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The Nature of Unhappiness
 
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The Nature of Unhappiness [Paperback]

David Smail (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Frequently Bought Together

The Nature of Unhappiness + Why Therapy Doesn't Work and What You Should Do About It + Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress
Price For All Three: £45.18

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Product details

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Robinson Publishing (20 April 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 184119350X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841193502
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 57,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"'Now that therapy has become such big business there are many therapists who seek to become rich and famous by bamboozling their clients. David Smail is our greatest bulwark against such chicanery. He describes life as it is and offers us, not a quick fix for our problems, but an understanding of our predicament which allows us to live with courage and hope.' - Dr Dorothy Rowe"

Product Description

David Smail's books work to a central theme - that psychological distress arises not from 'illness' or personal failure but as a response to damaging influences from the outside world. He believes that such distress can be alleviated by care and understanding from our fellows. He also examines how the dominant values of society and politics can have devastating effects on the individual, and consequently that counsellors and therapists can have limited success in treating such problems - that in fact it is the circumstances and not the individual, that need to be altered.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Radical and essential 22 April 2002
By A Customer
This volume contains Smail's two crucial later, mature works. The first book develops an 'environmental-materialist' approach to emotional distress that fits well with current functionalist philsophies of mind. Smail bases his theories on detailed *qualitative* insight with his clients, and argues convincingly that distress, if it is an 'illness' or 'breakdown' at all is one of the environment. Consequently, his case study is not of an individual, but of the society in Britain in the 1980s (and later). The book concludes with a brilliant restatement of Enlightenment values (truth and justice) in the face of postmodern doubt.

The second book, 'How to Survive without Psychotherapy', re-applies the abstract theory to psychological therapy and mental distress, starting with an astute, but common-sense, analysis of what therapy cannot be expected to achieve. It then uses 17 brief case histories to show that emotional distress (depression, anxiety, compulsion), wrongly blamed on the sufferer or others, is often really an effect of larger powers in society. Finally it takes a hard look at what 'should, can, and could' be done. Although it is not a book designed solely, like most self-help books, to provide hope, as an ex-depressive, I found it enlightening and rewarding, and I know it matches many others' experience as well. My only criticism is that Smail is sometimes unnecessaily harsh on cognitive approaches, arguing that changing thinking does not change external reality (yet at the same time he notes the anguish caused by wrongly viewing oneself as "abnormal").

Not just of use in systemic/interpersonal therapy, this work also deserves to be taken seriously in philosophy of mind. And in my opinion, any mental health professional who has not come across Smail's ideas does not have a realistic grasp of their subject.

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By Forrest
Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a deep book. This is not bla bla bla. This is serious stuff. Psychology should disappear as a 'therapeutic treatment'.

Additional comment: Despite his critical view the author should also consider why he was/is part of this circus. Looking for love and glory? It is a contradiction.
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