"...many times, confused by criticism, they do not perceive wisdom. Sometimes they think that the therapist is being unreasonable by criticizing them when they have not made any mistakes, or that he overlooked something that even a wise person might overlook, or that he is indeed wiser but does not love them or hates them or envies them..."
A small excerpt from an early ancient Greek psychotherapeutic treatise. The Epicurean method of frankness, a distant ancestor of psychoanalysis, required "that everything be said by everyone," in the context of group sessions. In "On Frankness by Philodemus," we discover - albeit in fragmentary form - the psychotherapeutic method that was practiced in antiquity by the Epicureans.
"On Frankness" is one of the works of the Epicurean Philodemus, which are included in the Herculaneum Papyri; the city is located near present-day Naples. In 79 AD, it was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The countless papyri are preserved in a charred form, but with new technologies, their reading is now possible - albeit particularly laborious - and the work of restoring their texts continues, with the assistance of a multitude of specialists and scholars.
