Does this skepticism and cynicism undermine one's self-confidence. Yes, it absolutely does. I know dozens of psychologists who simply comfort themselves about their own individualistic ways of doing psychotherapy. Obviously the vast majority of mental health workers never publish, never get involved with advanced training, never get embroiled in theoretical arguments. They earn a living and everything is fine with them. Meanwhile, the state of the art in psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy is in quite an interesting state. There are hundreds upon hundreds of different treatments along with all sorts of theoretical and atheoretical rationales. The notion that we are 'progressing' toward some refined, unfied state of the art in psychotherapy just is not true by a measure. Attempts now to closely analyze the 'process' of therapy and what we actually say and do in sessions while being a long overdue approach will do little to resolve the enormous subjective complexity of all this. Having round table discussions...and experiencing different degrees of self-justification because people happen to be rallying around one particular type of approach might 'feel' good to the participants, and the comradery might be great, but you just can't tell me that this is taking us somewhere. It always looks like all this is leading somewhere, but I've been at too many conferences, read too many books and journals to see that there is no real convergence of ideas. We can go on and on and on about the quality of evidence that supports all the supposed superstructures of this or that theory, but, again, does anyone have a vision of where this is all going. Obviously, we are all very busy being psychotherapists, and we all have to be doing something we think 'works', but both intellectually and professionally, I wish I was hearing more about the doubts and the questions people have.
Well Vic and others....
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