This is a weird article, and one of the weirdest features that leaps out at me is that they are treating "psychotherapy" as a monolithic thing to discuss and be studied. There are, of course, many forms of psychotherapy, such as CBT, EMDR, IFS, etc. etc. So I don't see how any one monolithic study of "psychotherapy" can evaluate its effectiveness, even if they are going to focus solely on depression, and indeed, this article only addresses depression.
Furthermore, of course, depression does not occur in a vacuum, and in my case it was the tip of the iceberg, and future sessions would progressively refine and broaden the diagnostic landscape.
Most of all, the positive experiences I have gained from psychotherapy are not simply talking to a professional guy and having him validate my feelings, but rather I've learned practical tools for coping and alleviating symptoms. You may work out of this year's depression, only to find yourself depressed again in five years. If you had taken drugs, then you come crawling back to the psychiatrist and the pharmacy again and you get back on drugs. If you had taken psychotherapy, then you may not need to return to the psychotherapist, if you have been equipped with the right tools, you could have them in a notebook still, and then you just do some checklists, you follow steps, and you've got your skills for coping back at your fingertips again.
Granted, I don't believe that psychotherapy is the be-all-end-all of curing mental illness. In fact, psychotherapy was invented in competition to, or perhaps as a replacement for, auricular confessions to a Catholic (or Orthodox) priest. The Protestant Reformation had eviscerated Germany's ability to cope with the mind's inmost challenges, and the common people had lost their most trusted human confidants, the ones who ministered in the person of Christ. So Freud and his Freunde came up with a way to whisper secrets to a man, have them held in confidence, and maybe even get some advice in return. But essentially, it was just a secular façade to compensate for a sacrament which had been efficacious for thousands of years.
I can assure you that a great majority of practicing Catholics do not treat confessions seriously. Coming from a traditionally Catholic society, we don't have any better coping techniques than "simply man up".
I'm fascinated with Americans who discover Catholicism though. Suddenly the religious parts of Europe become what Japan is to anime enthusiasts - a mythical land of perfection.
Psychotherapy is about the relationship. This point is of such importance, that in Germany (where psychotherapy is covered by the mandatory health insurance) patients are allowed to have a couple of test sessions with several different therapists and then choose to continue with the one they feel best.
Also - as already pointed out - there’s a multitude of schools or types of psychotherapy (CBT, Psychodynamic, etc.) with statistically significant benefits. Of course, some are more suited for some cases than others. The OP treats psychotherapy as a monolith.
One way to look at it, is, that many people weren’t raised with competent-enough parenting (or mentoring) to acquire the skills to cope with some issues on their own - i.e.: the “just deal with it”. And this is the role of the therapist: not to become a parent, but to play the prosthetic role of a very competent parent, or mentor. So that the patient can increase self-awareness, self-reflection, and emotionally grow into being able to better deal with the situation at hand.
However, perhaps the biggest takeaway message here is that we need to educate Society - as we educate kids to learn to recycle - on how to choose a good therapist, what good therapy feels like, the importance of accredited and evidence-based methods (so people don’t rely on astrology and other quacks for - and therefore avoid properly dealing with - their emotional health needs), as well as, what should NOT happen in therapy sessions.
PS: And also educate about what is black & white thinking ;)
Classifying a detailed article as either "science" or "science denial" is certainly black and white thinking.
I also don't think it's true that the role of the therapist is to be a mentor. I've had mentors, therapists, and parents, and those roles don't overlap as much as you seem to think.
If psychotherapy is not a myth, what is the exact mechanism that therapy fixes an issue? If it were science that answer would be readily apparent. I can say exactly how photosynthesis works using chemical structures at every step of the process. But I can’t look up in a book how precisely psychotherapy fixes depression. Psychology has a dearth of actual repeatable testable experiments, which is why it’s not a science.
If so many people lack parenting that gives them the skills to tough it out and deal with it, that psychotherapy is necessary, why were so many people able to function prior to psychotherapy? Psychotherapy is only 100 years old, hell it’s only been socially acceptable for like 20 years. But people functioned just fine.
