COMMENT:Critique of the clinical practice of psychotherapy by a well known experimental psychologist. Topics discussed include false memory, alien abductions, and satanic ritual abuse. The main focus, however, is the practice of clinical psychology and its continued disassociation with experimental findings. The book is notable for its discussion of how bias introduced by availability, representativeness, selective recall and popular beliefs creates the illusion of accuracy in clinical diagnosis. The experiments reviewed have application to other areas where clinical, as opposed to statistical, diagnosis is performed.
