Disclaimer: this is more of a theoretical debate about the merits and intricacies of psychotherapy. If you struggle with any serious issues affecting your mental wellbeing, please don't be afraid to seek advice or help from a mental health practicioner.


What do you think?

Some arguments:

• psychotherapy evolves around the premise, that the "psyche" is an independent entity and that our psychological constitution is solely (or mainly) determined by our attitudes and thoughts - which is in essence a false circular reasoning imho, where you claim that A is determined by A (psyche by psyche). this premise fails to fully acknowledge, that our mental faculties are made possible and also are determined by underlying neurobiological (-physiological, -chemical etc) processes and that research shows, that many problems manifesting in the "mental" realm are actually associated with things happening in the physical brain.

• the psychotherapeutic profession is often portrayed as one of altruistic, selfless healers, deeply invested in the wellbeing of their clients - at the same time we have to acknowledge, that they often charge hourly rates, that are comparable to those of private attorneys and that many of them enjoy the status and reputation, that comes with working in that field. it seems as if the highly personal and emotive nature of psychotherapy is beneficial for the service providers, since they can easily attract susceptible and vulnerable people and turn them into paying customers simply by pushing the right buttons

• their business model only thrives, as long as a critical mass of people (= potential clients / customers) is convinced, that without psychotherapy they are not able to function properly - if most people were self-confident and under the impression, that they have the means to handle their own affairs autonomously or (if available) with the support of their social / family network, psychotherapy wouldn't be a lucrative enterprise. hence, the psychotherapeutic profession constantly needs to create the impression, that their services are urgently needed and without alternativ

• psychological theories are mostly based on subjective assertions and models proposed by individuals from within the field, not on an intricate understanding of the exact mechanisms and processes that direct and determine mental functioning - it also has been found, that a significant percentage of studies in the field of psychology could not be replicated, therefore lacking reliability, yet psychotherapists / clinical psychologists point at those exact studies, when asked to provide the evidence-base for their supposedly "scientifically proven" modus operandi

These are just a few of my reasons, why I think that psychotherapy is a potential hoax! Feel welcome to agree or disagree and join the debate

 

Last edited: Jan 28, 2024

Edward Bernays would beg to differ, the very fact that after the war all the top psychologists were head-hunted into advertising and propaganda tells you that it is very real. Look around you ... do we not buy shit we don't need daily? Do we not willingly eat the effluent from their factories, waste re-packaged as 'treats'? We even pay to do so. Top Psychologists at work every day ... if only they bent their will to making peoples lives quantitively better instead. Check out a BBC Documentary called 'Century of the Self'. We have been dominated by ceaseless 'effective' advertising, the kind that's hard-wired in the circuits of your brain to be effective, since the day we were born. Nothing that comes out of their factories is actually good for you and never was. Psycho analysis might help you to see the mechanisms at work, but can anyone be protected from themselves?

 

Last edited: Jan 26, 2024

I guess there are more specialized boards for this discussion than audiosex.
May I ask why you started this?
Did anyone force you to go to therapy against your will?

 

Your very first argument is false, given that psychotherapists often descripes drugs (that work on the physical level) to influence your mental state and thus the underlying physiological and chemical processes are not despised at all

 

No it isn't. Psychoteraphy purpose is to goes deep into you. Tell you the things that you are not aware of.
Realising your traumas and trying to heal them. Give you different perspective and wider view why is that, why you where you are and what you can do to change that.

The other thing is that it is hard to do and many psychoterapeutists sucks. They need to be smart, pick things up, have knowledge and experience and be able to pass their observations and develop a treatment method.
It is similar like with teachers you need to find proper one for you. The one which will resonante with you and understand.
You can have the most knowledgable teacher in the world, the expert in his field but if he will not be able to pass you this knowledge you will learn nothing.

 

I would compare psychotherapy with sample packs.
You have a problem, that you can’t fix by yourself. You aren’t able to create. Cannot make your own music.
Now here comes the shrink/sample pack, offering solutions. But with it you’re still not creating, you still don’t fix your own problem.
Nice comparison ey?

 

nothing says "i'm perfectly sane!" like making a post against therapy on an audio forum

 

The evidence base for most psychotherapies is quite poor in terms of objective outcomes. It wouldn't be approved as a drug therapy due to the trials being of inadequate quality (lack of blinding and/or meaningful objective outcomes).

