Posted by boBB on May 20, 2000, at 22:34:40
In reply to Re: Psychotherapy v. CBT, posted by boBB on May 20, 2000, at 18:23:32
hey Snowie,
(this was a private e-mail, but I posted it here, unedited, since some people seem to enjoy reading my towering babble.)
You can call be bob with one "b" on each end. Its not my real name, and i have caused so much havoc with this psuedonym in various discussions, I am reluctant to go over to my real name when i have introduced myself as bob.Sorry.I read the URL you mentioned. That guy is probably better informed than I am about the subject matter, at least as far as him having advanced training in pscyhology. I don't even have a high school diploma, but I have a room full of things i have published. The ecletic approach to therapy seems pretty rational to me. Psychodynamic approaches seem so deterministic they soemtimes might as well be astrological forecasts. The popular methods don't account for cultural or individual differences, it seems. But still, deterministic psychodynamic theory seems take into acount the way brains seem to be built than do sugar sweet humanistic approaches that believe people can do anything they put their mind to. In some ways, we are slaves of our emotions, at least if you believe the neurologists.
Behaviorists say free your ass, your mind will follow. Cognitive theorists say free your mind, your ass will follow. Humanists say if your not free its all your own fault. Pro-med docs say their meds will make you free.
I still think we would find a lot of strict behavioral stuff practiced in publicly funded clinics and state hospitals. I talk to people coming out of there and they say if a person acts a certain way- violent, self-destructive, etc., "they will put you in (your state hospital name) and change your behavior." My hunch is, the more time a therapist has to spend with a client, the more they will wrangle with the client's cognitive relationship with their emotions.
There is another approach I here about that treats personal problems "phenomenologically." This seems much like what the guy called ecclectic, though I suspect there is a body of literature developing around the word phenomenological that is more specific than the ecclectic hybrids various therapists might put together. It seems to me, phenomenology expands on psychodynamic approaches to consider the whole range of phenomenon that can influence a person's life and emotional development. I tend to agree that there are influences from our childhood that determine who we are, the trouble comes in cataloguing those influences in such a way that fits all 6 billion humans alive today. And while traditional psychodynamic therapists might focus only on familial relationships, and others might focus only on our striving for superiority in a social context, maybe a phenomenological therapist would deal with the impact of poverty, or of wealth, perhaps hybridized with nutritional assesements, maybe some genetic understandings, and a consideration of the amount of early childhood training or lack there-of, and maybe some other things like adolescent experiences - I don't know - maybe if you were a farm kid and had to give up the farm, or your dad was a vietnam vet dealing with frustrations over losing a war, whatever - the whole phenomomenon of the clients life would have as much influence as would the therapists eclectic selection of theoretical approaches.
The trouble I see with pro-med therapists is that they have to agree with one of DSM's catagorical diagnoses, which are really subjective analyses, to fit the client into a legal catagory to which they can prescribe the correct med. That is why I keep harping on the correlation of Ritalin and other aminergins and illegal aminergins, such as Methamphetamine or Ecstacy. The drug seems to work for some people, but the ritual of obtaining the drug varies whether it is obtained legally or not. If it is obtained legally, then the client is often sold a set of assumptions about themselves that can easily become stereotypes that in turn develop their own limiting dynamic. People develop telling language, like "I am AADD" when in fact they are a person who was diagnosed as having AADD. The difference is that the stereotypical "I am" claims a set of assumptions, where as the "I am a person who was diagnosed..." accurately describes the relationship. This is important, I think, because the end result of therapy should be clear thinking, not stereotypes. I have made the most progress in life when I learned to describe things with the dispassionate accuracy of a journalist. I learned to distinguish between allegations of something and having actually witnessed something. I try not to say something happened if I did not see it happen.
This gets to the heart of what I see as the limits of therapy. Most of it deals with fixing the emotional status of the individual. Some of it involves (especially cognitive approaches, maybe) developing better understandings of how an individual percieves the world. But little of it deals with developing reforming behaviors in the individual, which is to say, therapy does not teach us that the world is broken and we can help fix it, it teaches us that we are broken and the world wants to make us normal. I disagree. At best, we are all broken together.
The other problem with therapy is that most therapists bring into the relationship their presumption of what is the best life, culturally. College, education and steady employment are pretty much presumed to be normal. In fact, those are just cultural choices. We might correctly believe, as I do, that most human industry - building skyscrapers, roads, cars, airplanes, is kind of sick - it is a product of humans dissatisfaction with who they are (hairless apes) and that in our sickness we are attempting to re-create the world in their image - a world that ran itself pretty well without our help. That is why I long for, but do not find, therapy for activists, for people like me who you (Snowie) called "net citizen scientists". I need help dealing with my lifelong frustration with the vanity of human endeavor. I don't need a well-paid college grad telling me my world view is the product of my brain disease. Too many people who I love, and who seem to me to be very healthy emotionally, agree with me and I have a duty to those people, and to all the non-human life on earth to be true to myself.
Well, that is a lot to say, heh? It's okay, I write fast and don't mind talking off the top of my head. Feel free to stay in touch and explore my perspective, even if you disagree. I don't even mind if you tell me about yourself and your point of view, if you feel safe doing that.
Later,
"bob"
poster:boBB
thread:34042
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000517/msgs/34180.html