Customer Reviews

Mind Games: Are We Obessed With Therapy?

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Dr. Baker, who died in 2005, was formerly chairman of the psychology department at the University of Kentucky. From that vantage point, and 40 years as a psychologist, it became apparent to him that most of what mental health professionals profess to do is pseudoscience. Mind Games describes and debunks some of the major shortcomings and downright nonsense promoted in the name of mental illness. Baker deftly savages the ridiculous but popular belief in "multiple personalities" and several other so-called ilnesses that he says are "iatrogenic," or caused by the therapist. He describes his obvious displeasure with the medicalizing of everyday problems in living, and especially with their "treatment" with drugs. Not a temperance fanatic at all, he advocates moderation in living and in seeking help. His is a message of self-reliance and skepticism about expert help. Given the great harm done to people by the mental health profession, Baker recommends a variety of non-professional means of coping and regaining happiness and stability. As a prominent skeptic he wrote many books debunking nonsense. This is one of his best.

The author of this volume got off to a good start. He began logically with a history of what purports to be "psychotherapy." Many of the practices were brutal, barbaric, and served no purpose in the rehabilitation of the patients in the institutions that used them. Much of that, in fact, continues today. One chapter ended with something more innocuous, Eye Movement Desensitization Therapy, a fad of today's practitioners. I'm not sure why Baker slipped that in where he did, except to point out that it is a "therapy" of no scientifically validated purpose (except perhaps of economics: It lines the wallets of those who practice it.)

There is a lot to say about psychotherapy's shortcomings. What does it do? More, on what "theories" is it based? Baker covers Freud, the father of the practice. He quotes researchers who found that Freud had his "insights" while under the influence of cocaine. Thus, these insights were at best questionable. Put under the tool of scientific scrutiny, they're even more questionable. And Jung is no better.

The author, while beginning to cover those theorticians' shortcomings, was distracted by items of which a critic could easily say, "those are the exception," for instance of therapists who sexually abused their clients. What's more, the ones he covered lost thier licenses or whatever permitted them to practice. His argument thereby was lost in that those he criticzed lost their practices anyway! So Baker's excess coverage of much of this was of little critical value.

There's so much more he could have covered on the irrelevance of psychotherapy. Take, for instance, dream therapy, or Rohrschach tests. What they have in common is that they're totally subjective, of no substance at all beyond the theories of a couple of egomaniacs like Freud and Jung. Yet people are spending billions on them.

Of further concern to me is the issue of AUTHORITY. People seeing psychotherapists inadertently give them a great deal of authority, to interpret dreams, to interpret their "unconscious" and on and on. Based on what?... Put in that context, the least one might to is to challenge that authority, not succumb to it. Baker's coverage of that is limited to the control therapists have over their charge. He argues that's what attracts people to the "profession" of therapist. With that I agree, but I think the authority issue goes deeper than that, into, again, on what dubious grounds people give that authority to others with a few letters after their names.

In addition, the narrow standards by which society and its psychological "experts" define "normal" are not only so narrow as to be comical, but more based on image than reality. How many historical figures' behavior--the behavior outside of the public eye, anyway--would be aberrant by the standards of the therapeutic state? Where would be be without those figures' talents? There are only infrequent references in the book to such eccentrics as Einstein, et al. Had they been under the care of today's therapeutic state, we wouldn't even have a relativity theory, let alone some of our finer musical and artistic compositions.

Baker's portions on iatrogenisis, particularly MPD (multiple personality disorder) and its cohorts and a whole chapter on depression and its drug "solutions" were well-taken. But I felt he elaborated too much on them making the chapters too long. And while I have little doubt as to the lack of efficacy of psychiatric drugs--particularly, as Baker points out, ironic when they come from the same people decrying "illegal" drugs--I think he was overdramatic. The chapters would have been better served by reemphasis on (1) the profits the drug companies are making from these drugs and (2) too many physicians are ill-equipped to prescribe such things, are reliant, therefore, on advertising from drug manufacturers.

As to the overall rhetoric of the text, the word "allopathic" was used at least twice. That's a term created by or at least most frequently used by homeopaths and other "alternative" medicine practitioners. It is, therefore, of dubiuos value, and jeopardized Baker's credibility. In other portions of the book, therapy is related to "race, ethnicity and class" in ways that I think misuse the figures. In short, it's expressions like those that I expect from young (white, affluent) hyper-radicals who, in their post-modernist fashion, are fond of referring to a monolithic, capitalist medical culture against which they claim to rebel with so-called "alternatives." I expect more from Baker. Granted, I don't disagree with him on some of the class, etc., issues. But he skimmed them with quotes from a few who're critical of the therapeutic industry leaving the reader wondering if the author had thought them through or just shot them in to make an ideological point without true application.

In several chapters, I got the impression that Dr. Baker is a member of the temperace movement. Again, I'm not advocating use of psychiatric drugs, let alone their excess prescription for every mood swing. But I got the "evil drug" impression like I would expect from a fundamentalist preacher or a "treatment" guru. He's so opposed to "addictions" that he discourages them to caffiene and even to chocolate. Let's get real! Indeed, he could have covered weapons in the therapeutic arsenal such as "treatments" of various kinds particularly for alcohol and drug abuse. But maybe he's ideologically alinged with them.

Overall the book had it's good points. But it was cumbersome and, again, frequently went off in directions at best distracting and usually harmful to the message. And, frankly, I hate to say that as I think the therapeutic state needs some credible critics.