David Whitwell and his publishers are to be congratulated for producing a book of rare and companionable honesty which, in being personal and specific, offers insight into the experience of every thoughtful clinician. To my knowledge this book is unique in being the reflections of a self-critical and highly experienced practitioner refracted through an understanding of the recovery movement and leading to a personal revaluation of practice.

It is also a paradoxical text that resists many of our scientific conventions. It is written simply and with restraint, lacking the dense referencing and citation that scholarly works depend upon for their credibility – as such it is radically unimpressive and befriending of the reader. The dedication to his family is a reminder that psychiatrists are people too, and more than a few have been touched deeply by the same issues as those they work with.

David has long been troubled by the gap between our apparent knowledge (what he calls ‘naïve psychiatry’) and our ineffectiveness in producing recovery through conventional psychiatric treatment, but found it ‘easier to help people in distress once I had acknowledged my doubts’. His experience was that in learning how to be less knowledgeable he became better connected to the reality of peoples’ lives and struggles. In turn he describes discovering that a recovery-based approach, focusing on people's aspirations, hopes and needs, and supporting the active role of the individual in their own recovery, on their own terms, was a better way to work.

In many ways this is a companion text to Postpsychiatry: Mental Health in a Postmodern World (Reference Thomas and BrackenThomas & Bracken, 2005) which sees us as being caught up in and confined by science-based approaches that focus on the deficits of individuals and resort to technical solutions which relegate meanings, values and the social context to secondary consideration.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has set ‘recovery’ as the theme for its annual meeting in 2007 and this will offer ample opportunity for both positive testimony and critical evaluation. Recovery Beyond Psychiatry is an unusual, welcome and timely publication, which is a stimulus to this developing discourse and deserves wide readership and reaction.