scientific basis: "By offering a professionally sanctioned and scientifically respectable alternative to the various lay mental healing therapies that predominated the popular cultural landscape, American physicians hoped to secure a dominant position in a market that they had long neglected. In the long term, they failed. Medical enthusiasm for psychotherapy did little to dampen interest in alternative therapies.... The market was simply too unwieldy to be dominated by a single player.... In the short term, however, medical proponents of psychotherapy....created a viable cultural space for a new type of psychotherapy. (p. 306) Caplan argued that this medical reaction to the Emmanuel Movement added a great deal of fuel to the Freudian fire that began with Freud's lectures at Clark University in 1909, soon after the downfall of the Movement. These lectures were well-received by both academics and the wider public; and Freud's ideas became widely known because of a large number of favorable lectures and articles on his work that soon appeared in both scholarly and popular publications: "The fundamentally positive reception of psychoanalysis in the United States during the second decade of the twentieth century was largely attributable to a host of factors that had little to do with the substance of Freud's theories. The allure of psychoanalysis derived in large measure from the unprecedented combination of popular and professional enthusiasm for mental therapeutics that existed at the time of its introduction in the United States. Had Freud delivered his lectures just 3 years earlier..., chances are great that they would have received little fanfare. But by standing on the modest shoulders of Worcester and McComb, Freud received far more than an honorary degree from Clark University.... His ideas, modified though they may have been, rapidly spread across an entire continent. (pp. 306-07) I know what you relevancy freaks are thinking: what does psychoanalysis have to do with psychology? Thanks, anyway, for giving me the opportunity to summarize the main points of the article. It helps me to understand and remember them better; and perhaps the information might be useful to you in your professing. Jeff Ricker Scottsdale Community College Scottsdale AZ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reference: Caplan, E. (1998). Popularizing American psychotherapy: The Emmanuel Movement, 1906-1910. _History of Psychology_, _1_, 289-314. Caplan also wrote a book that I want to read (just like his article, it's also got a colon in the title, so you just know it's got to be good! I would like all TIPSters to promise that they will never, ever, ever again use a colon in the title of something they publish. OK? OK?!!!!? And I'm very sorry about that subject heading: oops, did it again...I think we all should take a verbal enema and clear those colons out). Caplan, E. (1998). _Mind games: American culture and the birth of psychotherapy_. Berkeley: University of California Press.
