Overview

This book is directly aimed at sufferers of mental distress. The book's aim is to remove from sufferers the burden of 'fault' for their pain and to demystify some of the practices that surround the 'treatment' of mental illness. It is not exactly a self-help book because it is a false claim of any 'treatment' of mental illness that 'cure' can be brought about by exercise of will. Much of what causes mental distress is lack of power and resource, outside the control of the sufferer. Surviving without psychotherapy involves the appreciation of several things. First, the limited nature of therapeutic assistance - whilst clarification and support may help the sufferer understand his/her predicament and encourage the use of what resources the sufferer has, therapy cannot change the distal root causes of distress. Second, that only socio-political solutions can address some of the most powerful causes of distress, e.g., redundancy, housing and poverty. In sounding a cautionary note about psychoanalysis, Smail observes that mental distress is far more about money than sex.

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9780367103439

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David Smail was a constructive critic. With finely tuned precision, he cut deeply into what is wrong with psychotherapy and, with wisdom, he pointed to another way to deal with the feelings of despair, anxiety, and depression we experience in contemporary life. He was a genuine psychologist who applied the craft skillfully. Reading what he has written is, for want of a better term, therapeutic. His books always leave me thoughtful and hopeful, comforted by the sense that here was a man who actually understood something of life and had a grasp of what happiness really means. --Dr Tana Dineen, author of Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People David Smail showed that if we want to ease our unhappiness then there is no other way but to change the world in which we live, beginning with the illusions perpetrated by the psychology industry. David's work forms a rich intellectual legacy and a testament to a man who spoke up for the most oppressed and marginalised. It will also provide a beacon for anyone who wishes to understand what is wrong with our society and to struggle towards making it a better one. David Smail's analyses, commitments and elegant prose comprise classic works in the tradition of independent scholarship. He translated the traditional assumptions of psychotherapy into the structural and situational determinants of human problems. He was a psychologist who argued against psychology and came to see the barriers to social progress institutionalized within society itself. A man of the left, he made the left less doctrinaire and more relevant. He is greatly missed. --William M. Epstein, author of Empowerment as Ceremony and Psychotherapy as Religion

""David Smail showed that if we want to ease our unhappiness then there is no other way but to change the world in which we live, beginning with the illusions perpetrated by the psychology industry. David's work forms a rich intellectual legacy and a testament to a man who spoke up for the most oppressed and marginalised. It will also provide a beacon for anyone who wishes to understand what is wrong with our society and to struggle towards making it a better one."" ""David Smail's analyses, commitments and elegant prose comprise classic works in the tradition of independent scholarship. He translated the traditional assumptions of psychotherapy into the structural and situational determinants of human problems. He was a psychologist who argued against psychology and came to see the barriers to social progress institutionalized within society itself. A man of the left, he made the left less doctrinaire and more relevant. He is greatly missed.""--William M. Epstein, author of Empowerment as Ceremony and Psychotherapy as Religion ""David Smail was a constructive critic. With finely tuned precision, he cut deeply into what is wrong with psychotherapy and, with wisdom, he pointed to another way to deal with the feelings of despair, anxiety, and depression we experience in contemporary life. He was a genuine psychologist who applied the craft skillfully. Reading what he has written is, for want of a better term, ""therapeutic."" His books always leave me thoughtful and hopeful, comforted by the sense that here was a man who actually understood something of life and had a grasp of what happiness really means.""--Dr Tana Dineen, author of Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People

David Smail was a constructive critic. With finely tuned precision, he cut deeply into what is wrong with psychotherapy and, with wisdom, he pointed to another way to deal with the feelings of despair, anxiety, and depression we experience in contemporary life. He was a genuine psychologist who applied the craft skillfully. Reading what he has written is, for want of a better term, therapeutic. His books always leave me thoughtful and hopeful, comforted by the sense that here was a man who actually understood something of life and had a grasp of what happiness really means. --Dr Tana Dineen, author of Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People David Smail's analyses, commitments and elegant prose comprise classic works in the tradition of independent scholarship. He translated the traditional assumptions of psychotherapy into the structural and situational determinants of human problems. He was a psychologist who argued against psychology and came to see the barriers to social progress institutionalized within society itself. A man of the left, he made the left less doctrinaire and more relevant. He is greatly missed. --William M. Epstein, author of Empowerment as Ceremony and Psychotherapy as Religion David Smail showed that if we want to ease our unhappiness then there is no other way but to change the world in which we live, beginning with the illusions perpetrated by the psychology industry. David's work forms a rich intellectual legacy and a testament to a man who spoke up for the most oppressed and marginalised. It will also provide a beacon for anyone who wishes to understand what is wrong with our society and to struggle towards making it a better one.

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David Smail

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