Crazy Therapies
"Crazy" Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work? is a book by the psychologist Margaret Singer and the sociologist Janja Lalich. It was published by Jossey-Bass in 1996.
Content
Singer and Lalich's intended audience is psychiatric and psychotherapy patients. They discuss a list of severe warning signs that psychotherapy patients should pay attention to, regardless of the psychotherapist's credentials or reputation. They discuss these in detail and quantify them into ten classic behaviour patterns. These include potential sexual abuse; asking the patient to perform menial chores; discussing the psychotherapist's own problems in detail; asking the patient to cut off relations with friends and family; diagnosing the patient's condition before thoroughly discussing the issue; claiming the patient must be hypnotized in order to sort through past memories; treating patients as if they all have the same psychological root cause of illness; claiming to have a magical miracle technique; utilizing a checklist to find out if the patient suffers from an illness that the psychotherapist specializes in; and finally, demanding that the patient accept certain religious, metaphysical or pseudoscientific beliefs in order to continue psychotherapy. Specific therapies include those that espouse beliefs in "possession by spirit entities, past-life regression, alien abduction, Primal therapy and other unverified cathartic therapies, reparenting, rebirthing, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), facilitated communication (FC), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Neural Organization Technique (NOT) and a host of other unscientific notions".[1]
According to Singer and Lalich (1997:167), "crazy therapies" are promoted using several techniques. "One is to start a certification program soon after conjuring up a new procedure" and "another is to seduce customers with rash promises and endorsements from acolytes and sycophants." Singer and Lalich (1997:195) advise that if a therapist is saying "I don't understand it but it sure does work", that could be a red flag. "Or if he's answering your questions with a lot of jargon you don't understand, insist on straightforward explanations. Or if he's telling you that it's tried and true, do some independent research and find out what the critics are saying". "In many cases such fad therapies are promoted by people who are (1) imposing an agenda that may not fit your needs and (2) abandoning testing and science. Well meaning as they may be, remember, its your emotions and your pocketbook that are being played with".[2]
Reception
The book was reviewed by Philip Zimbardo, who wrote in Behavioral Interventions that the book revealed situations in which therapists can become "persuasive agents of destructive influence".[3]
Carroll stated that the book describes "surreal pseudoscience at its worst". He added that Singer and Lalich had helped to expose "some of the worst psychotherapy has to offer".[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b Review, Crazy Therapies, May 29, 1997, Robert Carroll.
- ^ Singer, Margaret & Janja Lalich (1997). Crazy Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work?. Jossey Bass, p167-195. ISBN 0-7879-0278-0.
- ^ Zimbardo, Philip, Behavioral Interventions, April 2001, "Crazy Therapies : What Are They? Do They Work?". Archived from the original on 2006-10-07. Retrieved 2006-10-21.
External links
- longer book review, skepdic.com
- Excerpted segment - The Therapeutic Relationship, ICSA
- v
- t
- e
- Biopsychiatry controversy
- Controversies about psychiatry
- Critical psychiatry
- Hearing Voices Movement
- History of mental disorders
- Involuntary commitment
- Involuntary treatment
- Martha Mitchell effect
- Medical ethics
- Medicalization
- Nouthetic counseling
- Outline of the psychiatric survivors movement
- Political abuse of psychiatry
- Positive disintegration
- Psychiatric survivors movement
- Psychoanalytic theory
- Recovery model
- Rhetoric of therapy
- Rosenhan experiment
- Self-help groups for mental health
- Therapeutic community
- American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization
- Aspies For Freedom
- Autism Network International
- Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
- Citizens Commission on Human Rights
- Critical Psychiatry Network
- Disability Rights International
- Hearing Voices Network
- Icarus Project
- International Disability Alliance
- Learning Disability Coalition
- Mad Pride
- MindFreedom International
- National Empowerment Center
- Radical Psychology Network
- Rehabilitation International
- Royal Association for Disability Rights
- Paranoia Network
- Soteria
- Socialist Patients' Collective
- World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
- Linda Andre
- Giorgio Antonucci
- Franco Basaglia
- Ernest Becker
- Lauretta Bender
- Richard Bentall
- Peter Breggin
- Paula Caplan
- Ted Chabasinski
- Judi Chamberlin
- David Cooper
- Lyn Duff
- Michel Foucault
- Leonard Roy Frank
- Erving Goffman
- James Gottstein
- Peter C. Gøtzsche
- Jacques Lacan
- R. D. Laing
- Peter Lehmann
- Kate Millett
- Loren Mosher
- Joanna Moncrieff
- David Oaks
- Elizabeth Packard
- Sascha Scatter
- David Smail
- Thomas Szasz
- Stephen Ticktin
- Robert Whitaker
- Against Therapy
- Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Anti-Oedipus
- Asylums
- Crazy Therapies
- Doctoring the Mind
- Interpretation of Schizophrenia
- Liberation by Oppression
- Mad in America
- Madness and Civilization
- Radical Psychology
- The Gene Illusion
- The Myth of Mental Illness
- The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise
- The Protest Psychosis
- The Radical Therapist
- We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – and the World's Getting Worse