There are a lot of quack "psychotherapies":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychotherapies

 

Last edited: Jan 26, 2024

You could argue that a doctor can't heal you, your body can only heal itself. Still if your leg is broken, it might help to see a doctor, or in this case a
surgeon or you might never be able to walk again properly. If you have a psychosis and you don't know what is real and what isn't, it might help to see a psychiatrist as they might be able to help. Otherwise, you might jump off a cliff because you thought you are a bird.
Does everyone need to go to therapy. Maybe not. Can people benefit from therapy. Sure they can. So it most likely is not a question that you can answer for anybody else but yourself. Far too often people try to impose their views on other people. Not saying that you are. Therapy didn't help me, so it can't help anybody else. I think it is a hoax, so everybody else needs to be protected, or no-one else should be able to benefit from it. Why do they care or want to decide over what is right for other people? That's an interesting question I think. I know a lot of people that benefitted from therapy, so I think it can be a good thing. Do I personally have therapy? No I don't.

 

Many things work some of the time for some of the people. The problem is that humans are pattern obsessed.

(Like this very post generalises all of humanity with universal patterns)

Humans are by their very nature incapable of accepting that something that at some point worked for them, helped them or turned out to be true, may not work, help or hold true for every other person.

It angers them, it won't let them rest at night. There must be universal patterns we can make use of!

Unsurprisingly, no one has ever found a universal pattern.

But it's also never the pattern that's wrong or the pattern-believers who are wrong, it's unknown external factors or the non-believers who prevent the pattern from working 'correctly'.

All our institutions arose from 'oh yeah, that seems to work for the two of us' pattern-recognition applied to (imposed on) ever larger groups of people. The banking system, capitalism, religion, the lottery, the state, the armed forces, medical practices - you name it.

Conquered peoples, up to that point, of course, firmly believed in their own pattern-based systems.

This is why, for as long we're human, we will never be able to break the cycle of, for example, inventing new, firmly believing in, insisting on, and then eventually wholly condemning the same medical procedures. Trepanation, lobotomy, circumcision, chiropractice.

Psychotherapy probably works as well as having a good friend to talk to for most people. For some it works even better than that. Everyone else should explore options instead of mulling over why this thing that so many people say works for them doesn't work for them.

 

Some people just need someone to listen to them. Shame it wasn't available to everyone in society due to cost.

 

In my view most psychological things are much more nature than nurture orientated and people have pretty much fixed 'hardware' in that regard. I think if your hardware is inadequate for certain situations (like running heavy software) you could try to counter it by some sortware alterations, like running a less bloated windows so you get some more free resources. However, in the end your hardware might still be slower than the hardware of others and you can not really change that, just as you can not really become more intelligent if your (harware) processor is not so fast. However, you can counter it a bit by an updated driver to some degree to get better results (like learn some skill or put more effort and time to still understand something that does not come naturally). Everyone just has different hardware and thus tends to deal with different problems.
I do agree with a previous poster that people tend to see things as patterns I am definately a person who sees things as patterns and people certainly. I think if something is not a pattern, it means that it's random. However, just because it is a pattern may not mean you see the right pattern. You could have below average skills to see the true patterns too.

I find most people will have the same sort of problems their entire lives (their weaknesses) and the same set of strengths. It's like having great working memory and little drive storage. Well, then in your life the thing you will likely run into issues where your drive is full but shit runs well on your computer. However, then it's your own responsibility how to deal with that configuration. You may be naive and not understand this or you might do trial and error and find out that way what works or not or you could be more of an analyser and figure it out that way. That can all be different.
I have a friend that me and girlfriend are gonna meet up with tonight. He always goes to all kinda therapies and coaches and psychologists for his issues. However, it never really changes anything deeply in him. He says he is very different from 5 years ago, but I know 4 years ago he was basically the same as he is now, with the same sort basic problems because they are simply tied to his base personality. I agree with xorome that you can just as well talk to a good friend. In our friend group we (me and girlfriend) are often the one they come to talk to about relationship or psychology related issues and we give some advice, I think because have a bit better people understandings and interest than them on average. Howevert, it can also be a coach of s psychologist or whatever as long as you find that it helps get to know you or move forward.

