Richard Ofshe

Wow, I thought I knew a lot about the causes of False Memory Syndrome and the problems it can cause. This harrowing book ends up as an indictment not of just a few misguided therapists with improper training, but basically the entire field of psychotherapy for being unable to nip this pseudo-scientific garbage in the bud.

The authors provide lots of details about what patients and their families suffered in the hands of their therapists, as well as refuting the factual and logical errors that recovered memories therapy is based on. Having recently been doing some formal study of argumentation and fallacious reasoning, I was particularly interested in the ways they used to deconstruct the reasoning of the movement.

I was always somewhat leery of psychotherapy because my father wasted so much time with it, but now I know that wasting time is not even a problem compared to the damage a bad psychotherapist can do.… (mer)