Psychotherapists Put Their Heads Together : Conference: Thousands gather in Anaheim to exchange theories on mental illness. Topics range from violence to thumb-sucking.

More than 6,000 counselors and psychologists gathered Thursday at the Anaheim Convention Center to hear some of the world’s leaders in psychotherapy discuss their disparate views of treating mental illness.

Among the luminaries here through Sunday: philosopher and psychologist Rollo May, existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who long ago knew the father of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud; sexual disorders therapist Helen Singer Kaplan; and activist Betty Friedan.

Though not a psychologist, Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women, was expected to offer a feminist perspective on psychotherapy in a keynote address scheduled for tonight, conference organizers said.

Entitled “Evolution of Psychotherapy,” this is the second international conference of its kind. The first was held five years ago in Phoenix to celebrate what would have been Freud’s 100th birthday and drew 7,000 mental health professionals from around the world.

Thursday’s conferees called this second large meeting of mental health professionals extraordinary.

“This is the most comprehensive meeting of psychotherapists in our culture,” said May, 81, who traveled from San Francisco to debate theory with colleagues, see old friends and grumble a little about younger therapists who sounded “too dogmatic.”

South African psychologist Arnold Lazarus agreed. “It’s extremely rare to get so many luminaries under one roof and so many people with divergent views.

Lazarus, who advocates “multimodal” therapy, drawing from several psychotherapeutic schools, noted that in the 1985 conference, “I came away humbled” by the great psychologists he met--including ones he did not agree with.

“Also,” he said, “last time there were many more fireworks with people exchanging uncomplimentary statements,” but “this time, it’s far more scholarly” and more polite.

For all that, Lazarus said, many of the ideas expressed here this week will probably be discredited several years from now.

In psychotherapy, “We are today where phrenology was 150 years ago,” Lazarus said, referring to the long-ago discredited “science” of determining a person’s character by analyzing the bumps and shape of his skull.

The five-day conference, which began Wednesday, is offering lectures on psychotherapeutic theory plus workshops on depression, anxiety, family violence, sexual dysfunction and recovery from childhood trauma, to name a few.

Frankl described the coping skills he used that enabled him to survive imprisonment in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. At one point, walking through snow-covered fields in shoes that had holes in them, “I was in despair,” Frankl said, but he pulled himself out by imagining “that I was standing behind a lectern,” describing the psychology of a concentration camp. He later wrote an article describing that psychology.

In between Thursday’s lectures and panel discussions, participants could grab a cup of coffee and wander through a large hall where exhibitors marketed self-help books, summer camps for drug-abusing teens and therapy “toys” for adults and children alike.

One booth was selling a “pregnancy doll” that you could stick pins in when you felt nauseated. Another was doing brisk sales in audiotapes--$9.95 a piece--to correct thumb-sucking and low self-esteem, as well as a family therapy board game that covers such issues as divorce, separation and death and is played with “coping” and “stress” cards.

Conference chairman Jeffrey Zweig, director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, said the idea of the meeting was to bring together leaders from some of the 300 distinct schools of psychotherapy around the world.

Despite its educational purpose, the conference is also fun, participants said.

“One of the luminaries (Albert Ellis, originator of rational emotive theory) just came up to me and said, ‘Let’s go to Disneyland tonight,’ ” Lazarus said.

They’ll stay off Space Mountain and the Matterhorn, Lazarus said, but otherwise it’s no holds barred.

Lazarus suggested major scientific publications should come to Disneyland with them--to take pictures of the famous psycho-therapists in their Mickey Mouse ears.