Synopses & Reviews
In the 1990s a disturbing trend emerged in psychotherapy: patients began accusing their parents and other close relatives of sexual abuse, as a result of false “recovered memories” urged onto them by therapists practicing new methods of treatment. The subsequent loss of public confidence in psychotherapy was devastating to psychiatrist Paul R. McHugh, and with
Try to Remember, he looks at what went wrong and describes what must be done to restore psychotherapy to a more honored and useful place in therapeutic treatment.
In this thought-provoking account, McHugh explains why trendy diagnoses and misguided treatments have repeatedly taken over psychotherapy. He recounts his participation in court battles that erupted over diagnoses of recovered memories and the frequent companion diagnoses of multiple-personality disorders. He also warns that diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder today may be perpetuating a similar misdirection, thus exacerbating the patients suffering. He argues that both the public and psychiatric professionals must raise their standards for psychotherapy, in order to ensure that the incorrect designation of memory as the root cause of disorders does not occur again. Psychotherapy, McHugh ultimately shows, is a valuable healing method—and at the very least an important adjunct treatment—to the numerous psychopharmaceuticals that flood the drug market today.
An urgent call to arms for patients and therapists alike, Try to Remember delineates the difference between good and bad psychiatry and challenges us to reconsider psychotherapy as the most effective way to heal troubled minds.
Review
“Of all the mad ideas that have swept through the practice of psychiatry since Freud first undertook to map the unconscious, probably none has resulted in more cruelty to patients and their loved ones than those that led to the Recovered Memory Movement and its adjunct disease, Multiple Personality Disorder. . . . Paul McHugh is a healer.”—Midge Decter, author of
An Old Wifes Tale Midge Decter
Review
“
Try to Remember is a riveting account of his battle against the repressed memory movement. It is also a passionate plea for psychiatry as a humane science, grounded in evidence, and focused on helping people in the here and now.”—Michael J. Sandel, author of
The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering Michael J. Sandel
Review
“Readers of this splendid book will not forget its central lesson: If psychotherapists do not learn from their colossal mistakes, they will surely repeat them.”—Carol Tavris, Ph.D., co-author of
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) Carol Tavris
Review
“Never has psychiatry been so simultaneously inundated with real science and with so much pseudoscience. . . . McHugh explains to uninitiated readers how he learned to tell the difference and where many of his colleagues went wrong.”— Alan Stone, M.D. Professor of Law and Psychiatry, Harvard University
Alan Stone
Review
“This is the absorbing, never-before-told story of how a cult of Freudian psychiatrists went on a witch-hunt across America … before a small band of scientists risked their reputations and livelihoods to expose the cult for what it was: a wacky pack a quacks.”—Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Review
“Paul McHugh documents some of the absurd concepts introduced into psychiatry . . . his book is of equal interest to those outside the healing professions as it is to those within them.”— Sir David Goldberg, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK
Sir David Goldberg
Review
“America's premier pioneering biological psychiatrist Paul McHugh blows the whistle on sloppy and trendy thinking in psychiatry. . . . A must read.”—Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., author of
Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique Michael S. Gazzaniga
Review
“Engagingly written and accessible to a wide audience . . . a gold mine of fresh insights and constructive suggestions concerning how we can improve our system of psychiatric diagnosis.”—Richard J. McNally, Ph.D., author of
Remembering Trauma Richard J. McNally
Review
"Dr. McHugh has rendered a valuable service by describing the lamentable failture of self-criticism of doctors and therapists, some of them motivated by ideological zeal and others by hope of gain—and some, of course, by both. He has also given us a timely warning that we may expect further such episodes of popular delusion and the madness of crowds unless we straighten out our thoughts about the way our minds work—or, if that is not possible, at least about how they dont work."—Theodore Dalrymple, Wall Street Journal Theodore Dalrymple
Review
"As well as admirably empathetic accounts of troubling case studies and enjoyable subtle demolitions of rival colleagues, the book offers a polemical primer on competing schools of thought in psychiatry over the last half-century. Lest the abuses he documents irreparably damage the reputation of psychotherapy, McHugh concludes, his profession ought to take a rigorously empirical approach to mental health, and cast out therapies built on suspicion."--Steven Poole, Guardian (UK) Wall Street Journal
Review
"McHughs account, by his own admission, is deeply personal. It is also deeply disturbing. Vulnerable patients were drugged, hypnotized and otherwise manipulated into concocting stories. Scientific method was thrown to the wind. And practitioners behaved badly--very badly."--Globe and Mail Steven Poole - Guardian
About the Author
Paul R. McHugh is the University Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He formerly was director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at John Hopkins Hospital. He is the author or coauthor of five books and has published over 200 articles in journals and publications such as the Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Commentary.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Chapter 1Meeting the Issue Chapter 2The Path Less Traveled Chapter 3Appraising the Problem Chapter 4Joining the Contest Chapter 5Fighting for Danny Smith Chapter 6The Scope of Suspicion Chapter 7Moving from Defense to Offense Chapter 8Getting to Know Patients Chapter 9Making Sense of
DSM Chapter 10What Is Meant by
Hysteria? Chapter 11Words, Words, Mere Words Chapter 12The Move to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Chapter 13Making Sense of Psychotherapy Chapter 14The "Conflict" and the "Deficit" Psychotherapies EpilogueNotes Suggested ReadingIndex