From Philosophy to Psychotherapy: A Phenomenological Model for Psychology, Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis (review)

Authors who cross disciplines can be brave or foolhardy, and sometimes both. Not only are authors rarely equal to the task, so vast, complex, and diverse is the terrain assumed by their interests, but their readers, also, are rarely equal to the task of understanding and assessing these very efforts. One deleterious consequence is that cross-disciplinary fields are overrun with bad scholarship.

Edwin L. Hersch, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, has written an ambitious cross-disciplinary book that is meant to appeal to philosophers and mental health care providers. But given his training, and given the practical ends to which the book aims, it will appeal most to interested mental health care providers. This is not nothing, of course. Hersch is right to emphasize that psychotherapeutic practices are informed by theories, and that knowing something about these theories is essential to the intellectual coherence and vitality of that practice.

He also knows this is a hard sell - not to philosophy professors, naturally, for whom any such project is preaching to the choir, but to busy psychotherapists, many of whom will deny they need an explicit or even coherent philosophy. To his credit Hersch does a reasonably good job of showing psychotherapists how philosophy can enlighten practice, and in its own way can teach us positive lessons about the self. The trouble will be convincing psychotherapists to read along.

As for philosophers: while no doubt pleased by all the attention, they will generally cringe at Hersch's folksy style, exclamations, and peculiar mixture of hokey yet pretentious ruminations. A case in point is his own guiding model that he calls 'Beams-of-Light-Through-Time.' This metaphor - that we perceive, understand and experience the world only through our focused attention to it - is fine enough. But Hersch's language and reach are overblown. Similar excesses include, but are not restricted to, the following section heading: 'Einstein's Theory of Gravity and Motivational Force: Can "Cares" Be Seen as Bending the Metaphoric Landscape of Our Phenomenological World(s) Much as "Masses" Do in the World of Physics?' A better editor would have intervened.

There is a lot to praise in this book. Hersch is a tireless cheerleader for academic philosophy. His love of twentieth-century phenomenology in particular is readily apparent, infectious and, in a postmodern age, refreshingly unfashionable. And because his style is so straightforward and teacherly, the book will be useful for those looking to hang abstract reflections on a concrete practice. But the praise cuts two ways. Tireless can be earnest, straightforward can be folksy, teacherly can be pedantic, and the drive for conceptual rigour and originality can be overwrought to the point of self-parody.

On the one hand, From Philosophy to Psychotherapy is brave because we really do need to better understand the theoretical foundations of psychotherapy, and Hersch offers some clarity and insight in this regard. On the other hand, it is foolhardy because Hersch is unequal to the task. The result is a flawed book, too long by half, but written with good intentions and lots of heart.