Customer Reviews

Against Therapy

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Against Therapy is an elaborate critique of the concept and practice of "therapy." The greatest praise, in my view, goes to the fact that Masson has in this book, along with others that he's written, denounced several very serious issues with therapeutic practices, specially the harm and abuse that are carried out against defenseless human beings in many cases to a lethal point or one that condemns a human being to a life of sanctioned torture. Using very poignant historical examples, Masson clearly shows how terrible but sanctioned diagnoses and therapeutic practices have been used to torture people into submissive roles society ascribes to them, or to make their mental health seriously deteriorate as a result of their so-called "treatment." His examples are especially focused on how a patriarchal society uses a variety of violent techniques to punish, torture, and/or make women submissive. While all his examples and points are well taken, he elaborates more on the male/female power war to the exclusion of others.

Another point of praise, is that Masson has also given a big focus to the issue of sexual abuse of children and its gross denial in society. But while he does give examples of children that were grossly mistreated, he does not elaborate on how similar structural forms of oppression that women have faced from a patriarchal society are present in society's structure regarding adults v. children. He also highlights much more male abuse of female children and ignores other forms of sexual abuse, a format that does a disservice to other victims by continuing the silence about it. We know today that the number of male children abused is immense and has been continuously overlooked. We also know that issue of girls abused by women is still at a tip of the iceberg stage. But overall, his wonderful empathy with the deeply unjust suffering of so many children, women, and men is also another poignant mark of his work.

Masson goes further than just examining and denouncing barbaric practices, all carried out in the name of science or therapy or for the good of the patient, and usually carried out with total impunity, and he takes the next important step to ask if the fundamental premises and model of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psycotherapy are not where the roots of such a vast and disturbing problem lie. This is a tremendously important question to ask and he does a fine job in elaborating on various intrinsic power, greed, corruption, and oppressive social structure issues involved in making therapy relationships harmful. It's not only on the greatly abusive relationships level that he asks these questions, but also regarding how the very notion of "the therapist:" falsely constructed as one person who knows it all, who is "sane, without any problems," who is "adult," who is "ethical," v. the "patient" construct of being "crazy," more infantile, therefore incapable of knowing anything (specially about him or herself), or whose external reality where the root of many problems may lie is readily dismissed and the patient and the patient's internal world blamed for any and all suffering, problems, etc. Masson zeroes in to critique definitions of who is "crazy," and what is considered "crazy," and who has the power to create such definitions and stigmatize and torture people with them.

Masson also does a great job in describing how corrupt and collusive mental health institutions (and academia) are, a problem hardly ever tackled specially in the public light. His related book "Final Analysis" does a great job of exposing the corrupt psychoanalytic industry and further buttresses his points in "Against Therapy."

I disagree with his conclusion that all forms of therapy are to be thrown out the window as a solution to the mass scale abuse, lack of accountability, or quality in therapeutic practices. What are the people in need of help supposed to do? Who do they turn to? Masson's answer to "just have better friends" is really impractical and highly demeaning to millions of people facing serious problems. However, given that the mental health industry is so corrupt in terms of ethics and controlling even mild forms of incompetence, plus the greed and stupidity, or in seriously addressing in public any of these issues, even his drastic proposed solution is refreshing to read. It's inspiring to see his courage in breaking the collusive silence that so many academics and professionals prefer to engage in. I highly recommend his books for anyone in general, but specially for people considering or engaged in therapy or in becoming therapists, or those interested in having a less corrupt and abusive society.

The basic argument of this book is that psychotherapy is wrong and should be abolished. Any thesis can be legitimately supported, provided that the arguments used are logical. Unfortunately, this book is a bizarre patchwork of unrelated facts and illogical arguments. It reads like an angry statement "against", with no constructive goal in sight.

Masson sees abuse and injustice everywhere in psychotherapy. In his description of psychotherapy, the author is like somebody who is looking at the world through a pair of glasses that filter out all colours, except for the black. Seeing only shades of black in the world, he complains of how awful and oppressive this view is. And it certainly is, because he set himself up for this experience from the very beginning. Adopting his viewpoint, one could say exactly the same about most aspects of life, for example school, family, work, the judicial system, the political system. And is the solution to just dismantle all these institutions, like the author suggests to do with psychotherapy? One quickly realises how far removed from reality this proposition is.

Masson states that psychotherapy is inherently bad. This statement raises a number of questions: Can emotional distress be studied? Can it be managed? Can people help one another, and how? These are very interesting questions, but unfortunately Masson doesn't seem interested in them. He simply states that psychotherapy should cease to exist. "It can and should be replaced by open and searching criticism of the very foundation of our society" (p.295) This is such an idealistic statement. Is this all he would suggest to somebody who is looking for help? The only attempt he makes to offer a practical idea is about "self-help groups that are leaderless and avoid authoritarian structures, in which no money is exchanged, that are not grounded on religious principles [...], and in which all participants have experienced the problem they come to discuss". When this is all he has to offer in a book of 300 pages, you quickly realise that his work lacks a constructive intent.

