Contrary to the claims of the psychotherapy myth, humans can be resilient and tough-minded; they can suffer the slings and arrows of life without expensive interventions from “experts.”
There is much to criticize about the modern psychotherapy industry and culture overall, but I think this piece misses the mark. You seem to be arguing against an outdated neo-psychoanalytic caricature instead of what most therapy is actually like. Your focus on depression is also narrow, and it seems like your real beef is with the vaguely unhappy "worried well" going to therapy instead of doing other things with their lives. Psychotherapy is something that some people find useful and other people don't, and some people find it even distasteful, which is fine. But if you looked at this through the lens of, say, exposure and response prevention (ERP) for obsessive-compulsive disorder you might come away with a somewhat different impression as to psychotherapy's goals and efficacy. You may also underestimate the extent to which some people really have difficulty getting through life. I think this is something many people forget.
Anyway, I'm driven crazy too by the intrusion of therapy-speak into ordinary life, and people bragging about going to therapy, and all those excesses. Some of this could be blamed on therapists but I think it is just as much a product of the meme-amplification-machine that is our current culture. Important to make fine distinctions and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I agree with your point that the article creates a caricature of what therapy is actually like today. While it sometimes does look into past experiences to understand current reactions to events, the point isn’t to place blame and arrive at a state of victimhood. Rather, the point of most therapy is to recognize poor thinking patterns in oneself and learn ways out of the mental traps they can create. Certainly some therapy does do what the author describes, but from my experience that is not most therapy.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the authors' position that psychotherapists often promise too much and hold on to their patients for too long. Particularly with mildly distressed patients, therapy becomes the purchase of friendship.
However, I strongly disagree with their characterization of the serotonin hypothesis, which was invented before we had the tools to measure anything going on inside the brain. This is not pop psychiatry, but a caricature promoted by anti-psychiatrists. I spent almost 40 years as a psychologist in academic psychiatry and family medicine departments. The only time I ever heard depression described as a serotonin deficiency was by drug reps who were hired for their youth and beauty, not their intelligence.
It is pop-psychiatry though, as I assume the author means the popular view of the public of what the field can do. Do you contest that the majority of Americans believe in the chemical imbalance theory? Or that given this is a widespread myth, academic psychiatry has at minimum failed as an institution to accurately inform the public?
You’ve also contradicted yourself. If the chemical imbalance myth has only been promoted by unscrupulous drug companies’ idiot reps in your experience, then you know that the chemical imbalance myth is NOT “a caricature promoted by anti-psychiatrists” since the complaints of these so-called anti-psychiatrists are based on at least one real-life institution that’s actively promoting it as best they can.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to reply to some real misrepresentations of me and call out your use of alter-casting me to make a point. I describe alter-casting as putting words in people's mouths to control what they can subsequently say in my recent article "Nonscientists at Groningen Declare That ADHD Does Not Exist!" [ https://shorturl.at/atzY5 ]. I don't think most Amercians can give a coherent account of chemical imbalance theory, much less belief in it. I expose this anti-psychiatry myth in "A Critical Look at the Impact of Joanna Moncrieff’s “Chemical Imbalance” Umbrella Review" [https://shorturl.at/hrEP9].
You are very confused about promotion of antidepressants. Psychiatrists now lag behind internists, GPs, Family docs, and other primary care docs. Why do you have such a hard on about psychiatry. Is it uniquely evil or do you distrust medicine more generally?
Resilient people can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing and nobody left. Therapy is just one means to an end, sometimes a last resort. Why generalize and call it a myth? Therapy brought me back from the brink, steadily and quickly.
It is ignorant to say that people can just simply stop ruminating over negativity and just move on in their life. People who have mental illness do not have the pathways in their brain to successfully cope with these problems, that’s why it’s called a “mental illness”. Even mentally healthy people may lack the ability to fully cope, they may be in a bad condition but they can still carry on in their life, just not is severe as an illness.4
I am no expert on psychotherapy, in fact, the one time I tried to do it, I absolutely hated it and quit within a few weeks. But I know that some therapeutic strategies are very effective at providing clients with the tools to change those mental pathways, and cope with life, which is not always going to be happy and fun. (I think it’s called CBT?)
That’s really the only therapy method I know about, and I agree it’s extremely expensive.
It doesn't have to be. You can do it yourself. There are good workbooks available. True, it's harder to do it alone and to keep it up. A good AI CBT therapist could be helpful.
"the idea that understanding the cause of one’s suffering is the key to curing it is dubious." That is not what cognitive-behavioral therapy claims. That sounds more like an outdated Freudian approach.
But cognitive behavioral therapy deals with thoughts, and understanding them. It isn't about digging through the past. These are two different modalities.
