Taking Care established David Smail as an important social and political analyst whose background happened to be in clinical psychology. In this work he develops the analysis of mental illness, and psychology in general, in the contexts of society, power and interest.
People's experience is embodied in the world in which they exist. Notwithstanding the claims of some, psychology cannot, in the same way that magic cannot, change the nature of that experience fundamentally. At best, psychotherapy might provide a degree of understanding about that limitation. The historical...
Taking Care established David Smail as an important social and political analyst whose background happened to be in clinical psychology. In thi...
This work challenges the notion that anxiety and depression amount to a mental illness denoting that something is wrong with the individual sufferer. Instead, anxiety and depression are described as perfectly rational responses to difficulties in the sufferer's world, experienced subjectively by that person.
The book's primary purpose is to explain the meaning of anxiety as experienced by the sufferer. These insights also lead to a view, by way of secondary purpose, that the role of the therapist is not in -curing- the individual, but rather to negotiate demystification and to...
This work challenges the notion that anxiety and depression amount to a mental illness denoting that something is wrong with the individual sufferer. ...
It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them.
On the whole, psychology has concerned itself very little with the field of power which stretches beyond our immediate relations with each other, and this has led to serious limitations on the explanatory power of the theories it has produced. To illustrate this, typical cases of patient distress in the 1980s are examined. The decade when...
It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental po...
This book is directly aimed at sufferers of mental distress. The book's goal is to remove from sufferers the burden of fault for their pain and to demystify some of the practices that surround the treatment of mental illness.
It is not exactly a self-help book because it is a false claim of any treatment of mental illness that cure can be brought about by exercise of will. Much of what causes mental distress is lack of power and resource, outside the control of the sufferer. Surviving without psychotherapy involves the appreciation of several things. First, the limited nature of...
This book is directly aimed at sufferers of mental distress. The book's goal is to remove from sufferers the burden of fault for their pain and to dem...