Another problem with the book is that Masson's highly biased approach when describing different orientations to therapy makes his work lack credibility. For example, the chapter on Gestalt consists of a series of judgments about Fritz Perls as a person; only a few words are spent on his method. Reading the section on Ericksonian hypnotherapy, you have the impression that Masson skimmed through various books about Erickson, found some case histories that shocked him, and that he cut and pasted portions of such case histories into his book. This is a very poor representation of the Ericksonian approach. Such lack of objectivity discredits Masson's work. Not knowing anything about some of the therapists described in the book, I am inclined to think that Masson has misrepresented them just as much as he has misrepresented Erickson, and therefore the credibility of the whole book drops low.

However, I believe that there is some good to be found in "Against therapy". Even if its main contention is unreasonable and poorly supported, the fact that Masson's ideas are so extreme provokes the reader into taking a stand and making her/his own judgment about what is right, what is wrong and what you're not sure of.

One other important theme underlying most of the book's arguments is that psychotherapy reflects and expresses the social and political environment where therapy lies. However Masson does not attempt to develop this theme. People like Wilhelm Reich have written extensively about the social and political implications of therapy. The book makes no mention of these writings, which is a huge omission.

It would have made more justice to its work if Masson had titled the book something like "Abuses and violence in psychotherapy and psychiatry." If you are looking for examples of such situations, the book offers interesting materials and is food for thought. If you are looking for an objective and logical discussion of psychotherapy, look elsewhere.

Finally! Someone actually writes about the fact that therapy does not work much of the time, and that many therapists just cannot do therapy (many are too screwed up themselves). With that said, however, Masson, unfortunately, is very Angry throughout this book; he is just not distanced enough in many of the chapters. I suspect that he is upset that he had to leave his "chosen career".In addition, he is too superficial about many of the points he raises; there doesn't seem to be much analysis. He just states his opinion; and that's about it. This is a true shame. He raises an important issue; there is a real need for someone to write a good, deep analysis about why therapy doesn't work for so many people, why so many therapists are disturbed themselves, and where consumers who are suffering mentally can seek real help.

As a psychotherapist and seminar leader, I welcome a book thatcalls the whole profession into question. While I believe there ismore room for discussion of the specifics, I think Masson's book raises some serious quesions about the practices and ethical considerations of the psychotherapy environment. It was instrumental in my movement toward group work and away from individual work with clients. AGAINST THERAPY should be required reading for all students in the helping professions.

from the author of DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF: A PERSONAL APPROACH TO DREAM INTERPRETATION; WHO'S CRAZY, ANYWAY?; and DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE.

Masson has written an important book that should be studied as part of the education of every mental health professional. The power imbalance in the therapeutic encounter makes it imperative that if you are going to see a psychotherapist, the focus must be on restoring confidence and self-understanding and not being told by what you should be. For professionals, the temptations of such power often leads to unethical behavior. Yes, AGAINST THERAPY is an angry book-- and rightfully so.

First of all, I like Massons book very much. His exposure of therapeutic abuse is excellent. Freud, Jung, Pearls, not to mention people like Rosen and Bettelheim, are thoroughly exposed. But when Masson claim that these abuses are an integrated part of the very method of psychotherapy he just can't prove it. Massons alternative to psychotherapy seems to be self-help groups where people talk to each other without "experts" involved. But those who have been a part of such groups surely know that one of the main things that are discussed there is how you can get the best therapist....
In short - Massons criticism is fine; his alternative is not an alternative at all. Unfortunately, in this world psychotherapy is necessary, whether Masson likes it or not....

When an author puts forth the claim that all psychotherapy should be abandoned on the grounds that the entire field is inherently corrupt, one is tempted to dismiss him as a crackpot. But Dr. Masson is no crackpot. He is the former director of the Sigmund Freud Archives and a psychotherapist himself. Given those qualifications Dr. Masson's ideas are worthy of consideration--however radical they may appear.

By the time you finish this book, with its well researched history of psychotherapy, you will be convinced. The abuses of patients at the hands of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts over the past century and a half are so horrifying as to make some chapters almost impossible to read. But Masson's object is not to shock us with the details of the sexual, emotional and physical abuse that psychiatric patients have suffered, but to demonstrate that the entire field rests upon a false assumption which basically guarantees that patients will be mistreated. The assumption is that therapists know what sanity is. They do not--for the simple reason that nobody does.

The only thing that therapists can know is how their society defines sanity. (Even that is a stretch. Unlike anthropologists, psychologists are not trained to analyze social norms and mores.) As has been amply demonstrated, the notion of sanity changes substantially from one era to the next. A woman in the 19th century could be incarcerated for life in a mental asylum for "incurable pride" or for "moral insanity", terms which we find quaint nowadays, but, as they were taken seriously at the time, destroyed countless lives. And if we find these terms quaint, just imagine how such culturally specific concepts as "neurosis" will be viewed in the future.

