I know what you mean, but it is dangerous. You can go by a lot of professions doing that. Is XXX an hoax?

Anyway of deeping knowledge of yourself is worth it. If you don't think, you don't take concience, if you don't take concience, you repeat your patterns, if you repeat patterns you don't change, if you don't change you wont adapt, and you or other are goin to suffer the consecuences.

We are externalizing human care. So in this hyperespecialized, aseptic, atheist and individual world, psycotherapist, do his mission on helping humans to go ahead.
Other times were priest, or old people. Now we know about everything, but we are still animals full of emotions, and is important to have profesional help at some points. So the answer is no

 

I take it as the dumbest thing I've read in this whole thread.

Most mental health issues are like colds. In most cases, they self-resolve over time whether the patient gets treatment or not.

Cancer, OTOH, is a very different kettle of fish. Rather than self-resolving, it'll generally kill you. What oncologists are attempting to do isn't 'cure' you, but buy you some more of what epidemiologists call 'QALY's' -- quality adjusted life years. So success isn't counted in whether you live or die -- everybody dies -- but in the number of additional QALY's a patient derives from a particular treatment.

Psychotherapists have barely even attempted to quantify their outcomes, and when they have, it's never come anything close to the kind of rigour that oncologists have. Where they have done, it's really been in the areas of 'severe and enduring' (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.) mental health problems (the stuff that's the business of psychiatrists) rather than the 'mild to moderate' end of the spectrum that psychotherapists generally deal with.

Of course, psychotherapists hate the QALY because they say it isn't sensitive enough to measure what they do. But it certainly measures the number of additional life years oncology therapies bring about in a patient.

Take THAT as you will.

 

can you say environmental conditioning?

 

Freud = Fraud

 

"Guided self-reflection" is the key word.

 

I have never had experience of Psychotherapy so I don't know if it works or not, but anything that can help someone through a traumatic time in their lives has to be a good thing!

 

Not a hoax.

Some bad counselors, psychologists, and so on, yes.

However, overall net positive.

 

Hoax is a strong and specific word. I would ask "is psychotherapy a pseudo science?"

 

No, its based on CBT as a reference and as the most common psychotherapeutic treatment offered currently. Psychoanalysis is even more ridiculous, but not really worth discussing, since its not really a thing anymore where I live.

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2024

Well, it seems that most of you have not really read my arguments, since some of your replies are so wildly out of context.

 

Edward Bernays might be interesting in a discussion about general psychology, but he is not really relevant in this specific context of psychotherapy. Well, you might argue that he was influenced by his relative Sigmund Fraud, but that's it.

 

Not false. I'm basing all my statements on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as the most common and widely practiced form of psychotherapy today. It premises that our thoughts determine our behaviour and our emotions. The biological brain does not play any role in the actual treatment regimen.

Imagine a TBI-survivor, who as a consequence of the damage to his brain tissue (which causes a disruption of the neural pathways and neurological dysfunction) suffers from depression, irritability, memory problems and other cognitive impairments.

If as an outsider you knew nothing about the underlying cause for his symptoms, one would happily recommend him to seek psychotherapy, because the person appears to have "mental" issues. A psychotherapist would treat him based on the idea, that his issues are caused by his problematic thought patterns and attitudes, because that's what the CBT theory evolves around. The person could undergo CBT for countless sessions, but this wouldn't change anything about the underlying brain physiology, that is really causing his problems. The person does indeed suffer from "mental" issues. Only that these "mental" issues are not caused by his mentality, but by the underlying machinery, that is supposed to facilitate mental functioning.

You might say that someone suffering mental symptoms due to TBI is a very particular example, but the basic principle remains the same in people with "healthy" brains: their congenital (and over the cause of life developed) brain structures determine their personality and cognitive style. That's exactly why you have some people who are very extroverted by nature and some who are very introverted. Some who tend to be agreeable and easy going, others who get into arguments quickly etc

Psychotherapy is based on pathologising certain behaviours and cognitive styles + proclaiming, that it's due to "problematic thought patterns", that these natural deviations from a supposed ideal exist, as if all people were born with the same generic brain and it's just due to different ways of thinking, that people act differently (= problematically). That is the implicit premise of modern psychotherapy, CBT in particular and that premise is wrong, since as I said earlier: these differences are natural, in fact caused by the underlying biology of each individual.

