Clinical Psychology: A Critical Examination: 2 - Softcover

This thoughtful, scholarly and incisive critique of clinical psychology is a must read for all trainees, trainers and practitioners. This thoroughly readable book is compassionate and ultimately optimistic - his is not a deconstruction that leaves us without thought or hope for a different future. Craig Newnes is one of a very few clinical psychologists who dares to write both critically and self-reflexively about professional practice - its histories, abuses, legacies, values and promises. Professor Arlene Vetere, Deputy Director PsychD Clinical Psychology, University of Surrey. This wide-ranging critique of the theory and practice of contemporary clinical psychology will provoke thoughtful reflection about the profession's past and lead to debate about its future. Dr Dave Harper, Reader in Clin Psych, University of East London.

'Critique' is the crux of good academic work, and functions as the hinge-point between scholarship, professional activity and practice. Each theory is only as strong as its capacity to withstand sustained critical examination of the assumptions it makes about the world, and so each of these books have been constructed in such a way as to anticipate what would be made of their arguments by the most searching reader. A founding premise of each book in this series is that learning about a field of professional activity must also be to understand how theory and practice are linked together, and so the role of 'critique' in this process is to question what the impact of those ideas will be on the lives of people outside the classroom. To 'critically examine' an argument is a way of constructing a new practice which will help us understand the world and change it.