Category: Letters To Editors

Leon Hoffman on Treating Childhood Anxiety
By Categories: Letters To Editors

Hoffman, L. (2009). Treating Childhood Anxiety. N Engl J Med 360:2475, June 4, 2009 Correspondence

To the Editor: In the editorial accompanying the report by Walkup et al., Emslie1 states, in support of randomized, controlled trials, “It appears unlikely that the majority of children with severe and persistent anxiety disorders are receiving optimal evidence-based care in the community.” I do not believe that the results reported by Walkup et al. can be generalized, in that 84% of potential subjects were excluded (3066 screened, and 488 randomly assigned to a study group), making the external validity2 of the findings doubtful.

Continue reading Leon Hoffman on Treating Childhood Anxiety

Henry J. Friedman’s on Scott Stossel’s review of American Therapy by Jonathan Engel
By Categories: Books, Letters To Editors

Click Here To Read: Henry J. Friedman’s unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times on Scott Stossel’s review in the New York Times of American Therapy by Jonathan Engel.

Click Here To Read: Still Crazy After All These Years By Scott Stossel, a review of American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States by Jonathan Engel on this website.

Click Here To Read: A Review by Joe Gartner of American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States by Jonathan Engel on this website.

Click Here to Read: Edward Lewin on Jonathan Engle’s book: American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States on this website.

Letter to the Editor about Jonathan Engel’s American Therapy by Henry J. Friedman
By Categories: Books, Letters To Editors

Upublished Letter to the Editor of the New York Times by Henry J. Friedman

To the Editor:

As a practicing psychiatrist who utilizes psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology in an effort to relieve the emotional suffering of my patients I feel a distinct need to respond   to Scott Stossel’s review of Jonathan Engel’s book, “American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States”.  Stossel   chooses to attack psychotherapy in general and psychoanalysis specifically despite the fact that Engel’s book, as described by the reviewer, is respectful of treatment and repeatedly cites psychotherapy research that supports the effectiveness of psychotherapy for a large percentage of patients.   I can only wonder   what motivates this reviewer to make unfounded statements, such as, “If it were to be conclusively demonstrated that therapy doesn’t work, therapists would be put out of business; that’s effectively what’s already happened to Freudian psychoanalysts.”. While it may be common parlance in uneducated circles to announce the death of   Freudian psychoanalysis I would expect a more informed perspective in a review published in the Sunday Times Book Review.  Stossel’s claims are entirely unfounded and appear to emerge from some hostility he   feels about psychoanalysts and psychotherapists earning a living from the work that they perform with a wide variety of patients who are, indeed, helped to live with less anxiety and despair as a result of understanding the influence of their developmental and current life environments. Continue reading Letter to the Editor about Jonathan Engel’s American Therapy by Henry J. Friedman

Letter to The Editor of the New York Times by Fred M. Sander
By Categories: Letters To Editors

Letter to The Editor of the New York Times by Fred M. Sander, published on December 19, 2008. 

To the Editor:

David Brooks summarizes the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “Outliers”: “Exceptionally successful people are not pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements.”

Mr. Brooks counters this view with the alternative hypothesis of the power of an individual’s will and capacity to focus imaginatively.

This merely restates an old question of whether leaders create their followers or the reverse. Continue reading Letter to The Editor of the New York Times by Fred M. Sander

Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain by Fern Traeger
By Categories: Letters To Editors

Unpublished Letter to the Editor by Fern Traeger:

To the Editor:
Re: “Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain” (Sunday Opinion, October 5th)

Bravo to Frank Rich who has so articulately identified one of the most disturbing aspects of Sarah Palin’s rhetoric: “A consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition.” Rich goes on to describe Charlie Gibson’s interview with Palin during which he asks her about her readiness to join McCain’s ticket, and her response that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink.”

In my professional sphere, this inflated sense of one’s abilities, inconsistent with reality, is known as mania. It is characterized by grandiosity that, in the extreme, might result in an individual jumping off a building believing he is Superman, or another bankrupting himself spending all his savings on luxuries, or someone who, as Rich points out, thinks she can be President because she wants to be President.

In the first two examples, the individual’s recklessness primarily hurts himself; the consequences of the third will be disastrous for all Americans, and will reverberate throughout the world.

Ferne Traeger
New York, October 6th, 2008