Is It Always Good to Talk?

Many modern therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, offer quick-fix results and predictable outcomes, but beyond the promise of short and localised treatments, what are they really offering - a serious analysis of human suffering or conditioning techniques designed to stifle what society refuses to recognise? To what extent can the mind be the object of external intervention? The history of mind-doctoring suggests that we preserve a certain scepticism here.

Darian Leader, psychoanalyst and author of The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression is in conversation with Lisa Appignanesi, writer, broadcaster and author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800.