OME years ago I heard the following verses from Finian's Rainbow: S When a rich man gambles on a horse, He's a 6on uiuunt. When a poor man gambles on a horse, He's a gambler, he's a loafer, He's a reason for divorce.When a rich man chases after dames, He's a man about town. When a poor man chases after dames, He's a lazy good-for-nothing And a lot of dirty names.At the time, I was reminded of a passage in Freud, in which he made a similar observation. The compulsive gambler and Don Juan, he said, was indulgently received as a sportsman and dilettante while the poor man who gambled and whored was condemned as a delinquent and adulterer. I t struck me then that the founder of the amoral concept of psychotherapy was keenly aware of the role of values in the social appraisal of personality disorder. On some occasions he also commented on the importance of values in the development of neuroses. In his example of the difference between the daughter of the superintendent on the ground floor and the daughter of the family on the first floor, he indicated his perception that the life of a sheltered well-to-do girl tended to alienate her from important aspects of her being. Nevertheless, he was steadfast in presenting the function of the therapist as a mirror of the timeless, unchanging, universal conflict between the individual and society.With the many changes in the theory of personality since Freud, the concept of the therapist as mirror has been greatly modified.
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