Shouldn't I Be Feeling Better By Now?: Client Views Of Therapy

by Yvonne Bates (Editor)

Around one in four clients of counselling and therapy either deteriorate in treatment or show no signs of recovery. Why does therapy fail this significant proportion of vulnerable people and what can be done about it? This ground-breaking volume assembles the first ever collection of client critiques of therapy as a way of kick-starting an urgently needed debate. Including contributions from a range of internationally respected therapists, the book identifies areas of concern and seeks to provide constructive solutions for the future.

Nominated for the Mind Book of the Year Award 2006

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2005

Reviews

[Psyskeptic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an impressive collection with gripping first hand accounts of therapy gone wrong. I found myself deeply enlightened and often stunned at the often negative effects of therapy, and this was most often not even the result of overt therapist abuse. There seemed to be something inherent in the therapy itself that caused the abuse, and this book does a fantastic job of crystalizing some of the key ways this happens. The author/editor, a counselor herself, does a great job of collating the first person client narratives into a coherent whole, and her honest and searching commentary often helped clarify key points for me as the reader.

I gave the book five stars on the basis of the client accounts alone, but there were a few drawbacks I would note. First, in the rare book on client's negative experiences of therapy, every bit of writing from therapists that the editor included seemed somehow out of place and at least to me somehow annoying, e.g., chapters 14 and 15. The client viewpoints in this book are extremely refreshing and insightful reads, but aside from a few highlights (David Smail) I didn't really find the therapist's perspectives interesting or very helpful. I also felt there was a lack of accounts from clients of client-centered or other humanist-type counselors, while psychoanalysis and topics like transference are perhaps overrepresented--though, this may be a representative sample given the notorious abuse and damaging effects of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies. Also, I had known about transference before, but I have to admit I really did not understand how damaging it can be--and neither it seems did any of the therapists described.

Overall, this book really solidified to me how damaging therapy can be. Not that it's necessarily a doomed enterprise. I do think counseling can be helpful and often is, not unlike other types of faith healing. But it is also often harmful, and this is not something we hear much out of the therapy industry.

[kazerniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it as a client but it was useless to me as the essays are mostly about psychoanalytical and psychodynamic (whatever that is) therapies and all my counselling experience has been with humanistic, person-centred therapists, so I couldn't relate at all to the procedures and attitudes described in the book.

I guess this anthology is mainly targeted for therapists of directive schools.