The Therapy Industry

Across the world anxiety, stress and depression are on the increase, a trend which looks set to continue as austerity measures bite. The official response tells people that unhappiness is just a personal problem, rather than a social one. This book offers a concise, accessible and critical overview of the world of psychological practice in Britain and the USA. Paul Moloney argues that much therapy is geared towards compliance and acceptance of the status quo, rather than attempting to facilitate social change. This book fundamentally challenges our conceptions of happiness and wellbeing. Moloney argues that therapeutic and applied psychology have little basis in science, that their benefits are highly exaggerated and they prosper because they serve the interests of power.

Almost weekly, the news is full of stories about disappearing retail chains. From House of Fraser and BHS to Toys'R'Us and Sears, recognised names are vanishing overnight – as such large organizations disappear, so the malls, shopping centres, high streets and main streets become emptier and less appealing to visit. The retail sector is hugely important in terms of job numbers: in the US, it employs around 30 million people (directly and indirectly); in the UK, around 10 million. As such, anything that jeopardises the retail sector will have a deep and lasting impact on millions of lives, as well as on public policy. While many blame the 'Amazon effect', this is an oversimplification. Deeper forces are at work that are changing people's relationships with brands, the balance of power between producers and consumers, and the whole nature of the supply chain that has existed since the industrial revolution. Retail Therapy offers a comprehensive analysis of these forces and their impact on the world of retailing. More importantly, it presents a cogent analysis of the longer term trends that are shaping retailing, and outlines a clear road map for sustainable success in the future.

Is it possible to effect deep, lasting, meaningful psychological change in a short period of time?

This book provides a scholarly yet accessible approach to critical psychology, specifically discussing therapeutic practices that are possible outside of the mainstream psychology industry. While there are many books that deconstruct or dismantle clinical psychology, few provide a compendium of potential alternatives to mainstream practice. Focusing on five main themes in reference to this objective: suffering, decolonization, dialogue, feminism and the arts, these pages explore types of personal inquiry, cultural knowledge or community action that might help explain and heal psychological pain beyond the confines of the therapy room. Chapters focus on the role of cultural knowledge, including spiritual traditions, relational being, art, poetry, feminism and indigenous systems in promoting healing and on community-based-initiatives, including open dialogue, justice-based collaboration and social prescribing. Beyond the Psychology Industry will be of interest to researchers, clinical psychologists, therapists, academics in mental health, and cultural psychologists.

Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Sides of Science and Therapy explores the dark sides of psychology, the science that penetrates almost every area of our lives. It must be read by everyone who has an interest in psychology, by all those who are studying or intend to study psychology, and by present and potential clients of psychotherapists. This book will tell you which parts of psychology are supported by scientific evidence, and which parts are simply castles built on sand. This is the first book which comprehensively covers all mistakes, frauds and abuses of academic psychology, psychotherapy, and psycho-business.

Dr. Tana Dineen, after thirty years in the profession, has written an unflinching critique of Psychology. Manufacturing Victims, now fully revised and updated, has been heralded as an expose of the way the discipline has become corrupted by the vested interests of its practitioners. Book jacket.

Drawing on scientific evidence and common sense, the authors reveal how "therapism" and the trauma industry pervade society. They demonstrate that "talking about" problems is no substitute for confronting them.

In this ground-breaking and highly controversial book, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attacks the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from Freud to Jung, from Fritz Perls to Carl Rodgers. With passion and clarity, Against Therapy addresses the profession's core weaknesses, contending that, since therapy's aim is to change people, and this is achieved according to therapist's own notions and prejudices, the psychological process is necessarily corrupt. With a foreword by the eminent British psychologist Dorothy Rowe, this cogent and convincing book has shattering implications.

A hard-hitting critique of how managed care and the selective use of science to privilege quick-fix therapies have undermined in-depth psychotherapy—to the detriment of patients and practitioners In recent decades there has been a decline in the quality and availability of psychotherapy in America that has gone largely unnoticed—even though rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are on the rise. In Saving Talk Therapy, master therapist Dr. Enrico Gnaulati presents powerful case studies from his practice to remind patients and therapists alike how and why traditional talk therapy works and, using cutting-edge research findings, unpacks the problematic incentives in our health-care system and in academic psychology that explain its decline. Beginning with a discussion of the historical development of talk therapy, Dr. Gnaulati goes on to dissect the factors that have undermined it. Psychotropic drugs, if no longer thought of as a magical cure, are still over-prescribed and shunt health-care dollars to drug corporations. Managed-care companies and mental health “carve outs” send health-care dollars to administrators, drive many practitioners away, and over-burden those who remain. And drawing back the curtains on CBT (cognitive behavior therapy), Dr. Gnaulati shows that while it might be effective in the research lab, its findings are of limited use for the people’s complex, real-world emotional problems. Saving Talk Therapy is a passionate and deeply researched case for in-depth, personally transformative psychotherapy that incorporates the benefits of an evidence-based approach and psychotropic drugs without over-relying on them.

“A warm, profound and cleareyed memoir. . . this wise and sympathetic book’s lingering effect is as a reminder that a deeper and more companionable way of life lurks behind our self-serious stories."—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times Book Review A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think. In The Zen of Therapy, Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the incidental details of a given hour, his Buddhist background influences the way he works. Meditation and psychotherapy each encourage a willingness to face life's difficulties with courage that can be hard to otherwise muster, and in this cross-section of life in his office, he emphasizes how therapy, an element of Western medicine, can in fact be considered a two-person meditation. Mindfulness, too, much like a good therapist, can “hold” our awareness for us—and allow us to come to our senses and find inner peace. Throughout this deeply personal inquiry, one which weaves together the wisdom of two worlds, Dr. Epstein illuminates the therapy relationship as spiritual friendship, and reveals how a therapist can help patients cultivate the sense that there is something magical, something wonderful, and something to trust running through our lives, no matter how fraught they have been or might become. For when we realize how readily we have misinterpreted our selves, when we stop clinging to our falsely conceived constructs, when we touch the ground of being, we come home.