I don't need studies to validate the hundreds of incredible results I've seen within the population I have direct access to (and myself)
Moreover, what's most onerous, if anything, about the psychotherapeutic mindset is the implicit "broken / fixed" distinction (usually framed as something like "health" or "well-adjustedness")
Another framing with regard to experience would look at "development," "growth," "abundance," "depth," "truth"
There is much to unfold and discover in this life, and psychotherapy is a sliver of a broader set of practices—which have been with humanity for the entirety of recorded history—for doing so deliberately
What's most interesting about this article is the demonstration of a high form of a certain current in conservative culture: intolerance for (read: anger and fear at) the "sensitivity" of others. The internal script is something like "I can't handle that other people are sensitive and lash out at me for how I am." The projection is self-evident.
However you'd find also thousands, millions in fact, of happy people who used the services of psychics, mediums, astrologers, crystal healers, taro readers, shamans, reiki practitioners, remote viewers. You'd also find millions who got cured with sugar placebo pills.
Which is not to say psychotherapists don't do anything right. Maybe they do something right. But it may be almost by accident, or maybe much is not needed for you to feel someone's got your back.
These trends, of solving a given problem a given way, are largely cultural. I wouldn't be surprised if one day we see present day psychotherapy as flawed as we see alchemy today.
A more accurate representation of the conservative position is that they just don't want to be forced to pay for psychotherapy for others, especially since there is very limited evidence that it actually works better than other treatments for certain conditions. I haven't seen any principled conservatives object to other people paying out of pocket for their own psychotherapy, even if they consider it ineffective.
The more I learn about my depression the more I realize just how underdeveloped medicine is in this area. Everything that the author writes is true, some psychiatrists will even admit as much - i.e. that standard treatments such as psychotherapy or SSRIs or exercise work, but each of them just barely. We may be decades or even centuries away from reliably treating depression.
Most depressions indeed go away on their own, and perhaps are even helpful - they can force a person to reconsider and rearrange their life. The heavier ones probably have to be treated with everything that the patient and their environment can muster, all at the same time. And since the patient usually can't do much, it's up to the environment (friends, family, health care, mental hospitals). Please keep that in mind and force your depressed friends to go for walks, or do anything else at all, repeatedly. All the +5% basics like physical activity or smalltalk really do add up. Though the depressed person will not be able to see it for a while.
I had a pretty bad bout of depression about a decade ago. My girlfriend left me, followed shortly by one of my closest friends dying. I saw a therapist and went on antidepressants. I didn’t find either particularly effective or helpful.
I don’t know if it’s even possible for other people but what I ended up doing out of desperation was just logic-ing my way out of it. I would sense it coming and start directly countering thoughts and waves of emotions with reasons what I was feeling was not true and things I was grateful for. It was literally like arguing with my own thoughts and telling them to shut up. It shortened the bouts by a ton, stopped me from spiraling and eventually they stopped all together.
Maybe that will help someone else super analytical like myself? I genuinely don’t know. In more recent years, did not help my wife with her struggles at all.
You (rarely) can force a cure onto people, and in the case of mental problem it's basically impossible.
If the science was clear in that depression would be heavily contained if the sufferer engaged in physical activity, good sleep, good diet, good general routine and zero stuff like social media or mindless entertainment, then how man people would actually follow through?
We criticize psychs for their love of giving pills, but we are the first who are lazy and stupid and would never actually do what's best for us
I think like many people, the first couple of paragraphs inspired me to see what else was published on the site for more “context” about the author’s point of views.
At this point, writing a good-faith rebuttal to the article seems unnecessary.
The article summary seems to be that an emotionally resilient person in a supportive community may not need therapy in response to an adverse emotional event. Studies and meta-analysis show that therapy is effective but it is possible that the effects are overstated. The author doesn’t suggest alternatives to therapy.
Personally, it is possible that there are supportive communities where coping skills are widely taught at an early age and that those skills are better for complex trauma than those developed by therapists (e.g. EMDR) but I am pretty confident those types of communities are far from the norm.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
> The demographic groups involved likely have an average intellectual quotient (IQ) under 85, an aspect that's seldom discussed openly in France. What is the cost of silence?
I'm all for evidence based medicine, but I don't think the authors could make me trust them less if they tried.
Under all the studies cited and the scientific analysis there's this subtle, yet clear, gnarly conservative discourse that can be summed up as "Therapy? Be a man, would you?".
And if that's not enough, there are all the ... I lost count how many, subtle logical jumps that seem reasonable for the sake of argument and brevity, but if you spend more than a second on it make you go "wait, that's right".
My suspicions were aroused when I saw they interviewed J. Michael Bailey, who has been doing science backwards for decades now to paint me and the people who saved my life as a bunch of deluded perverts.
