American psychotherapy and its malcontents: A review of Cushman, Phillip (1995).

Reviews the book, Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy by Phillip Cushman (1995). Phillip Cushman's 1995 Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy provides both a far-reaching critique of psychoanalysis in America and an alternative theoretical approach founded on the notion of the self as sociohistorically configured and moral. With the proliferation and sometime redundancy of critiques of the mainstream, it would not be unfair to ask what Cushman's critical analysis effects beyond what has already found its way into print. To begin with, his contribution is distinguished by its object. Whereas most critiques are aimed at theories and practices as institutionalized in the academy, Cushman takes as his primary target those which have dominated the professional practice of psychotherapy in America. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)