The Ethical Visions of Psychotherapy

I have just finished a short but fascinating book by K.R. Smith, The Ethics Visions of Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2020), 112pp. Imagine, if you will, Charles Taylor teamed up with Alasdair MacIntyre and Smith to write this book. It explores crucial philosophical issues that Taylor and MacIntyre have been rightly celebrated for over the last several decades, but which mainstream psychology and psychotherapy have all but totally ignored. Smith unpacks those issues, and the costs of their neglect, and the promises and prospects of exploring them in the years ahead by and for psychotherapists. To do all this in short, accessible, polemic-free book is a masterful achievement. It is the sort of book that belongs on the bibliography of every introductory psychology and psychotherapy course. 

Here is the publisher's blurb:

The standard view of psychotherapy as a treatment for mental disorders can obscure how therapy functions as a social practice that promotes conceptions of human well-being. Building on the philosophy of Charles Taylor, Smith examines the link between therapy and ethics, and the roots of therapeutic aims in modern Western ideas about living well.

This is one of two complementary volumes (the other being Therapeutic Ethics in Context and in Dialogue). This volume explores the links between therapeutic aims and conceptions of well-being. It examines several cognitive-behavioral and psychoanalytic therapies to illustrate how they can be distinguished by their divergent ethics. Smith argues that because research utilizing standard measures of efficacy shows little difference between the therapies, the assessment of their relative merits must include evaluation of their distinct ethical visions.

A key text for upper level undergraduates, postgraduate students, and professionals in the fields of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, theoretical psychology, and philosophy of mind.

I will have more to say about the book in due course, when I also hope to have heard back from Smith with some questions I sent to him for an interview on here. Stay tuned!

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