The reason that Masson takes special aim at psychotherapy, of course, is that it is his area of expertise. In reality any situation in which one human being can decide the fate of another may lend itself to abuse. (As the saying goes: "Power corrupts.") What makes psychotherapy and related fields so unique is the degree to which they have become entrenched throughout the entire system. The diagnosis of mental illness sticks like glue, no matter who makes it, and no matter how little real evidence there is to support it.

Masson wrote this book in the 1980s, and it is tempting to think that since then we have come a long way in terms of patient rights, treatment for the mentally ill (however their illnesses may be defined), and general awareness of the pitfalls of psychological diagnoses. Most of us believe that the abuses of the past are now behind us. If you believe that, or that Masson's critique is out of date, think again.

In 1988, Ean Proctor, a young boy confined to a wheelchair with ME (known in the US as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) was forcibly removed from his parents on the grounds that they were "enabling" his illness. Ean was taken to a state hospital where to "prove" that his illness was "all in in his head" they threw him into a swimming pool. Ean sank to the bottom and had to be rescued. After several months of such torture, Ean was released to his parents. That was 1988. Have things improved since then?

In 2003, Sophia Mirza, who was also diagnosed with ME, was forcibly removed from her home and "sectioned". Her mother, who was a nurse, was accused of perpetuating Sophia's illness (Munchausen by proxy). After several weeks of being abandoned in a darkened room, Sophia was returned to her mother. But she was never to recover from her incarceration. Sophia died in 2005. The autopsy revealed that 80% of the dorsal ganglia of her spine had been damaged due to her illness. How did the "psychological treatment" prescribed for her condition help her?

And, most recently, in 2009, a 17-year-old boy from North Carolina, Ryan Baldwin, who had been diagnosed in 2004 and 2005 with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, was removed from his home on the grounds that his parents were enabling his illness (again, Munchausen by proxy). There is to date, absolutely no scientific evidence that Munchausen by proxy even exists. Yet ill children have been taken from their homes, tortured (in the case of Ean), neglected (in the case of Sophia), and traumatized on the basis of what amounts to a religious conviction. (That is, a belief which does not need to be justified, supported by evidence or even understood by a majority of its own adherents.) When a person is defined as mentally ill, whether or not the claim is substantiated, any kind of treatment--or mistreatment--is justified. The mere stigma of mental illness effectively nullifies civil rights.

Whether or not you come to the conclusion that Dr. Masson needed to include an alternative to psychotherapy in his book, or that he unfairly judged an entire field by a few bad apples, or that with more research the flaws in psychotherapy can be corrected, there can be no doubt that in 2010, the abuses which Dr. Masson so thoroughly documented are continuing. We are still in the dark ages.

I'm a therapist. I got into the field in part because, as a child, I was on the receiving end of a number of crappy and arrogant therapists. That said, although I daily wonder if I am really helping my clients or just wasting their time and money, I have not questioned whether this uniquely constricted and unbalanced relationship we share is in and of itself harmful to them. Against Therapy certainly raises important questions and has given me much to ponder. Unlike the author, however, I don't yet feel that the field needs to be dismantled. My clients come to me as a last resort, after all of their own attempts at problem-solving fail. What do they do without me and those like me? More medication maybe. I don't see natural social supports moving in the direction of replacing therapists without being pushed in that direction by therapists (a regular part of my work with clients is finding friends and family they can replace me with.) Currently my money is on research and evidence-based treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. Medical error is one of the most common causes of death in this country, but I've never heard anyone say that a reasonable solution would be to get rid of doctors. Still, a thoughtful book and should be required reading for all therapists.

I was completely misled by the title, expecting to read about actual bad effects of talk therapy. This is actually two books in one: arguments against the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy, and a history of malpractice by some of the most respected figures in those fields. This latter is the better part, being well-sourced (for once), but one-sided. Despite the footnoting, it is well-written and a fairly quick read.

Masson's arguments against the two professions (he lumps them together) are social and political and have nothing to do with the efficacy of either. Like Thomas Szasz and Scientologists, he claims there is no such thing as mental illness.

It's also quite dated. These days, medical insurance generally won't pay to keep people hospitalized for more than a few days, and the state hospitals were emptied long ago, so the potential for abuse is much lower. Psychiatry is generally psychopharmacology, and Masson barely mentions cognitive behavior therapy, which is currently the psychotherapy of choice and has little to do with older talk therapies.

I thought this book should be read by all mental health professionals and the so called accreditation organizations (they don't look in the right places). . . Masson goes directly to asking questions about the power deferential in therapy . . .

I could go on with my own observations and experiences within this field, but this is not the place . . . I do, however, believe that both power and psychiatry practice need better supervision. . .

My only critique of the book is that because Masson seems to know most about psychiatry and psychoanalysis, he quickly added Chapter 8 not fleshing this section out enough.

This book has inspired me to want to do some research -- I would like to do some reseach on what Masson brings up on p. 190 -- and the psychology of the seller of the Brooklyn Bridge. . .