Saving Talk Therapy

A hard-hitting critique of how managed care and the selective use of science to privilege quick-fix therapies have undermined in-depth psychotherapy—to the detriment of patients and practitioners
In recent decades there has been a decline in the quality and availability of psychotherapy in America that has gone largely unnoticed—even though rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are on the rise. In Saving Talk Therapy, veteran psychologist Dr. Enrico Gnaulati presents evocative case studies from his practice to remind patients and therapists alike how and why traditional talk therapy works and, using cutting-edge research findings, unpacks the problematic incentives in our health-care system and in academic psychology that explain its decline.
Beginning with a discussion of the historical development of talk therapy, Gnaulati goes on to dissect the factors that have eroded it. Psychotropic drugs, if no longer thought of as a magical cure, are...