While I'm not arguing against the overall point of this piece, the following sentences were so obviously non sequitur that it raised suspicions that possibly other assertions are misleading: "If psychotherapy were an effective treatment, one would expect declines in depression and suicide rates and improvements in mental health in the United States, absent countervailing forces. And if we do not see these declines and improvements, then this should at least engender some skepticism about the efficacy of psychotherapy." It's glaringly obvious that only a tiny section of the population is ever exposed to psychotherapy, and there is zero effort at measurement of said "countervaling forces." The further elaboration does nothing to address this failure of logic but only fast-talks past it. It felt like an attempt at a swindle, inflicting a bit of damage to the authors' otherwise thought-provoking presentation. Ugh.
Hooray, another brilliant takedown of bullshit by the Winegard bros. Rarely, therapy might do some good, and ditto pills; the overwhelming majority of both is bs.
Just saw this, and it's outstanding. (Cogent and agrees with me, so it's definitely correct.) Brothers Winegard, how about going after the vague and overdiagnosed autism sometime?
As is the case with most of the toxins in the social psychology of the 21st c West, academia is where this false culture of 'therapy' runs riot....pandering to the worst kind of over-privileged spoilt-brat student. A great place to find a forensic examination of this is Heather Mac Donald's 'The Diversity Delusion' which I reviewed here in 2020: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
"Thus, a healthy culture should teach ..." <-- At its best, therapy fills this hole in the culture. At its worst therapy gives people a shovel to dig deeper.
The author writes that nonsense in order to not feel bad about his miserable life. By writing that he feels justified in his decisions that led to his current pathetic life.
Furthermore by claiming that "life is full of misery" he can wallow in self-pity without taking actions to change his life for the better. Because if great misery is an inherent part of life then you can nothing do to change it and you don't have to act to change your life and to admit that your miserable life is your fault. What a convenient explanation.
Really amazed you have this take. Identifying a fundamental element of human experience isn't a pass at becoming obsessed by it. We all recognize we're going to die some day but spend almost little to no time dwelling on it; we often do the opposite - we spend our lives as if the runway is infinite.
If the author said anything, resolving the miseries of life is actually highly possible and doesn't require some gated cleric of church of talk therapy to resolve. Go for a jog, attend church, take vitamin D. Where do you get this preference that he's avoiding ownership when we're talking about feelings and symptoms? Maybe you're overdue for a jog yourself.
There is much to criticize about the modern psychotherapy industry and culture overall, but I think this piece misses the mark. You seem to be arguing against an outdated neo-psychoanalytic caricature instead of what most therapy is actually like. Your focus on depression is also narrow, and it seems like your real beef is with the vaguely unhappy "worried well" going to therapy instead of doing other things with their lives. Psychotherapy is something that some people find useful and other people don't, and some people find it even distasteful, which is fine. But if you looked at this through the lens of, say, exposure and response prevention (ERP) for obsessive-compulsive disorder you might come away with a somewhat different impression as to psychotherapy's goals and efficacy. You may also underestimate the extent to which some people really have difficulty getting through life. I think this is something many people forget.
Anyway, I'm driven crazy too by the intrusion of therapy-speak into ordinary life, and people bragging about going to therapy, and all those excesses. Some of this could be blamed on therapists but I think it is just as much a product of the meme-amplification-machine that is our current culture. Important to make fine distinctions and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I agree with your point that the article creates a caricature of what therapy is actually like today. While it sometimes does look into past experiences to understand current reactions to events, the point isn’t to place blame and arrive at a state of victimhood. Rather, the point of most therapy is to recognize poor thinking patterns in oneself and learn ways out of the mental traps they can create. Certainly some therapy does do what the author describes, but from my experience that is not most therapy.
I am somewhat sympathetic to the authors' position that psychotherapists often promise too much and hold on to their patients for too long. Particularly with mildly distressed patients, therapy becomes the purchase of friendship.
However, I strongly disagree with their characterization of the serotonin hypothesis, which was invented before we had the tools to measure anything going on inside the brain. This is not pop psychiatry, but a caricature promoted by anti-psychiatrists. I spent almost 40 years as a psychologist in academic psychiatry and family medicine departments. The only time I ever heard depression described as a serotonin deficiency was by drug reps who were hired for their youth and beauty, not their intelligence.
See my A Critical Look at the Impact of Joanna Moncrieff’s “Chemical Imbalance” Umbrella Review, https://jimcoyneakacoyneoftherealm.substack.com/p/a-critical-look-at-the-impact-of
It is pop-psychiatry though, as I assume the author means the popular view of the public of what the field can do. Do you contest that the majority of Americans believe in the chemical imbalance theory? Or that given this is a widespread myth, academic psychiatry has at minimum failed as an institution to accurately inform the public?
