About That Mean Streak

My Letter to the Editor appeared in today’s New York Times, as follows:

To the Editor:

Re “About That Mean Streak of Yours: Psychiatry Can Do Only So Much” (Feb. 6): The examples Dr. Richard A. Friedman uses to promote his view that some people “can be mean or bad just like anyone else” give psychiatry a bad name.

Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, in my experience, can help a person understand the roots of meanness, and only with such understanding is there hope for modulated change. I would ask Dr. Friedman what he means when he says that one patient had “all the benefits of an upper-middle-class upbringing?” And how did the psychotic patient happen to have the home phone number of a female resident? The vignettes do not substantiate his thesis.

Jane S. Hall
New York

The writer is the founder of the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

These types of arguments and articles unfortunately reflect poorly not only on psychiatry but on all mental health workers. As a psychoanalyst with a social work background I have treated many people whose so called “mean streaks” are wrecking their lives. Psychoanalytically-oriented work provides a deeper, broader look at why people react in “mean” ways. This off-putting attitude is a symptom of anxiety about closeness and intimacy that has become characterological and though adaptive in one way, also extremely injurious. We must speak up in support of our field and to educate the public.