Psychotherapy As Religion: The Civil Divine In America

by William M. Epstein

Psychotherapy is immensely popular in the US even though consistently ineffective because it reaffirms basic American values of self-sufficiency and individualism, argues Epstein (social work, U. of Nevada-Las Vegas). He reinterprets the research as fables--little morality tales of social instruction--and discusses the failure rate, the unreliable measurement instruments, the social role of psychotherapists, and other factors. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: Psychology, Psychiatry

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 17, 2006

Reviews

[Messina]

I haven't read this book yet, and this isn't a review so much as a note to myself which I hope that I will see at the top of the list next time I click on the link for this book. This note would be useful to me if I have forgotten why I included this book in my "want to read" list by the time I see it next.

This book was recommended to me by a member of a group I'm in on Facebook. His recommendation was in response to a post I wrote about how the common lines among therapists that "you should be the bigger person" and "you can't control what other people do, you can only control what you yourself do," may be helpful in certain situations, but I could also see how it fostered our culture's hyper-individualism, which wasn't a good thing. I also said that these lines could stand in the way of more people analyzing power dynamics from a social justice-y perspective if they were used to silence someone who was oppressed on any axis trying to speak out about this oppression. Ie. "You can't control their decision to oppress you, you can only decide to suck it up and lean in and keep going after the goalposts even if they get moved." For patients in therapy who were to take this to heart, this could stop them from realizing that maybe their time was being wasted trying to play this rigged game as it was and maybe it would be better spent working toward redefining the rules.

I'm passionate about social justice and strongly value cooperation over competition. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

I'm writing this post to express my thoughts on what I might think of the book based on the blurb they used on this post.

It says that psychotherapy isn't so much a science as it is the civil religion of America. The thought that it's the civil religion of America is one that I would be interested in reading more about.

One thing that makes me skeptical about how much I would like this book, though, is that it seems to completely value science and completely disvalue religion. I can see how religion has earned a reputation among many people as something not to be trusted, as it has certainly been used as a tool of oppression on a large scale. But it also can and occasionally has been used as a tool of liberation. I believe that science and religion are two sides of the same coin and can be used in tandem, each to provide insights that the other cannot. I don't believe that the scientific method necessarily trumps intuition, spirituality, and other more right-brained things. For example, learning that there wasn't much scientific backing for the Enneagram didn't make me any less in love with it, because I feel like I've learned more about human nature though studying it than I could have otherwise. I wonder if this book is going to debunk the Enneagram? The blurb did talk about how psychotherapy had its roots in religion and I understand that the Enneagram does as well.

So, I just wanted to record these thoughts for now in order to remind myself why I should probably check this book out at the library next time I'm there before I decide to buy it. After I have read it I can go back and edit this "review" and explain whether or not my misgivings about the book proved to be justified.