This work, which questions the medical model of psychiatry as the basis of psychotherapy, seeks to help professionals return their field to an activity that is more helpful to clients, more professional, more scientific, more moral, and more psychosocial in orientation. The difficulties facing practicing psychotherapists, the causes of the problems, and a framework to guide efforts to deal with these concerns are discussed in hopes that the uneasiness of psychologists about the present direction of the field can be reduced and changed.

This volume offers a psychology of human personality and behavior created as a function of the politics practiced by the social structure in which they are based. The interaction of individuals with authoritarian/totalitarian, democratic/humanistic and anarchistic forms of politics is examined. The focus is on the particular type of politics practiced by psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, with the conclusion that these enterprises operate more along authoritarian/totalitarian than democratic/humanistic lines. Simon argues that the mental health field, as currently dominated by...