An Intelligent Person's Guide to Psychotherapy

by Anthony Stevens

Psychoanalysis, and its many psychotherapeutic offshoots, has been a major influence in 20th-century cultural life. Yet dynamic psychotherapy now finds itself in grave crisis as a result of the intellectual shipwreck of its founder, Sigmund Freud. Since Freud, theory has been shown to be largely without empirical basis, what is to stop the whole psychotherapeutic edifice from collapsing into the quicksands on which it is built? In this overview, Anthony Stevens describes how the major schools of psychodynamic therapy grew out of the psychology of their charismatic founders and have subsequently turned into exclusive and mutually hostile rival "sects". Stevens argues that the best hope for the future lies in research to determine the positive therapeutic ingredients that all methods have in common. This, combined with the kind of undogmatic, open-minded humanity advocated by C.G. Jung, could lead to the adoption of a new paradigm capable of transcending the differences between them - the paradigm adopted by the new breed of "evolutionary psychotherapists".

Hardcover

First published October 22, 1998

About the author

Anthony Stevens is a well known Jungian analyst and psychiatrist who has written extensively on psychotherapy and psychology.

Stevens has two degrees in psychology and a doctorate in medicine from Oxford University. He studied for a time under John Bowlby. He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists. He lectures regularly in the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere.

Stevens is the author or co-author of many books and articles on psychology, evolutionary psychiatry, Jungian analysis and the significance of archetypal imagery.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.