Illusion and Reality

The book's primary purpose is to explain the meaning of anxiety as experienced by the sufferer. These insights also lead to a view, by way of secondary purpose, that the role of the therapist is not in 'curing' the individual, but rather to negotiate demystification and to provide insight into the effects of the problems in the sufferer's world.

David Smail

Preface to Constable edition , The Myth of Normality , The Reality of Threat , Shyness and the Self as Object , The Domination of Words , The Language of Anxiety , The Magic of the Machine , The Experts , The Possibility of Undeception , The Confrontation of Reality