Customer Reviews

Genes on the Couch: Explorations in Evolutionary Psychotherapy

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Excellent. This book practically applies the approach and insights of research in evolutionary psychology to psychotherapy. We are now finally beginning to dispel some of the blatantly erroneous assumptions within traditional therapies such as Freudian psychoanalysis. Highly recommended.

Excellent. This book practically applies the approach and insights of research in evolutionary psychology to psychotherapy. We are now finally beginning to dispel some of the blatantly erroneous assumptions within traditional therapies such as Freudian psychoanalysis. Highly recommended.

Good effort, but ultimately disappointing. It's same ol', same ol', but in a new vernacular. The authors are rehashing psychotherapeutic wisdom, only this time it is coached in the "scientific" language of evolutionary psychology. And so empathy, positive regard and respect for a client become functions of the "kinship" approach (Bailey), and males are uncommunicative and lousy partners because, well... Because such is their nature, created over the evolutionary eons.
OK, it is not worthless if you are looking for the evolutionary language to reframe human problems. It is not helpful if you are looking for new insights to those problems and new ways of alleviating them. (You'll learn that unconditional support and regard are of primary importance to clients in psychotherapy. But you already knew that, didn't you.)

And I wondered why the chapter on male "psychology," full of stereotypes on male and female behavior, was not followed by a chapter on females, but instead by one on "gender differences." Is it because evolutionary psychologists are pretty much in the dark when it comes to female psychology (if we don't count the old stereotypes, especially about female sexuality)?

This book will find its admirers among the (self-adoring) EP crowd - but if this is not your cuppa tea, you do well looking elsewhere for psychotherapeutic insights.