[1] The intent of the book is to provide a healing experience by means of explanations, practical suggestions, descriptions and first hand accounts from women who have experienced sexual abuse.
[7] Bass and Davis have also been criticized for leaping to unwarranted, implausible conclusions with significant consequences and for scientific errors found in the first edition that were not corrected in subsequent reprintings.
[8] Since its second edition, the book has contained a case study of an individual who was allegedly a victim of satanic ritual abuse, now considered a moral panic.
[8] The Courage to Heal is written by Ellen Bass, a poet and creative writing teacher and her student Laura Davis,[9] an author and incest survivor.
The authors suggest that people experiencing dysfunction in their lives (including a wide-ranging set of problems such as depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, dysfunctional relationships, dissociative identity disorder, self-injury and suicidal thoughts) or feel there was something traumatic in their childhood should investigate these feelings; Bass and Davis also present what they believe is a path to healing from the trauma of alleged childhood abuse.
[9][11] Discussing the book in relation to narratives of incest, professors of English Janice Doane and Devon Hodges believe the book's popularity is due to it offering "an enormously enabling fantasy that by the same token refuses a complex analysis of the very means of recovery, writing, that it so confidently touts" and for promising to completely make sense of the reader's lives through the simple process of writing.
[16] A 1995 review by psychologist and clinician Susan Contratto states that the book was perceived as dangerous by the antifeminist backlash since it legitimized stories of abuse as told by the survivors.
[4] This lack of qualifications resulted in Bass, Davis and others who adopted their approach leaping to conclusions that caused considerable harm, irrespective of their intentions.
[4] They have been accused of creating an industry which has isolated and separated family members despite having no positive proof the abuse occurred,[6] and for replacing individual identities with that of a "survivor".
[4] Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and award-winning researcher in the field of memory describes the book as the "bible of incompetent therapists".
[19] The Courage to Heal encourages the use of strategies such as guided imagery to access and attempting to elaborate details and emotions and discouraging individuals from questioning the memories recovered.
[8] Since its second edition, the book has contained a case study of an individual who was allegedly a victim of satanic ritual abuse, now considered a moral panic.