This study is aimed at the lay person with a "readable" history of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. It provides an introduction to the key figures from Freud to Beck and explains their most important ideas. It also illustrates how psychotherapy has influenced our understanding of the mind and how it works, particularly in the area as we refer to as "mental illness". This book explores the "character" of major figures in psychology as well as their ideas. Links are made throughout, showing how historical and cultural events (for example, the Holocaust and the invention of the computer) have influenced ideas about the mind, and vice versa.
Dr. Frank Tallis is a consultant clinical psychologist at the Charter Nightingale Hospital in London. He has also written How to Stop Worrying (1990) and is a trustee of Obsessive Action, a charity which helps sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and their families.
