Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Fighting for Mental Health: A Personal View

2003; American Psychiatric Association; Volume: 57; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2003.57.2.277a

2575-6559

David A. Adler,

Psychiatric care and mental health services

This book is composed of three parts.Part 1 contains one chapter on death, meaning, and human relations and a second on conscience and the ethic of mutuality, human development as a passionate labor of gratitude.Part 2 contains six chapters about: (1) selling one's developmental soul, self-betrayal and wearing the mask of the enemy; (2) the compulsion to repeat, homesickness, and to begin again as if for the first time; (3) the silent loyalty oath, symptoms as memorials to one's lonely suffering; (4) on the outside looking in, "waiting at the end of the block," and the sense of entitlement; (5) the evil eye, envy, and begrudging the passion of a new beginning; and (6) giving the devil his due, spite, and the struggle for individual dignity.Part 3 contains four chapters: (1) bringing heaven down to earth, the idealizing transference, and the search for a powerful other; (2) confidence and doubt, the therapist's sense of lovingness, and the use of the personal in psychotherapy; (3) haunting echoes of personal truth, the pangs of regret, and remorse; and (4) self-acceptance and the generosity of letting go, the experiences of mourning, and growth.This is a well written book consisting mainly of Shabad's personal opinions that should have at least indicated, from the outset, his blind allegiance to a psychoanalytic perspective, where the unconscious is used as an excuse or reason for almost all ills of humanity.Buttressed with few case studies of patients (lasting up to four years of therapy, twice a week!), this book is the best reason to support present-day, empirically based psychotherapies.Of the 176 references, only 17 cited works published after the 1990s.Completely ignored is the vast research literature on death and dying, including at least two journals in the area of tanatology.Long on poetically phrased opinions and short on evidence, except for references to the authority of founders of psychoanalysis (Freud) and objectrelations theory (Winnicott), with lip service to a few humanists (Kierkegaard, Maslow, and May), this book reaches what this reviewer would consider questionable professional practices bordering on the unethical, at least for a psychologist.No baseline or objective evaluation is administered, and no more costeffective and, very likely, more efficient methods of treatment are suggested, like EMDR, hypnosis, or even therapeutic writing.It might appeal to therapists who are similarly inclined, still hanging on to the past, denying the present, and ignoring the future.