The Medicalization of Psychotherapy

This book is an ethnographic account of the practice of clinical psychology under the auspices of the reductionism of biomedicine. Sylvia Olney uses Peircean linguistic analyses to naturalize consciousness by validating the dimensions of mind and intention to restore psychotherapy to its place as a significant healing art.

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The Medicalization of Psychotherapy: Practicing under the Influence is an ethnographic account of the practice of clinical psychology under the reductionist auspices of biomedicine. Using Peircean semiotic analysis focusing in particular on modes in meaning-making, Sylvia Olney proposes that consciousness should be accorded the same conceptual and value status as “nature” and the human body. This would resolve the psyche/soma split as mirrored both within and between the practice disciplines of medicine and psychotherapy, and could also free practitioners and client/patients from the idea of essential helplessness in the face of biology, a notion which happens to contribute to the vested interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Given the advances of neuroscience and psychoneuroimmunology that support the recognition of force-like dimensions of mind and intention, The Medicalization of Psychotherapy helps to restore the practice of psychotherapy to the significant healing art it has actually been: the healing of consciousness.