All therapy books start with a claim that their form of therapy will change everything. Previous forms of therapy have required years or even decades to produce ambiguous results. Our form of therapy can produce total transformation in five to ten sessions! Previous forms of therapy have only helped ameliorate the stress of symptoms. Our form of therapy destroys symptoms at the root!
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Previous forms of therapy have failed because they were ungrounded. They were ridiculous mental castles built in the clouds by armchair speculators. But our form of therapy is based on hard science! For example, it probably acts on synapses or the hippocampus or something. Here are three neuroscience papers which vaguely remind us of our form of therapy. One day, neuroscience will catch up to us and realize that the principles of our form of therapy are the principles that govern the organization of the entire brain – if not all of multicellular life.
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But my basic confusion is this: I work in a clinic with about ten therapists. Some are better than others, but all of them are competent. I send my patients to them. In a few hundred patients I’ve worked with, zero have had the sudden, extraordinary, long-lasting change that the therapy books promise. Many have benefited a little. A few would say that, over the course of years, their lives have been turned around. But sudden complete transformations? Not that much.
The general idea here is that the “form of therapy” isn’t what’s important but rather the skill of the therapist.
David Burns claims that out of 50,000 people trained in his form of therapy around 0.2% have skills to achieve these kinds of results.
If Scott ten colleges were randomly picked out of those 50,000 people it would not be surprising if none of them would be at that high end of the skill level.
Then there’s the other argument about deliberate practice. On main feature of David Burns form of therapy is that it sees therapists engaging in deliberate practice as an important aspect of becoming a good therapist. Most schools of therapy don’t really go for deliberate practice. I think it’s plausible that the rate of people with high skill in a school of therapy that engages in deliberate practice is higher than elsewhere.
I am extremely skeptical for reasons described in Book Review: All Therapy Books.
The general idea here is that the “form of therapy” isn’t what’s important but rather the skill of the therapist.
David Burns claims that out of 50,000 people trained in his form of therapy around 0.2% have skills to achieve these kinds of results.
If Scott ten colleges were randomly picked out of those 50,000 people it would not be surprising if none of them would be at that high end of the skill level.
Then there’s the other argument about deliberate practice. On main feature of David Burns form of therapy is that it sees therapists engaging in deliberate practice as an important aspect of becoming a good therapist. Most schools of therapy don’t really go for deliberate practice. I think it’s plausible that the rate of people with high skill in a school of therapy that engages in deliberate practice is higher than elsewhere.
I see, that all makes a lot of sense. I take back my objection then. It seems at least plausible that Burns is correct here.