Table of Contents

Part 1. Introduction1. Propaganda in the Helping Professions: What is it and Why Should You Care?Part 2. Context, Actors, and Scripts2. Introduction to the Players3. Interactions among the Players4. Propaganda Analysis: Different LevelsPart 3. Consequences of Propaganda5. A Rogue's Gallery of Harms Related to Propaganda in the Helping Professions6. The Medicalization of LifePart 4. How They Reel Us In7. Obscure Different Views of Knowledge and How to Get It8. Appeal to Popular Grand Narratives and Metaphors9. Disguise Advertisements as Professional Literature10. Propagandistic Use of Language and Social Psychological Persuasion Strategies11. Appeal to Our Psychological VulnerabilitiesPart 5. What You Can Do12. Enhance Your Argument Analysis Skills13. Increase Your Skill in Spotting Fallacies14. Increase Your Skill in Searching for Answers for YourselfNotesReferencesIndex

About the Author

Eileen Gambrill, PhD, is Hutto Patterson Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

"I know of no other work that so masterfully reviews propaganda and deceptive scholarship in all its guises and illustrates how it characterizes so much of what passes as 'help, ' 'therapy, ' or 'science' in the helping professions. In addition, the final chapters expand the analysis into a magnificent primer on identifying deception and doublespeak in the literature. As commercial and ideological conflicts of interest in the helping enterprise have largely blurred the boundary between science and marketing, this book should be required reading for all helpers and would-be helpers, their clients, and those who aspire to be critical thinkers." -- David Cohen, PhD, Florida International University
"I would have to describe Eileen Gambrill as 'the Rachel Carson of health and public policy.' This is a wonderful book, written with an engaging literary style from a liberal perspective, but as hardnosed as can be when dealing with questions of evidence, on the tendency of vested interests to distract us for their own essentially undemocratic ends. The book is testimony to the fact that soft-heartedness about the human condition need not imply soft-headedness when making evidence-influenced plans to try to assist." -- Brian Sheldon, PhD, University of Exeter
"I can think of no greater accolade than to state how much this book stirred me to think, and of how much I learned from reading it. This is a brilliant book. Every practitioner in the human services and, more importantly, every literate client, should read it. It provides an effective antidote to the pervasive propaganda to be found relating to the causes of psychosocial and biologically based disorders, their assessment, and treatment. A wonderful addition to the literature on scientific skepticism." -- Bruce A. Thyer, PhD, Florida State University"Propaganda in the Helping Professions is a book that needed to be written and that should be mandatory reading for all consumers. We are drowning in claims and
misinformation--from politicians, the media, and religious and business leaders. If ever
there was time when we needed a lifesaver of truth in this stormy sea of lies, it is now.
Eileen Gambrill has done her part to rectify this sad situation." -- Donald G. Dutton, PsycCRITIQUES