Jerome Frank (1909–2005) is one of the giants of 20th-century psychiatry. Born into a German Jewish family, he studied psychology, where he was influenced by Kurt Lewin’s ‘field theory’, in which individual psychology is determined as much by cultural context as by genetics or development. Frank then trained in medicine and psychiatry, and, as a Second World War army physician, encountered what he termed ‘demoralisation’ in combat troops, a concept he later took into his work as a liaison psychiatrist. Horrified by Hiroshima, he was a founding father of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Science.

Persuasion and Healing first appeared in 1961. While committed to the general benefits of psychological therapies, it was also a challenge to the prevailing psychoanalytic ethos of its day, and in later editions to cognitive–behvioural therapy hegemony. Based on detailed process–outcome studies, Frank (with Carl Rogers) pioneered the ‘common factors’ account of psychological cure. Psychotherapy is effective, but no one species is superior. Effective therapies include a trusted healing agent, a coherent theory of illness, prescribed procedures, emotional exploration, encouragement of self-reflection and mobilisation of agency in relation to the therapist and the client’s lived world. The book then takes an anthropological turn, daringly comparing scientific psychotherapy with the roles of religious healers and shamans. Frank concluded that therapy, and psychiatry generally to the extent that it relies on the placebo effect, is not so much a science as a form of specialised rhetorical discourse.

This ‘updated’ edition expands the original with contributions from Frank’s psychiatrist daughter, Julia, and his intellectual offspring Bruce Wampold, the most eloquent contemporary proponent of the common factors model. Thus the references have a curious biphasic character, with citations mostly pre-1970 or from the 2010s on.

What has this text to offer to contemporary psychiatry? For those interested in the history of our discipline, it is a mid-20th-century classic. For those struggling with the paradox that one needs both to acknowledge the shared deep grammar of all psychotherapies and commit oneself to a single ‘mother tongue’, it presents an admirable challenge. For those complacent about psychiatry’s social role, Frank brings us up with a jolt.

Updated Frank also points forward. A key Frankian concept is that of patients’ ‘assumptive world’, and therapists’ efforts to identify, combat and modify those relational assumptions. This has clear implications for cross-cultural psychiatry. It also chimes with Friston’s model of ‘active inference’, in which subjects act on their sensory input and social circumstances to minimise surprise. The common factors debate has now moved on to the idea that there are indeed specific interventions that work in psychotherapy but not necessarily those that their adherents cherish. Change entails fostering epistemic trust and mentalising, creating an empathic therapist/client ‘we mode’ and tolerating uncertainty while holding to an overall formulation. A similar ironic acceptance is recommended for readers of this not-to-be-missed reissue.