ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the important work of Ian Parker and Nikolas Rose on discourse and power to show how conventional therapy typically functions as a "regime of truth" which in turn acts as a self-serving and ethically questionable ideology. It also focuses on the work of "Rosie Alexander", "Ann France", and "Anna Sands", each of whom have written insightfully and in considerable depth about their often extremely harrowing experiences of one-to-one therapy. The book outlines the case for a "post-therapy era", in which therapy, in its profession-centred commodified form, is systematically exposed as being part of the problem rather than a solution to the cultural and spiritual malaise of modernity. It examines a number of hallowed concepts from the therapy lexicon.
