Book Review. CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami – Managerialism, Politics, and the Corruptions of Science. Farhad Dalal

Abstract

This book offers a critical response to the relentless and rapid growth of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in the UK. Dalal’s comprehensive analysis aims at critiquing the suspect practices and fetishism of measurement in CBT research. Looking at the broad intellectual and economic underpinnings of CBT, he also highlights the forms of neoliberal governance that maintain the whole edifice (or should we say artifice?). Overall, he does a great job of providing a long overdue retort to CBT’s insistent claims. The book is pertinent reading for art psychotherapists who have been left relatively marginalised by the cognitive behavioural tsunami and the dynamics and developments described.