The manifesto on "race realism" (!!!) is enough to convince me that the authors of this piece would shoot me dead if they ever got the chance.
They can kindly fuck off back to the 1920s with that nonsense.
While I have seen any kind of participation (hence quality and dubious patterns) in Wiki articles, this is what you find there:
> W spends most of his time on Twitter talking about _ and the alleged evils of _. He commonly retweets _ and other so-called _. W identifies as a member of the _ which is basically an attempt by _ to re-brand themselves as political moderates.[ref]
That is profiling work. (Not just "Ad hominem".)
--
The clash with the name "rational-wiki" is too strong not to be noted.
--
(Sniper, put some argument there: you are qualifying yourself. Not in a good light.)
This ain't it; there's a debate to be had about the quality of evidence of the many different approaches to psychotherapy, but this person, this tone and this arguments are not it. You can watch people who know much more about the topic (which could be achieve by a more open-ended cursory search) here in the comments trying to elucidate points that are not even made by the OP, just out of the good faith of their hearts (and a desire to keep things on topic). But posting a self-fashioned race-realist certainly would repel most knowledgeable people with good faith.
Strawman, no one thinks that it is false: humans can be resilient and tough-minded; they can suffer the slings and arrows of life without expensive interventions from “experts".
Agreed. My understanding from someone I consider to be a very good clinical psychologist is that the only time you may need some psychotherapeutic intervention is when you are genuinely stuck with a problem you can’t figure out yourself _and_ it’s significantly hampering your quality of life in some way you consider meaningful.
And then, you only need help until you’re unstuck.
> chief content of this myth is that people often cannot process or work through adverse events and traumas—abuses ...
It's not people often, it's some people sometimes. Not everybody gets traumatized by the same things, not everybody needs help to process them. But some need help and for some psychotherapy helps.
Every time I see such an article that dismisses psychotherapy, I cringe a little bit.
It is obvious that the author is ignorant of the topic (psychotherapy).
It sounds like a hardware engineer dismissing software engineers and strongly affirming that all bugs can be solved with hardware solutions.
Some problems are indeed due to psychic issues and not physiological ones. Yes, you can probably workaround symptoms with drugs, but that does not really solve the problem.
If you have mental blocks and a shitty life that makes you depressed, and alleviate the depression with drugs, you still have mental blocks and a shitty life.
I wish that both disciplines were not as independent from each other as it is today. Having experts at both subjects could probably do wonders to help people and make proper progress.
Every time I read a critique of psychotherapy like this, it's hard not to conclude that the authors have very little knowledge of what therapy actually entails, and how it's changed over the decades.
As someone who has dealt with mental health issues stemming from complex trauma for most of my life, it's difficult to take this seriously. What the author describes is a laughable caricature of the field, and seems pretty far removed from the realities that many people face.
I see therapy as a commitment to focusing on root causes, and retraining maladaptive patterns of thought. I see my relationship with my therapist as that of a teacher/student. Someone who can help me reframe things and see other perspectives until I can do the same thing for myself. Coming from an abusive environment that hammered certain attitudes into me from an early age, I've found incredible value from establishing a trust relationship with a person who can act as a conversational sparring partner and can point out the patterns of thought I can't see in myself. I didn't have other people in my life who I trust this deeply, probably because of the underlying reasons I'm seeing a therapist.
I've found that some of the most helpful ways to improve my mental state have nothing to do with those sessions. Sleep, exercise, time in nature, social connection, artistic outlets, etc. are all critical. But those are the things that I didn't know how to actually do. I wanted to want these things, but couldn't navigate the mental blocks that kept me stuck where I was. And for whatever immediate physiological benefit these activities bring, they don't undo decades of conditioned thought that needs to change. Using sheer willpower to force myself to exercise only worked for a short time, and I couldn't establish lasting habits until I had unwound associated unhelpful patterns.
To present these things as better than or as effective as therapy is to completely misunderstand the point. Therapy is also not some panacea, and most of the real work happens outside of session.
> Patients can expect to pay somewhere between 60 to 250 dollars per hour for a therapy session. (A jog in the park, a church service, a long walk in the woods are all, of course, free.) In many cases, insurance covers part of this; however, therapy can still be expensive for the patient, and therapists—men and women who often espouse dubious, even risible theories—are handsomely remunerated.
