Cultures of Healing: Correcting the Image of American Mental Health Care [Hardcover]

Robert T. Fancher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

This work contends that while mental health care is legitimate, many of its claims to scientific truth and authority are not. Written by a practising psychotherapist, it argues that rather than operating as an objective science, the mental health profession is composed of competing "cultures" built around false ideology and subjective belief. This book provides a general history of mental health care in Americam and then analyzes four major schools of therapy - psychoanalysis, behaviourism, cognitive therapy and biological psychiatry - discussing the historical significance, general principles and methods of treatment, world view values and scientific status of each. It concludes with the author's assessment of how best to view mental health care and use it wisely and effectively. An appendix offers an insight into choosing a therapist.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Every so often a landmark book is published that analyzes a subject from such a fresh perspective that it reveals that subject in a new light and paves the way for change. This finely reasoned and far-ranging analysis of mental health care in the United States by psychotherapist and former philosophy professor Fancher is such a book. Surveying the history of mental health care in this country, he delineates four major schools-psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive therapy, and biological psychiatry-demonstrating that each school is based not on a sound science but on "induct[ing] people into understanding life in certain ways that are artifacts of the cultures of healing... rather than facts about human nature." Although cultures of healing are legitimate, Fancher argues that society must understand the culture of the schools of care and assess them critically. This book aids such thinking and is highly recommended for all who are concerned with the state of mental health care in the United States.
Marcia Welsh, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

For the layperson, argot-free and persuasive; for the mental health professional, challenging, in both senses of the word. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co (Sd) (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716723832
• ISBN-13: 978-0716723837
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,861,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soon to be back in print, January 29, 2003

By 

Bob Fancher (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cultures Of Healing: Correcting The Image Of American Mental Health Care (Paperback)

Okay, I wrote this, so of course I like it--and since I have to give it "stars" in order to post, I give it five.

But the point of this "review" is to say that the book will be back in print this Fall (2003), from Transaction Publishers/Rutgers, with a new intro and a new title--"Health and Suffering in America: The Context and Content of Mental Health Care."

The hype about mental health care in the last five years or so has grown more and more outrageously false. I'm glad Transaction wants to keep this book in print, as a corrective to the nonsense that those who profit from mental health care would have you believe.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book ever written on the subject., October 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Cultures of Healing: Correcting the Image of American Mental Health Care (Hardcover)

I am a psychologist, and have been reading actively in the field of psychology since 1960. I have never encountered a book nearly as good as this one that deal with the same subject matter. If you are interested in psychopathology, psychotherapy, mental health and its care, there is no better book than this one. Fancher writes with great clarity, with a philosopher's analytic ability, but also with great heart, with wisdom and compassion. And much of what he has to say is very hard to find anywhere else. The book presents a perspective that is not well known to the general public, that cuts against the grain of much of our popular understanding. It is a very tightly argued book. His arguments, which require real effort and concentration to follow, are detailed, scientifically and philosophically sophisticated, informed with clinical experience and with real wisdom. My favorite chapter is "The Middlebrow Land of Cognitive Therapy." There are penetrating insights in this chapter that were entirely new to me, although I have taught this material in two different courses for years. I will never look at cogntive therapy the same way again. As far as I know most of the contents of this chapter are original insights of Fancher, and can be found nowhere else. My second favorite chapter is "Biological Psychiatry's Confusion of Tongues." For me there was little new in this chapter, but it is by far the best summary of the problems with biological psychiatry that I have ever read. The critical analysis he presents in this chapter is not only brilliantly done, it is also an analysis that is quite hard to find elsewhere, and of absolutely fundamental importance in understanding biological psychiatry. This is an extremely powerful book, and most of its major arguments are so sharply and compellingly developed that I think most open-minded readers will have to admit that Fancher is pretty much right in most of his major conclusions. Of all of the psychology books I have read in the last ten years or so, this is the one I would have been most proud to have written myself.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most comprehensive comparison of schools of psychology, January 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cultures of Healing: Correcting the Image of American Mental Health Care (Hardcover)

This is the best book on comparative clinical psychology/psychiatry I've ever read.

If psychotherapists/psychiatrists were considered faith healers (which this book makes clear they are), this book would qualify as a book on comparative religion, and it would make one question their faith.

Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Cognitive Therapy, and Biological Psychiatry are all analyzed, with their core beliefs and assumptions described in detail. Each school's standing with the scientific facts is mentioned.

Cultural reasons why Americans accept certain therapies, or come to accept them in spite of their unscientific bases, are also given.

The most noticable omission is the lack of any discussion of Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Therapy, although many of the comments about Beck's therapy apply to RET too.

The chapter on biological psychiatry could have provided more background on its history, as well as mention more specific psychiatrists' and pharmaceutical companies' influences. For biological psychiatry, "Blaming the Brain" by Elliot Valenstein (mentioned in this text's acknowledgements) is also recommended.

Without coming out too strongly (which could create a backlash), the book does an excellent job of pointing out how biological psychiatry's illness model is used to justify prescribing psychoactive drugs with no proven specificity in treating "illnesses", in a culture which otherwise wages war on psychoactive drugs.

The only noticable editorial error was a major misspelling of "renaissance".