So I would not go as far as calling any of such things a scam that easily, but I would I'm a bit skeptical to put them up a pedestiral or see them as some oracle of truth because they use method a, b, c or have qualifications x, y, z.

However, all this is just my own personal opinion on such matters and others might view it differently.

 

I guess you are from North America and the whole context of discussion is from the viewpoint of therapy by Psychologists only.

First, there can always be arguments for and against anything in this world for the sake of argument itself.

Psychotherapy broadly speaking includes treatment for mental health and by extension treatment by but not limited to PSYCHIATRIST, PSYCHOLOGIST etc. It is one of the least understood and most overlooked streams of mainstream medical science.

A PSYCHIATRIST also treats you with medicines though a PSYCHOLOGIST will not.

And most importantly it is absolutely not a hoax.

For eg :- Most of the people suffering from Neurosis/Psychosis doesn't even think he/she may be suffering from any disease and needs to seek treatment. Only when noticeable changes in behaviour is observed by which time its already late one seeks/bought for treatment.
The only reason one doesn't give importance to this field of medicine, even mainstream medical professionals too, is due the the fact that mental illness if left untreated doesn't cause an acute threat to the life of a patient unlike physical disesases except in certain circumstances.

Yes one may say that some unscrupulous service providers exploit gullible people to squeeze money from them but the same could be said of any profession.

Most of us tends to forget that profession of treating people is perhaps the only essential service that has existed since the history of mankind itself in one form or other and will remain till its end.

Barring a few all others specifically leaders, bureaucrats (political/otherwise in any form) and lawyers are professions which has been on earth for the least (in fact a microscopic) amount of human timeline, extremely overrated and are least needed for the survival of mankind.

These are only relevant as of today because of the present state of circumstances created by very themselves (which can change overnight if society decides how to manage themselves or the society itself breaks down) and these are perhaps the only service providers who squeeze out the most resources from gullible people for their own benefit inspite of knowing what is truth and what a person needs to survive in the world and be happy.

So No, Psychotherapy is an absolutely proven field of medicine and is necessary for a full fledged treatment of mental illness .

P. S: BTW Beware of PSYCHOLOGISTS who may be unscrupulous and trying to squeeze money out from you. In case of any doubt seek opinion from a different Doctor.

 

Is religion a hoax? It seems to work for some people if they buy into it... therapy is just another version of the same thing as far as I can tell.

 

You really need to differentiate between psychiatrists and psychologists. They are not the same thing, which is why your insurance company/national health service would rather you see a therapeutic psychologist versus a psychiatrist unless you have serious issues or really deep pockets.

They might be used interchangeably in dumbed down society the same way people conflate sociopaths and psychopaths (hey they both have paths ) but they are in all actuality not equivalent.

Either way, not really an ideal place to talk about such things. The reoccurring number of people that want to discuss mental health on a music forum (musicians aren't historically the champions of mental health) would be worrying to some extent, alas I digress.

I will say this though on a scale of effectiveness psychiatrists have a higher success rate than oncologists. Take it as you will.

 

Statistically speaking Sir, you can't be more true than that.

 

all psychotherapies are not created equal
cognitive behavioral therapy did wonders for me

 

There are 100+ styles of psychotherapy, so even just reading your first complaint my immediate response is your complaining about one very specific style of it. I happen to find the most common ones completely useless, but it doesn't mean those aren't for some people. I've found the somatic ones like somatic experiencing most helpful.

I have lots of bad stories about bad therapy and therapists, that doesn't make therapy a hoax, it just a field that while helpful happens to have a lots of negatives and can be very hard to find someone who is good if you're experiencing very challenging problems.

 

I'm actually a licensed psychotherapist, working as a counselor/teacher of "at risk" teens, teaching lifeskills and using music to inspire (mostly just to keep them coming to school, tho). Some therapists are good and help make a difference. Some therapist are not good. I'm good with teens and young adults and oldies, but I probably wouldn't be that good with little ones. I'm actually in the middle of creating a YouTube channel . . . the psychologic implications of creativity and being an equipment junkie (oh I have so much experience. I don't think I'd go to an oncologist. Radiation? Chemo? I think I'd try alternative options and pray a lot.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.