As a kid, I grew up going to church services. Services in which I heard "spiritual leaders" rail against the sinfulness of homosexuality (among many other things). Around age 12, I heard earnest conversations from elders in the church about such people deserving to be stoned to death according to scripture.
This was rather confusing and terrifying to hear from people who were supposedly worthy of my attention at a time when I was coming to grips with the fact that I felt attraction to both men and women.
To deride psychotherapy and casually offer "free church services" as an alternative in the same sentence is pretty humorous to a person who has had life changingly positive experience with therapy...therapy that arguably became necessary after years of indoctrination and instilled existential dread by those free church services.
I'm not railing against all churches, and there are some great organizations. But it seems only fair to point this out in an article that calls therapy to task for those instances when it doesn't work.
I, for one, am grateful for therapy. It saved my life (literally), and has been an incredibly positive force in my life.
Homosexuality is an interesting case. The DSM classified homosexuality as a disorder until 1973, when the APA board of trustees voted to remove it as a disorder.
Is that a scientific judgement or a cultural one?
I don’t deny the effectiveness of therapy - I know of great successes personally and anecdotally and I understand self-reported well-being is improved broadly. And yet it’s not quite science or medicine. There is no real understanding of purely materialist mechanism of how it works.
I cannot disagree with the contents of this article enough. I can only go by my own personal experiences with psychotherapy, and observing family who have done the same, but the results speak for themselves. I was in a much worse place before psychotherapy, costing myself more in real dollars, time, and needless pain.
Psychotherapy is a tool, it's not a panacea, but ultimately if it safely helps people feel and live better then why throw so much shade ?
I was about to start psychotherapy last month, I ask my family's friend therapist If he could recommend me where to go. So he interviewed me for about 30 mins and ask me about all my problems.
A week later he send me the number of the therapist. I didnt write her yet, I think I dont need it as badly as before.
Those 30 mins were key. I am highly introspective and logical, I only needed to orderly speak my problems.
Go to therapy. It will be very effective due to you being introspective and logical. Your logical reasoning will be put to test by the therapist and what you thought was logical will be challenged constantly. This will illuminate your entire thinking. This is damn near impossible to do on your own. You would rather take a plane to travel a thousand miles than crawl there on your knees.
Sounds like SOMEONE is pissed off he got dismissed from his psych professorship. So first he sounds like a white nationalist, now he sounds like a scientologist.
Seeing a shrink ruined my life. I used to be happy, productive, and socially engaged. Now I'm bouncing around medications, sleeping on the couch all day, and constantly ruminating about the past that I lost.
Feelings are less important than the big picture of your life. Fuck mental health care for convincing me to prioritize my feelings in the moment over my long term happiness.
First, I just don't get how after knowing about freud and his views anyone can trust freudian therapy. Second, I also don't get how people trust strangers with intimate details of their thought life.
I suppose if being happy and functional is your goal, it makes sense to do whatever you can to improve your chances. Personally, I prefer to experience reality and find truth even if it isn't happy or beneficial. I never hear them give advice that makes people unhappy or ask people to sacrifice for others. Furthermore, fundamental views and values I hold are likely very different from any therapist, so they can't qualify to advice me (and many others). Based on what I know about human nature, it's pretty damn scary how much people trust therapists.
Check out century of the self, a documentary I found on HN actually that documens how freudian psychology and modern marketing and capitalism aligned and worked together in the 20th century to create the world we are in today:
[+] [-] NoZebra120vClip|2 years ago|reply
Furthermore, of course, depression does not occur in a vacuum, and in my case it was the tip of the iceberg, and future sessions would progressively refine and broaden the diagnostic landscape.
Most of all, the positive experiences I have gained from psychotherapy are not simply talking to a professional guy and having him validate my feelings, but rather I've learned practical tools for coping and alleviating symptoms. You may work out of this year's depression, only to find yourself depressed again in five years. If you had taken drugs, then you come crawling back to the psychiatrist and the pharmacy again and you get back on drugs. If you had taken psychotherapy, then you may not need to return to the psychotherapist, if you have been equipped with the right tools, you could have them in a notebook still, and then you just do some checklists, you follow steps, and you've got your skills for coping back at your fingertips again.
