Book Review: The History of Psychotherapy: From Healing Magic to Encounter

Abstract

Healing magic, ancient oriental version. Assyrian and Babylonian tablets ; The papyrus ebers -- Healing magic, western style: the Lorica of Gildas the Briton ; Saint Francis heals the leper ; The laying on of hands and the royal touch ; James Graham's celestial bed ; Sir Kenelm Digby's powder of sympathy -- Healing magic in sleep and dream. The tablets of Epidaurus ; Artemidorus of Daldis ; The Navaho medicine man's interpretation of dreams -- Healing magic: survival and revival in modern times. Magic and the art of healing / James Frazer ; Magic and the profile of a magician / Bronislaw Malinowski ; Revival of black magic in Africa / Albert Schweitzer ; A passage from "totem and taboo" / Sigmund Freud -- Salvation through renunciation. Selections from the sacred books of the east: the Upanishads; the Bhagavad Gita; Buddha's fire sermon ; "The yellow emperor's classic on internal medicine" ; Saint Francis de Sales -- Scriptural demonology and the healing miracles of the bible. The old and new testaments -- The bonfires of the inquisition or the witches' hammer versus mental disease. Kramer and Strenger's "malleus maleficarum" -- Modern miracles. Lourdes, as believers and skeptics have seen it: Dr. Boissarie, Emile Zola, Alexis Carrel -- Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science. Sibyl Wilbur; Mark Twain; Stefan Zweig -- Prelude to psychotherapy. Dialogues / Plato ; Prescription for the good life / Epicurus -- Hippocrates and the not-so-sacred disease -- Light in the dark ages. Selections from Bartholomaeus Angelicus, Avicenna, and Moses Maimonides -- Pracelsus, the magician turned scientist -- Johan Weyer, or the twilight of the witches -- Philippe Pinel, who took the chains off the insane -- Anton Mesmer: the healing power that was only in the patient's imagination -- Hypnotism, suggestion, and the power of ideas. Selections from Braid, Liebeault, Bernheim, Charcot, and Janet -- Freud and the advent of the scientific method in psychotherapy -- Adler's individual psychology -- Focus on culture and interpersonal relationships / H.S. Sullican, E. Fromm, K. Horney, and H. Kelman -- Transactional analysis: therapy without tears / Eric Berne and T.A. Harris -- Jung in search of the soul. Freud or Jung? / Glover ; Freud versus Jung: the mythophobic versus the mythophilic temper / Ehrenwald -- Existential therapies: the quest for transcendence. Selections from L. Binswanger, M. Boss, R. May ; R.D. Laing's Kingsley Hall -- Parapsychology: magic lost and regained?: Freud, Servadio, Ehrenwald, Eisenbud ; Ullman's REM experiments -- Behavior modification: psychotherapy with a psyche?: H.J. Eysenck, J. Wolpe, T. Kraft, T. Szasz, I. Bieber, J. Marmor ; J. Masserman ; Samples of a controversy -- Psychoanalysts rediscover the body. Selections from W. Reich and F. Perls -- Group therapies: mental health for the small consumer. Selections from A. Wolf, S.H. Foulkes, J.L. Moreno -- Encounter and intimacy versus alienation and detachment. Selections from C. Rogers, M.A. Lieberman, M.B. Miles, and I.B. Yalom, with a note of caution by K.W. Bak.