Is CBT all it claims to be? The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami:
Managerialism, Politics, and the Corruptions of Science provides a
powerful critique of CBT's understanding of human suffering, as well as
the apparent scientific basis underlying it. The book argues that CBT
psychology has fetishized measurement to such a degree that it has come
to believe that only the countable counts. It suggests that the
so-called science of CBT is not just "bad science" but "corrupt
science".
The rise of CBT has been fostered by neoliberalism and the phenomenon of
New Public Management. The book not only critiques the science,
psychology and philosophy of CBT, but also challenges the managerialist
mentality and its hyper-rational understanding of "efficiency", both of
which are commonplace in organizational life today. The book suggests
that these are perverse forms of thought, which have been
institutionalised by NICE and IAPT and used by them to generate
narratives of CBT's prowess. It claims that CBT is an exercise in
symptom reduction which vastly exaggerates the degree to which symptoms
are reduced, the durability of the improvement, as well as the numbers
of people it helps.
Arguing that CBT is neither the cure nor the scientific treatment it
claims to be, the book also serves as a broader cultural critique of the
times we live in; a critique which draws on philosophy and politics, on
economics and psychology, on sociology and history, and ultimately, on
the idea of science itself. It will be of immense interest to
psychotherapists, policymakers and those concerned about the excesses of
managerialism.