You’ve also contradicted yourself. If the chemical imbalance myth has only been promoted by unscrupulous drug companies’ idiot reps in your experience, then you know that the chemical imbalance myth is NOT “a caricature promoted by anti-psychiatrists” since the complaints of these so-called anti-psychiatrists are based on at least one real-life institution that’s actively promoting it as best they can.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to reply to some real misrepresentations of me and call out your use of alter-casting me to make a point. I describe alter-casting as putting words in people's mouths to control what they can subsequently say in my recent article "Nonscientists at Groningen Declare That ADHD Does Not Exist!" [ https://shorturl.at/atzY5 ]. I don't think most Amercians can give a coherent account of chemical imbalance theory, much less belief in it. I expose this anti-psychiatry myth in "A Critical Look at the Impact of Joanna Moncrieff’s “Chemical Imbalance” Umbrella Review" [https://shorturl.at/hrEP9].
You are very confused about promotion of antidepressants. Psychiatrists now lag behind internists, GPs, Family docs, and other primary care docs. Why do you have such a hard on about psychiatry. Is it uniquely evil or do you distrust medicine more generally?
Resilient people can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing and nobody left. Therapy is just one means to an end, sometimes a last resort. Why generalize and call it a myth? Therapy brought me back from the brink, steadily and quickly.
It is ignorant to say that people can just simply stop ruminating over negativity and just move on in their life. People who have mental illness do not have the pathways in their brain to successfully cope with these problems, that’s why it’s called a “mental illness”. Even mentally healthy people may lack the ability to fully cope, they may be in a bad condition but they can still carry on in their life, just not is severe as an illness.4
I am no expert on psychotherapy, in fact, the one time I tried to do it, I absolutely hated it and quit within a few weeks. But I know that some therapeutic strategies are very effective at providing clients with the tools to change those mental pathways, and cope with life, which is not always going to be happy and fun. (I think it’s called CBT?)
That’s really the only therapy method I know about, and I agree it’s extremely expensive.
It doesn't have to be. You can do it yourself. There are good workbooks available. True, it's harder to do it alone and to keep it up. A good AI CBT therapist could be helpful.
"the idea that understanding the cause of one’s suffering is the key to curing it is dubious." That is not what cognitive-behavioral therapy claims. That sounds more like an outdated Freudian approach.
But cognitive behavioral therapy deals with thoughts, and understanding them. It isn't about digging through the past. These are two different modalities.
Yes, that's what I was saying.
Got it. Merci
While I'm not arguing against the overall point of this piece, the following sentences were so obviously non sequitur that it raised suspicions that possibly other assertions are misleading: "If psychotherapy were an effective treatment, one would expect declines in depression and suicide rates and improvements in mental health in the United States, absent countervailing forces. And if we do not see these declines and improvements, then this should at least engender some skepticism about the efficacy of psychotherapy." It's glaringly obvious that only a tiny section of the population is ever exposed to psychotherapy, and there is zero effort at measurement of said "countervaling forces." The further elaboration does nothing to address this failure of logic but only fast-talks past it. It felt like an attempt at a swindle, inflicting a bit of damage to the authors' otherwise thought-provoking presentation. Ugh.
Hooray, another brilliant takedown of bullshit by the Winegard bros. Rarely, therapy might do some good, and ditto pills; the overwhelming majority of both is bs.
Just saw this, and it's outstanding. (Cogent and agrees with me, so it's definitely correct.) Brothers Winegard, how about going after the vague and overdiagnosed autism sometime?
As is the case with most of the toxins in the social psychology of the 21st c West, academia is where this false culture of 'therapy' runs riot....pandering to the worst kind of over-privileged spoilt-brat student. A great place to find a forensic examination of this is Heather Mac Donald's 'The Diversity Delusion' which I reviewed here in 2020: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
"Thus, a healthy culture should teach ..." <-- At its best, therapy fills this hole in the culture. At its worst therapy gives people a shovel to dig deeper.
I agree that therapy is not that helpful.
But the rest is completely brain dead nonsense.
The author writes that nonsense in order to not feel bad about his miserable life. By writing that he feels justified in his decisions that led to his current pathetic life.
Furthermore by claiming that "life is full of misery" he can wallow in self-pity without taking actions to change his life for the better. Because if great misery is an inherent part of life then you can nothing do to change it and you don't have to act to change your life and to admit that your miserable life is your fault. What a convenient explanation.
Really amazed you have this take. Identifying a fundamental element of human experience isn't a pass at becoming obsessed by it. We all recognize we're going to die some day but spend almost little to no time dwelling on it; we often do the opposite - we spend our lives as if the runway is infinite.
If the author said anything, resolving the miseries of life is actually highly possible and doesn't require some gated cleric of church of talk therapy to resolve. Go for a jog, attend church, take vitamin D. Where do you get this preference that he's avoiding ownership when we're talking about feelings and symptoms? Maybe you're overdue for a jog yourself.