Talking About Therapy

Filled with enlightening first-person accounts, Talking About Therapy tells us why patients sought therapy, what they think of the therapists to whom they entrusted their well-being, and whether the treatment was worth the struggle, the emotional pain, and the money. Through stories that are touching, sometimes shocking, and always candid, readers will learn how patients responded to a wide range of treatment, including: Freudian and neo-Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian analytic psychology, group psychotherapy, Reichian therapy, and newer alternative approaches. Whether portraying their therapeutic experience as a scam or a liberation, or something in-between, the feelings shared by these forthright individuals will be fascinating to patients, potential patients, their families, and mental health professionals.

Talking About Therapy will also help therapists and their clients see beyond the individual context of treatment. The authors have organized their work by the decade in which each interview subject entered treatment (1940s to the present day), and this narrative framework reveals much about the evolution of the mental helth field in the last half century. From the heyday of Freudian psychoanalysis, through the tumult of the Vietnam War, feminism and gay activism, to our current era of street drugs, and the prevalence of anti-depressants, the impact of therapy on the lives of the individuals in this amazing book is conveyed directly and dramatically, with unflinching honesty.

DONNA D. COMAROW, a clinical social worker and board certified diplomate in her field, lectures on topics from attachment theory to creativity and psychosis, and is working on a book on how people resolve grief.

MARTHA W. CHESCHEIR, a former professor at Catholic University's School of Social Service and at Smith College, teaches advanced level clinicians at the Washington School of Psychiatry and maintains a private practice.