Granted, I don't believe that psychotherapy is the be-all-end-all of curing mental illness. In fact, psychotherapy was invented in competition to, or perhaps as a replacement for, auricular confessions to a Catholic (or Orthodox) priest. The Protestant Reformation had eviscerated Germany's ability to cope with the mind's inmost challenges, and the common people had lost their most trusted human confidants, the ones who ministered in the person of Christ. So Freud and his Freunde came up with a way to whisper secrets to a man, have them held in confidence, and maybe even get some advice in return. But essentially, it was just a secular façade to compensate for a sacrament which had been efficacious for thousands of years.
[+] [-] worklaptopacct|2 years ago|reply
I'm fascinated with Americans who discover Catholicism though. Suddenly the religious parts of Europe become what Japan is to anime enthusiasts - a mythical land of perfection.
[+] [-] DrNosferatu|2 years ago|reply
Psychotherapy is about the relationship. This point is of such importance, that in Germany (where psychotherapy is covered by the mandatory health insurance) patients are allowed to have a couple of test sessions with several different therapists and then choose to continue with the one they feel best.
Also - as already pointed out - there’s a multitude of schools or types of psychotherapy (CBT, Psychodynamic, etc.) with statistically significant benefits. Of course, some are more suited for some cases than others. The OP treats psychotherapy as a monolith.
One way to look at it, is, that many people weren’t raised with competent-enough parenting (or mentoring) to acquire the skills to cope with some issues on their own - i.e.: the “just deal with it”. And this is the role of the therapist: not to become a parent, but to play the prosthetic role of a very competent parent, or mentor. So that the patient can increase self-awareness, self-reflection, and emotionally grow into being able to better deal with the situation at hand.
However, perhaps the biggest takeaway message here is that we need to educate Society - as we educate kids to learn to recycle - on how to choose a good therapist, what good therapy feels like, the importance of accredited and evidence-based methods (so people don’t rely on astrology and other quacks for - and therefore avoid properly dealing with - their emotional health needs), as well as, what should NOT happen in therapy sessions.
PS: And also educate about what is black & white thinking ;)
[+] [-] staticman2|2 years ago|reply
Classifying a detailed article as either "science" or "science denial" is certainly black and white thinking.
I also don't think it's true that the role of the therapist is to be a mentor. I've had mentors, therapists, and parents, and those roles don't overlap as much as you seem to think.
[+] [-] ecshafer|2 years ago|reply
If so many people lack parenting that gives them the skills to tough it out and deal with it, that psychotherapy is necessary, why were so many people able to function prior to psychotherapy? Psychotherapy is only 100 years old, hell it’s only been socially acceptable for like 20 years. But people functioned just fine.
[+] [-] tern|2 years ago|reply
Moreover, what's most onerous, if anything, about the psychotherapeutic mindset is the implicit "broken / fixed" distinction (usually framed as something like "health" or "well-adjustedness")
Another framing with regard to experience would look at "development," "growth," "abundance," "depth," "truth"
There is much to unfold and discover in this life, and psychotherapy is a sliver of a broader set of practices—which have been with humanity for the entirety of recorded history—for doing so deliberately
What's most interesting about this article is the demonstration of a high form of a certain current in conservative culture: intolerance for (read: anger and fear at) the "sensitivity" of others. The internal script is something like "I can't handle that other people are sensitive and lash out at me for how I am." The projection is self-evident.
[+] [-] 3cats-in-a-coat|2 years ago|reply
Which is not to say psychotherapists don't do anything right. Maybe they do something right. But it may be almost by accident, or maybe much is not needed for you to feel someone's got your back.
These trends, of solving a given problem a given way, are largely cultural. I wouldn't be surprised if one day we see present day psychotherapy as flawed as we see alchemy today.
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|2 years ago|reply
<sigh>
[+] [-] virtualritz|2 years ago|reply
One would hope that most HN crowd would hopefully stop reading after this sentence.
Where to even start?
[+] [-] vmladenov|2 years ago|reply
We certainly wouldn’t want data to get in the way of our confirmation bias.
[+] [-] nradov|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smohare|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] H8crilA|2 years ago|reply
Most depressions indeed go away on their own, and perhaps are even helpful - they can force a person to reconsider and rearrange their life. The heavier ones probably have to be treated with everything that the patient and their environment can muster, all at the same time. And since the patient usually can't do much, it's up to the environment (friends, family, health care, mental hospitals). Please keep that in mind and force your depressed friends to go for walks, or do anything else at all, repeatedly. All the +5% basics like physical activity or smalltalk really do add up. Though the depressed person will not be able to see it for a while.
[+] [-] donatj|2 years ago|reply
I don’t know if it’s even possible for other people but what I ended up doing out of desperation was just logic-ing my way out of it. I would sense it coming and start directly countering thoughts and waves of emotions with reasons what I was feeling was not true and things I was grateful for. It was literally like arguing with my own thoughts and telling them to shut up. It shortened the bouts by a ton, stopped me from spiraling and eventually they stopped all together.
Maybe that will help someone else super analytical like myself? I genuinely don’t know. In more recent years, did not help my wife with her struggles at all.
[+] [-] Simulacra|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Knee_Pain|2 years ago|reply
If the science was clear in that depression would be heavily contained if the sufferer engaged in physical activity, good sleep, good diet, good general routine and zero stuff like social media or mindless entertainment, then how man people would actually follow through?
We criticize psychs for their love of giving pills, but we are the first who are lazy and stupid and would never actually do what's best for us
[+] [-] bpm140|2 years ago|reply
At this point, writing a good-faith rebuttal to the article seems unnecessary.
[+] [-] slv77|2 years ago|reply
Personally, it is possible that there are supportive communities where coping skills are widely taught at an early age and that those skills are better for complex trauma than those developed by therapists (e.g. EMDR) but I am pretty confident those types of communities are far from the norm.
[+] [-] phkahler|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calderknight|2 years ago|reply
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
[+] [-] EdwardDiego|2 years ago|reply
> The demographic groups involved likely have an average intellectual quotient (IQ) under 85, an aspect that's seldom discussed openly in France. What is the cost of silence?
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] porkbeer|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tonnydourado|2 years ago|reply
Under all the studies cited and the scientific analysis there's this subtle, yet clear, gnarly conservative discourse that can be summed up as "Therapy? Be a man, would you?".
And if that's not enough, there are all the ... I lost count how many, subtle logical jumps that seem reasonable for the sake of argument and brevity, but if you spend more than a second on it make you go "wait, that's right".
[+] [-] iamthemonster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sverona|2 years ago|reply
The manifesto on "race realism" (!!!) is enough to convince me that the authors of this piece would shoot me dead if they ever got the chance.
They can kindly fuck off back to the 1920s with that nonsense.
[+] [-] mdp2021|2 years ago|reply
> W spends most of his time on Twitter talking about _ and the alleged evils of _. He commonly retweets _ and other so-called _. W identifies as a member of the _ which is basically an attempt by _ to re-brand themselves as political moderates.[ref]
That is profiling work. (Not just "Ad hominem".)
--
The clash with the name "rational-wiki" is too strong not to be noted.
--
(Sniper, put some argument there: you are qualifying yourself. Not in a good light.)
[+] [-] chownie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cubefox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aaron695|2 years ago|reply
Then don't fucking link it.
I'm not saying Encyclopedia Dramatica is an authoritative source but you might find it a useful starting point to learn about Rational Wiki - https://encyclopediadramatica.online/RationalWiki
[+] [-] reocha|2 years ago|reply
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bo_Winegard
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ben_Winegard
[+] [-] ralfd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mellosouls|2 years ago|reply
Let's at least be honest.
[+] [-] wu2Fe7sp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refulgentis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mactavish88|2 years ago|reply
And then, you only need help until you’re unstuck.
Teach a man to fish, and all that…
[+] [-] croes|2 years ago|reply
It's not people often, it's some people sometimes. Not everybody gets traumatized by the same things, not everybody needs help to process them. But some need help and for some psychotherapy helps.
[+] [-] Seb-C|2 years ago|reply
It is obvious that the author is ignorant of the topic (psychotherapy).
It sounds like a hardware engineer dismissing software engineers and strongly affirming that all bugs can be solved with hardware solutions.
Some problems are indeed due to psychic issues and not physiological ones. Yes, you can probably workaround symptoms with drugs, but that does not really solve the problem.
If you have mental blocks and a shitty life that makes you depressed, and alleviate the depression with drugs, you still have mental blocks and a shitty life.
I wish that both disciplines were not as independent from each other as it is today. Having experts at both subjects could probably do wonders to help people and make proper progress.
[+] [-] bathMarm0t|2 years ago|reply
Option 2: Confront your mental blocks and shitty life with less depression (due to pharmacology).
Option 3: Confront your mental blocks and shitty life with a guide and less depression (due to pharmacology and therapist).
Option 4: Wait for the law of averages. https://youtu.be/3s_BqdZrUbE
I'm taking option 3 all day, every day.* (e.g. I agree with you. They should always be done in tandem / there is no silver bullet).
*It's very important that your therapist shares your zeitgeist or directly counters it as a devils advocate. The drugs... not so much.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] haswell|2 years ago|reply
As someone who has dealt with mental health issues stemming from complex trauma for most of my life, it's difficult to take this seriously. What the author describes is a laughable caricature of the field, and seems pretty far removed from the realities that many people face.
I see therapy as a commitment to focusing on root causes, and retraining maladaptive patterns of thought. I see my relationship with my therapist as that of a teacher/student. Someone who can help me reframe things and see other perspectives until I can do the same thing for myself. Coming from an abusive environment that hammered certain attitudes into me from an early age, I've found incredible value from establishing a trust relationship with a person who can act as a conversational sparring partner and can point out the patterns of thought I can't see in myself. I didn't have other people in my life who I trust this deeply, probably because of the underlying reasons I'm seeing a therapist.
I've found that some of the most helpful ways to improve my mental state have nothing to do with those sessions. Sleep, exercise, time in nature, social connection, artistic outlets, etc. are all critical. But those are the things that I didn't know how to actually do. I wanted to want these things, but couldn't navigate the mental blocks that kept me stuck where I was. And for whatever immediate physiological benefit these activities bring, they don't undo decades of conditioned thought that needs to change. Using sheer willpower to force myself to exercise only worked for a short time, and I couldn't establish lasting habits until I had unwound associated unhelpful patterns.
To present these things as better than or as effective as therapy is to completely misunderstand the point. Therapy is also not some panacea, and most of the real work happens outside of session.
> Patients can expect to pay somewhere between 60 to 250 dollars per hour for a therapy session. (A jog in the park, a church service, a long walk in the woods are all, of course, free.) In many cases, insurance covers part of this; however, therapy can still be expensive for the patient, and therapists—men and women who often espouse dubious, even risible theories—are handsomely remunerated.
As a kid, I grew up going to church services. Services in which I heard "spiritual leaders" rail against the sinfulness of homosexuality (among many other things). Around age 12, I heard earnest conversations from elders in the church about such people deserving to be stoned to death according to scripture.
This was rather confusing and terrifying to hear from people who were supposedly worthy of my attention at a time when I was coming to grips with the fact that I felt attraction to both men and women.
To deride psychotherapy and casually offer "free church services" as an alternative in the same sentence is pretty humorous to a person who has had life changingly positive experience with therapy...therapy that arguably became necessary after years of indoctrination and instilled existential dread by those free church services.
I'm not railing against all churches, and there are some great organizations. But it seems only fair to point this out in an article that calls therapy to task for those instances when it doesn't work.
I, for one, am grateful for therapy. It saved my life (literally), and has been an incredibly positive force in my life.
[+] [-] JackFr|2 years ago|reply
Is that a scientific judgement or a cultural one?
I don’t deny the effectiveness of therapy - I know of great successes personally and anecdotally and I understand self-reported well-being is improved broadly. And yet it’s not quite science or medicine. There is no real understanding of purely materialist mechanism of how it works.
[+] [-] Simulacra|2 years ago|reply
Psychotherapy is a tool, it's not a panacea, but ultimately if it safely helps people feel and live better then why throw so much shade ?
[+] [-] lucasiezzi|2 years ago|reply
A week later he send me the number of the therapist. I didnt write her yet, I think I dont need it as badly as before.
Those 30 mins were key. I am highly introspective and logical, I only needed to orderly speak my problems.
[+] [-] serpix|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EPWN3D|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retrocryptid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trowaway6392610|2 years ago|reply
Feelings are less important than the big picture of your life. Fuck mental health care for convincing me to prioritize my feelings in the moment over my long term happiness.
[+] [-] badrabbit|2 years ago|reply
I suppose if being happy and functional is your goal, it makes sense to do whatever you can to improve your chances. Personally, I prefer to experience reality and find truth even if it isn't happy or beneficial. I never hear them give advice that makes people unhappy or ask people to sacrifice for others. Furthermore, fundamental views and values I hold are likely very different from any therapist, so they can't qualify to advice me (and many others). Based on what I know about human nature, it's pretty damn scary how much people trust therapists.
Check out century of the self, a documentary I found on HN actually that documens how freudian psychology and modern marketing and capitalism aligned and worked together in the 20th century to create the world we are in today:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s