Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    Re: the book, The Good News About Depression, by Mark S. Gold.

    I'd just like to add my recomendation of this book also.  Over
    the past year I have read (and scanned) a LOT of literature on
    depression (once I was out of my own depression enough to read!),
    and this book is FAR ahead of most of the commonly available 
    literature.
    
    And if you, or someone you know, is looking for help with depression,
    this book includes referral information.
    
    Dennis

    	Just to clarify - the original note, referencing a specific
    book, was entered withthe hope that other noters may wish to offer
    their reccommendations for other books helpful with some aspect
    of Human Relations - Depression is just one aspect.
    
    	There are so many applicable books, some great, some not so
    great, and we may be able to help one another by sharing from our
    own reading experiences.
    
    	Thanks to all ...
    
    	Guy B.
    

         If you're looking for an entertaining look at Taoism I recommend
    "The Tao of Pooh".  It gives one a look at the fundamentals of the
    philosophy of Taoism using A. A. Milne's characters of the hundred
    acres woods.  I've found it amusing and interesting.
    
         I'd also recommend "When Am I Going To Be Happy?" by Dr. Judith
    Romanoff.  It's a book that teaches one to be responsible for one's
    own happiness and helps identify emotional bad habits that might
    be getting in the way of being happy.
    
    ASP

    	Another good one ...
    
    	"KEEPING SECRETS "
    
    		by
    
    	Suzanne Somers
    
    	Well written account of a family's struggle with alcoholism
    and recovery.
    
    	Enjoy ...
    
    	Guy B.
    

    
    re.0 "dispells many myths"
    like...?..which myths?
    
    one must be careful about dispelling myths in here...:-)

    

    	Re .5
    
    	Depression is a very complex matter, manifesting itself in many
    different ways, and subject to many misconceptions or myths - 
    
    	Some think that depression is 100% physiological
    
    	Some think that depression is 100% emotional
    
    	Some think that depression is only temporary and will go away
    by itself.
    
    	Browsing through the many books on the subject, one finds so
    much confusion, and so very little agreeement - more questons than
    answers it seems.
    
    	Dr. Gold has applied much research, and in his book, he does
    a great job in presenting findings which clear away much of the
    confusion. His emphasis is on the physiological, and the chemistry
    involved, and offers much help in terms of diagnostic techniques,
    and treatment.
    
    	If one who has read some of the books from a typical book-store
    on the subject reads Dr. Gold's book, one is left with the overall
    impression that this book is more precise and better researched
    than the others.
    
    	I personally found the book uplifting, and suggest that others
    who suffer long-term depression read it.
    
    	Thanks ...
    
    	Guy B.
    

    
    Title: 	Taking Care - An Alternative To Therapy
    Author:	David Smail
    ISBN:	0-460-02450-7
    Publisher:	J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1987
    
    In 'Taking Care', David Smail questions some of our most deeply rooted
    assumptions about the nature of personal distress which, he argues,
    cannot be understood outside the context of the society in which it
    arises. We suffer pain because we do damage toeach other, and we shall
    continue to suffer pain as long as we continue to do the damage.
    
    That damage, once done, cannot be undone, however much we might wish
    to believe otherwise. Our experience is acquired like the growth rings
    of a tree. It cannot be erased, and neither can we somehow magically
    alter the past by reinterpreting it. Therapy may well provide a measure
    of comfort; but as a 'cure' it simply does not work.
    
    If we are to alleviate human distress, we have no alternative but to
    abandon our faith in therapy and learn instead to take care of other
    people - to treat them as we would plants, which require careful
    tending, rather than as faulty machines which can, quite easily, be
    'repaired'. It is a daunting task, but David Smail enables us here to
    catcha glimpse of how life 'ought' to look in a world which, for all
    its apparently unalterable reality, it is certainly not beyond the
    powers of human beings to influence.
    

    My life is exhibit A for how well therapy works. It's not easy;
    you have to have a competent therapist; and it takes time. But
    there is no substitute for therapy. Telling someone who is 
    seriously depressed to be nice to other people and then they
    will get well is dangerous. Most people who need therapy have
    very little energy, and giving them another task to perform is cruel.
    
    I practiced the "think of others" theory for a long time before I 
    tried therapy, and it didn't work. We ourselves are people who need
    help sometimes, too, and there is nothing wrong with helping ourselves.
    Besides, now that my own health is good, I have a lot more time and
    energy to think of others.
    
    Eileen
     

Eileen,

The central argument of David Smail's book is a very simple one. Psychological
distress occurs for reasons which make it incurable by therapy, but which are
not beyond the powers of humans to influence. We suffer pain because we do 
damage to each other and we shall continue to suffer pain as long as we continue
to do the damage.

His particular concern is with psychological knowledge, and he has the 
difficult task ( to many people perhaps unpalitable ) of suggesting that the
main use to which psychological knowlege has been put has been through the
exploitation of some people by others for purposes which, though they do
not appear in those others' conscious awareness, nevertheless suit them
rather well.

Far from being repairable machines, human beings are embodied organisms on
whom damage will always leave a scar. We simple cannot get away with using
and abusing each other as we do, and it is a small wonder that the ways
of life into which we have uncritically fallen reverberate so disastrously
in our conduct towards and experience of each other.

The sense of 'therapy' which this book calls into question is that in which
therapy is 'officially' offered ( and undoubtedly widely accepted in the
public mind ) as a 'technical procedure' for the cure or adjustment of
emotional  or 'psychological' disorder in individual people. There are
many other 'unofficial' aspects of psychotherapy which David Smail does
not want to question and indeed pursuance of which the book could be said
to be written. These aspects are however in direct contrast to the 
grandiose claims and aspirations of most 'schools' of psychotherapy,
extremely limited and not juistifiably professionally 'patentable'.

As a matter of fact, though there stated profession and unstated interest
may be to offer cure, most therapists of good will also play an inadvertantly
subversive role within our society which damages us profoudly. What most
psychotherapists 'actually' ( as opposed to professedly ) do, is 'negotiate'
a view of what the patient's predicament is about which both the patient 
and the therapist can agree ( which is to establish, as closely as one ever
can, what is the truth of the matter ), and then 'encourage' the patient
to do what he or she can do to confront those elements of the predicament
which admit of some possibility of alteration. 

The actual possible achievements of therapy may thus be summarised as
establishing what is the case ( 'demystification' ), and providing comfort
and encouragement.

Psychotherapists have always had the greatest difficulty demonstrating that
their activities actually lead to anything remotely resembling a 'cure' of
the 'conditions' presented by patients who consult them. The focus of David
Smail's book is not psychotherapy*, but rather, he uses the experience of
therapy and therapists to examine the process whereby people change. For 
nowwhere do people try harder to change than in psychotherapy, and few
people can have put in more effort into trying to get other people to change
than have psychotherapists.

David Smail does not simply attack or condemn psychotherapy as a means of
offering help to people, but rather to indicate that the 'kind' of help
it offers cannot accurately be seen as one constituting a 'technology of
change'. There is no doubt that psychotherapy has an important role to
play in our society, but if we are to gain a clear idea of what is its
value and what should be its place, and if, more importantly we are to
understand the processes whereby people actually do change, we need to
absorb a little more honestly the lessons taught by the experience
of pschotherapy, and question much more rigorously the grounds upon
which we hold so tenatiously to the 'therapeutic assumption'.

Most therapists have been rather traumatised by the research literature:
the lack of hard evidence that therapy really 'does any good' in the way
that it is supposed to is something to set the seeds of panic sprouting
in those who see no obvious alternative way of making a living.

Therapy may have other uses than trying to change the way people are.

David.