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Rating: 
Summary: Hits the nail on the head
Review: Dr. Fancher makes many excellent points in this book. There is a lot more reform that needs to happen in psychology and psychiatry. It's good that there are courageous people like Fancher who will raise these crucial issues.
Rating: 
Summary: covers topic but not well-written
Review: I am giving up half-way through. The outline of this book is great, and the points made are valid. But it is not written well. Specifically, it is very wordy and repetitive. The author makes a point, discusses the point, then makes the point again a page or two later. I got it the first time.
I am toward the end of the section on the Behaviorists, and have just decided it is not worth finishing. I would give an example of the wandering wordiness, but it would take too much text to convey this oft-repeated problem. An editor needs to get hold of this and fix it up.
That's a shame - the author does a very good job of defining the theory and the scientific basis of the major schools of psychotherapy, and then noting how far the theory is from its scientific claim. For the intellectual content, I agree with other reviewers that this is one of the best books to do this. However, it is a lot of work to slog through all this writing to cover the wide but discrete range of theses presented.
The author makes profound statements about the human condition, normalcy, and pathology, including as understood by the schools of therapy. But he presents this elliptically. His case could be stronger if he simply stated his counter-arguments, supported them, then went on to the next chapter. The counter-arguments actually add up to a nice profile of what it means to be human, whether disturbed or not!
I was excited to get this book. I have read a lot on this topic. Like the author, I am also trained as a psychotherapist, and like the author, I am quite concerned about the way that therapeutic training ignores the truth that most of what we do is based on philosophy and belief and only to a small (but increasing) degree on science.
I was surprised at the quality of writing when I began reading. I then figured out my mistake: I picked this used book up for a good price, thinking it was written by Raymond Fancher, who wrote the marvelous book, Pioneers in Psychology. That also covers historical and philosophical bases of psychology. When the writing proved annoying, I looked closer and realized it was a different Fancher!
If you conduct research in this area and want a good account of the premises of the major schools of psychotherapy, and you want a good account of their criticisms, this is a valuable book. for example, an ambitious undergrad could write a strong paper with guidance from these arguments. But you will have to work at it -they are not clearly presented.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. A definite buy.
Review: I was amazed at the clarity this book sheds on psychological schools of thought. It does an excellent job of explicating the values of each school of thought, giving the reader information by which to evaluate them. I would highly recommend Cultures of Healing to anyone interested in therapy to help them understand what types of therapists do what, and what they believe in. I would also recommend Cultures of Healing to any psychology student who wishes to make some sense out of the morass of contradictory beliefs. Definitely buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Soon to be back in print
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Soon to be back in print
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Most comprehensive comparison of schools of psychology
Review: 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".
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