IN the opening passage of Cultures of Healing (W. H. Freeman, 拢16.95/$23.95, ISBN 0 7167 2383 2), Robert Fancher sets the keynote for understanding this set of books on psychology: 鈥淭he distance between what we know and what we wish we knew is too great to bear, and we fill it with believing.鈥�
In his expert dissection of American psychiatry and psychotherapy, Fancher shows how various approaches 鈥� psychoanalysis, behaviourism, cognitive therapy and drug treatment 鈥� are painfully lacking in scientific credentials, despite their claims. They are, in Fancher鈥檚 phrase, cultures of healing, rather than sciences, and should be treated as such. That would involve more questioning and criticism of what they do, and the recognition that they have a powerfully persuasive effect on patients. Fancher began life as a philosopher and this shows in his masterly analysis of the pretensions and paradoxes of the various schools of therapy.
Fancher鈥檚 arguments are complemented by those in The Romance of American Psychology by Ellen Herman (University of California Press, $35, ISBN 0 520 08598 1), which examines the way in which psychologists have made dubious claims to scientific credibility in order to acquire powerful roles among American policy makers, beginning during the Second World War when they advised the army on morale-boosting. The author does not condemn this trend, but simply draws attention to it: 鈥淒oes the rise of psychology herald a new chapter in the evolution of humanism or merely indicate that Big Brother is bright enough to arrive cloaked in the rhetoric of enlightenment and health?鈥�
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The next two books are dedicated to filling, with great verve and imagination, Fancher鈥檚 鈥渄istance between what we know and what we wish we knew鈥�. Both The Natural History of Desire by Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot (Yale University Press, 拢18.95, ISBN 0 3000 62931) and Sons, Mothers and Other Lovers by James Park (Little, Brown 拢16.99, ISBN 0 316 91232 8) focus on why men and women differ in temperament, why they cannot easily communicate, and how their psychological differences might be resolved.
The Natural History of Desire concludes that the differences are unavoidable 鈥� they stem from the fundamentally different challenges that face girls and boys in their passage from infancy to adulthood. On a purely intuitive basis, their detailed argument seems quite persuasive, although their choice of evidence is quixotic. Can the life stories of Margaret Thatcher and the terrorist Ulrike Meinhof really tell us that much about women as a whole? Should characters in novels be used as evidence for theories about psychology?
Sons, Mothers and Other Lovers offers a completely different explanation 鈥� it is all the fault of Mother, smothering, controlling and humiliating her small boy, demanding too much, or being inconsistent. In this way she convinces her son that women are terrifying monsters and prevents him from ever achieving a deep relationship with his wife or lover. The author remembers to add, occasionally, that it is really Father鈥檚 fault for being too remote and making Mother so fed up with menfolk in the first place 鈥� but these brief asides are somehow not convincing. They lack the vehemence of Park鈥檚 tirade against Mother.
After all this, it is quite a relief to turn to A Dictionary of Mind and Body by Donald Watson (Andre Deutsch, 拢12.99, ISBN 0 233 98890 4) which is just blatantly antiscience. Apart from its mendacious title (it should be called 鈥淗ow to Bluff Your Way at an Aromatherapists鈥� Conference鈥�), it is refreshingly straightforward. The entry on Conventional Medicine is entirely damning, while that on Colour Therapy is adulatory: 鈥淎n excess of yellow in one鈥檚 environment can result in a loss of anchorage, a feeling of insecurity, lack of focus and a loss of any sense of purpose.鈥� Occasionally, a therapy is a tiny bit too whacky even for this author, when words such as 鈥渦nusual鈥� are tactfully employed: 鈥淚n one unusual form of treatment with gems, the patient鈥檚 photograph is exposed to a rotating disc set with gems. Since the presence of the patient is not required, this has been called teletherapy.鈥� And I thought teletherapy was relaxing in front of the TV after a hard day.