Customer Reviews:
 Excellent exemplifications of the egregious flaws of CBT February 23, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Unfortunately, I loaned my copy of this book and can't provide exact quotes to make my case. But I remember enough to make my main point. The problem with CBT, as exemplified in this book, is that the authors are grossly unempathic and moralistic, therefore, fated to generate only accommodating clients who disrespect their interiors. This is a prescription for repression and symptom substitution.
To make my case, I refer readers to therapy sessions in which clients are cheer led and otherwise cajoled to reimagine their rape experiences. Clients report that reliving the experience is near as grueling as the rape was. The sweetly delivered message of this therapy is, "Get over it." There's no sense that the fears these people experience are complicated and, ultimately, useful experiences full of shame about feeling afraid and longings for comforting and other expressions of profound, live giving sympathy.
Gradually, clients desensitize in the hands of these therapists' cruel regimen. They get over their fears, but the side-effects--the loss of contact with and disempathy toward rich inner experiences--are egregious. This truly is a triumph of moralistic thinking in which therapists conceive of negative thoughts--read, parts of the self--as impulses that must be gotten rid of.
The authors obliquely respond to this critique of their core work and try to dispel it, saying that they are not promoting positive thinking. But that's exactly what this therapy is.
Okay, so I'm being brutal too. I'm hoping that the spiteful elements of my critique are viewed as understandable human reactions to what many prominent therapists think of as an inhumane therapy. It's reasonable to be angry at a therapy one perceives as damaging, especially when some of one's friends have been hurt by it, as a few of my friends have.
At least I know I'm being cruel and have a reason for relating that way. My words are passionate more than spiteful. I'm upset that this culture-bound therapy has taken in so many bright people. And I'm upset about the damage I've seen it do to people who don't succeed at accommodating to this therapy, as well as the ones who do. It makes them feel inadequate, unhelpable, and deserving of abandonment.
If, like me, you want to find examples of the flaws of CBT to serve as as contrasts to the facets of a more humane therapy, this book is well worth its price.
John McFadden
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 About time! May 22, 2000
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
Treating the Trauma of Rape may be heavy fare for survivors and their families...however, it is a complete treatment manual for therapists. The step by step explanations of treatment tactics...even the controversial ones...makes this a valuable tool in any therapist's practice. There are straight-forward styles of treatment, problems and cases that make the reading simple but not easy on the spirit. Not a self-help book by any means...share it with your doctor or with your client.
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