FREE TO FEEL: The New Therapies

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 1974

Dr. Liss is described by his publishers as ""an enthusiastic young psychotherapist"" (euphemism of dubious intent!) so it ought to be said straightaway that he is doing a legitimate service with this comprehensive, tidily differentiated guide to the therapeutic left. He has his audience pegged (the maladies at issue tend to set in, along with some affluence, presumably around the 30th year) but Dr. Liss admits it with the same nonchalance as he admits his eclectic bias in favor of all the new therapies, from the most mothering, one-to-one touch types to the authoritarian bash-em-downs at Synanon, regression to hard-boiled political consciousness-raising. This is not to say he's uncritical -- he has mild objections even to the sainted Perls -- only that he does not criticize in such a way as to rip the fabric of what has been rightly sensed as a single phenomenon, although an ungodly heterogeneous one, as befits an insurgency dedicated to organic principles. Since Dr. Lbs has a notably orderly mind, his doctrinal empathies work to the good, doing full justice to the rationales and allowing for the kinds of internal, felt distinctions that ultimately matter. Anyway, it's a clearer view than you're likely to get from the outside and an attractively helpful guide for the comfortably troubled, written in a cooler version of Dr. Reuben's reassuringly perky star-quality prose.

Pub Date: June 26, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Praeger

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION