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Freud in the slips
By Will last year, mid-July Add your comment below
Not had time to read this, but the premise is thought-provoking and intriguing: cricket and psychoanalysis.
Today—at the start of a new Ashes series, arguably the most intense of all cricketing encounters—both long-form psychotherapy and long-form cricket seem in decline. In a quick-fix world there appears to be less tolerance for approaches—whether sporting or psychotherapeutic—that take time. In May, Chris Gayle, the West Indies’ captain, said that he “wouldn’t be so sad” if test cricket died out. Gayle, like many big stars, has made a fortune from the Indian Premier League, and clearly prefers the shorter Twenty20 game. The meagre 4,000 tickets sold for the opening day of the second test against the West Indies on 14th May seemed to indicate that English crowds, too, shared some of his feelings.
Psychoanalysis faces a different, but related dilemma. With the government pouring money into short-term psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), psychoanalytic therapies, of which psychoanalysis is the most intense and long term, are feeling threatened (see also Alexander Linklater on psychiatry, p76). This is why Brearley, who since qualifying as a psychoanalyst in 1985 has shunned the spotlight—notwithstanding his cricket writings for the Observer—has opened the door of his basement consulting room in north London on a warm spring day and agreed to open up for questioning.
Full piece in Prospect Magazine.
Tags: mike-brearley, psychoanalysis, sigmund freud |
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