Book Review - 'American Therapy - The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States,' by Jonathan Engel - Review - NYTimes.com

Book Review - 'American Therapy - The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States,' by Jonathan Engel - Review - NYTimes.com: "Engel describes an experiment that seems to have been animated by these very questions. In 1979, a Vanderbilt University researcher named Hans Krupp divided 30 patients with psychological problems into two groups, one to be treated by trained psychotherapists, the other by humanities professors with no psychological expertise. The result? The two groups reported improvement at the same rates. “Effective psychotherapy,” Engel writes, “seemed to require little more than a willing patient and an intelligent and understanding counselor who met and spoke regularly and in confidence"

Psychiatrists Revising the Book of Human Troubles - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com#postComment#postComment

Psychiatrists Revising the Book of Human Troubles - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com#postComment#postComment: "The largest mental health facility is Rikers Island. The second is the Los Angeles County Jail. Remember Erhard Seminar Training, EST? It wasn't that long ago that psychology was regarded on the right as junk science. The only thing that puts mental illness on the political agenda is the money the drug companies can make with all their new pills. They really are following the exact model of the tobacco companies. Which would you consider a war on mental illness to be closer to, the war on cancer or the war on crime? Patients may well be crazy, but they are far more honest than the doctors that treat them"