Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy.
Eric Caplan. 246 pp. University of California Press, 1998. $35.
The psychotherapy industry finds itself in turmoil. The issues
are cost containment by managed care and an ever-expanding
pharmaceutical cabinet, arguments over the scientific evidence
for therapeutic efficacy and turf battles among several
professional groups, notably master's-degree practitioners, to
be recognized as independent psychotherapy providers. In the
midst of what clearly is a crisis state in psychotherapy as
profession, Eric Caplan offers us a historical account of its
beginnings. Psychotherapy in America is a 20th-century
invention. Standard lore indicates that it emerged at the
beginning of this century for two reasons: a change in view of
the etiology of mental illness from somatic to psychic factors
and the popularity of psychoanalysis following Sigmund Freud's
only visit to America in 1909. Caplan argues that this standard
history is wrong on both accounts. In this bri