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2024

I think most therapists would be smart enough to differentiate between a let's say emotional disorder and a neurological condition. I also don't think that the fact that some methodologies can be misused or even ineffective to some people invalidates them, different people have different needs, psychotherapy isn't a unified field that follows pragmatic rules set in stone that serves to everybody no exceptions allowed, it's a rather deep subject. If someone here ever wrote a monograph or a thesis, they know that discussing such a bottomless subject on an audio forum through short paragraphs here and there will ultimately lead nowhere, so if anybody reading this thread is going through tough times and is considering therapy, give it a shot... it's not going to hurt, people might not be able to help you but they might be able to make you help yourself. Don't give up, keep going, you'll get there, it takes time.

 

Wow, are you ignorant or just very naive? Evidence-base for psychotherapy is actually very poor, despite the fact that people personally invested in the field are the same ones that try to proof the validity. Here you will find a relevant publication on the subject.

Psychotherapy is not scientific to begin with, since it's based on non-falsifiable and subjective claims about the inner working of the "psyche", which does not really exist as an independent entitiy, but rather is a synonym for our mental faculties and senses, that are facilitated through biological processes in the central nervous system!

 

All "emotional" or "mental" disorders are by their very nature "neurological conditions", that's my point!

The underlying biology is what determines and facilitates our mental state. Of course, experiences, events, repeated patterns, learning all will vice versa affect our nervous system, since this is exactly what our brain is "designed" to do: built new neural pathways and synaptic connections, that encode and decode information and memories, that we can recall for our decision-making in the future. Bad experiences encode bad memories, which can influence, stress, overwhelm or highjack our mental state and prevent us from functioning in more productive ways.

I'm not trying to discourage those who are lonely or feel that they could benefit from talking to someone to seek a therapist! In fact I believe that the main merit in psychotherapy is that it grants one a space and opportunity to speak about inner feeling and reflect upon them in the presence of a (ideally) non-judgemental person. I believe that all the positive effects of psychotherapy can be attributed to that simple setting, not to any of those claimed "evidence-based" scientific blablablas that some psychotherapists like to refer to, to boost their ego and to prove that they are part of the academic caste.

 

"In fact I believe that the main merit in psychotherapy is that it grants one a space and opportunity to speak about inner feeling and reflect upon them in the presence of a (ideally) non-judgemental person."

 

No, psychotherapy is NOT a hoax.
But there are of course many charlatans in the field.

 

Yes, "just like sickness"

 

respectfully I say no.
as someone has already pointed out below
psychiatrist have a pharmaceutical licence to dispense medication
a psychologist doesn't

I've had a family member go into the "priory" for clinical depression after cancer at a young age and was prescribed medication to assist them through therapy( this was to deal with the abuse of being denied cancer treatment because of disability, which then brought up all the other lifetime abuses from society).

I knew of a young man who was coerced by his former wife to commit suicide twice( thankfully police intervened on the second attempt). He was high as a kite ( medicated) when I met him and undergoing therapy to undo the psychological abuse he had been subjected to.

I work with vulnerable adults with various mental health conditions who have worked with both psychiatrists and psychologists in order to improve their well-being without the need for excessive medication( behaviour therapy).

so.. there is a need for this profession. I do see your point about the issue of money( i suspect that is a mostly American issue).
my issue with the profession is that they can't always agree on things which are severely impacting parts of the population( and made worse by failure of peer-reviewed evidence to support their assertions), and that they have become very politicized which is affecting their judgement and interfering with their role of "healing"

 

Psychoanalysis (Freud et al) is a con. At university in England it is mentioned as being of historic interest only. The whole thing is unscientific as there are no refutable hypotheses.It is simply a way to get gullible people to part with their money. Cognitive behavioral therapy was certainly the most efficacious flavour of psychotherapy in my day. That may have changed by now.