Yeah and leeches used to be called "medicine" but if you shy away from doctors because of what the profession practiced in the past (things that are illegal now) you're not exactly doing yourself any favors.
psychotherapy is a form of treatment for many psychological disorders as defined by the DSM-V. The treatment varies based on the therapist's style and patient preference, but it always centers around talking to a licensed professional about the patient's feelings, behaviors, thoughts, dreams, fears. Through talking, the therapist can spot patterns of harmful and destructive beliefs and thought patterns. To use a bit of jargon, they can deconstruct a patient's defenses and suggest changes in thoughts/actions that - if followed - may often alleviate some or all of the symptoms.
Perhaps the thing that bothers you is that it's an inexact science ?
I upvoted you, but I would like to say that I think jsprogrammer's remarks being downvoted into oblivion is not warranted. He (she?) may have made his (her?) point inartfully, but it is a valid point: what is the basis for believing that "therapy" (whatever it may mean at this particular point in time) actually works, that it is anything more than a placebo?
For example, this to me is a yellow flag:
> talking to a licensed professional
Why is licensure such a key feature? Licensure can be as much an indication of political corruption and protectionism as scientific validity.
[EDIT: Just for the record, I actually do believe that therapy works, and I have advocated for it myself. That doesn't make it any less valid to ask the question: what is the basis for this belief?]
> jsprogrammer's remarks being downvoted into oblivion is not warranted.
he's making loaded statements out of ignorance because he wont bother to google psychotherapy's definition. There is a therapeutic process to talking and learning to manage emotions and cope with defenses.
Licensure is a key feature so you prohibit people from making fake therapeutic claims or quackery. Or to limit taking advantage of emotionally vulnerable people (it still happens, but licensure requires insurance). Same reason you or I can't call ourselves doctors and claim to cure physiological illness. Do you disagree with that "licensure" too ? Why can't you and I open up a back and spinal clinic ? We could probably make a lot of dough.
I dont know why its acceptable to denigrate the field of psychology. Is the 'engineering way' the only way to solve problems ? Should they just "stop it" until they have humans figured out down to a schematic/circuit ? Then they can treat all the anxiety/depression from our overworked consumerist lifestyles and make us into the perfect capitalist cattle ? Is psychology bullshit because Apple doesn't yet sell iPsychometers with USB-C interfaces so we can patch our brains with the latest "update" and all be perfect?
Humans aren't machines and healing or treatment for psychological pain and mental illness isn't done by running a script. It's done by interviewing patients, classifying symptoms, taking surveys, attempting (and often failing) treatments, doing double blind trials. Things that aren't deterministic, which is also the nature of reality. Why can't you face that ?
edit: let me give you specific examples of why you need a license to practice:
* patient comes in and says they were raped. and the alleged rapist is still doing it. unlicensed quack might be scared to report it to the police, might avoid helping the patient at all because it's "too difficult", or might try to exploit abuse victim for his own sexual pleasure.
* elderly suicidal patient divulges financial info to therapist, who then tips off a dirty lawyer/estate planner into contacting the patient and stealing /exploiting him.
* husband and wife go to therapy. Husband knows he's getting divorced but doesn't want to pay half. So he pays off the therapist to give biased testimony in court blaming the wife for false actions.
* therapist was personally harmed by a particular person earlier in life. now they take joy in intentionally misleading/upsetting other patients who look/act like the one who hurt them.
I hope this is enough to see why the field is regulated.
What makes you think I can't? (And why are you getting so defensive?)
> I dont know why its acceptable to denigrate the field of psychology.
Don't confuse denigration with legitimate criticism. Jsprogrammer's comments may have been loaded and ignorant, but they were not wrong: lobotomization was in fact considered a legitimate therapy in the not-so-distant past. And Psychology has a very checkered history, e.g.:
So some skepticism of the profession's claims is not entirely unwarranted.
BTW, but for the defensive tone, I think your response was very good, and exactly the sort of thing that is needed in this discussion. I upvoted you again.
I apologize, yes I was defensive. Probably because I need more practice having my ideas challenged. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and I will work on it. (and thank you HN for somehow cultivating a community where we can have such a forum).
Absolutely, I agree that the field is not perfect. Let me address the link you sent (I haven't read the book):
Psychoanalysis (also called the psychodynamic method) is but one of several prominent forms of therapy. I've never undertaken it, as I cannot afford to go 3hrs/week for a year or more, so I cannot talk from experience.
I have read quite a bit about it from textbooks and I see a lot of merit to at least the theory. Merit, I say, because it appeared to corroborate with anecdotal evidence from my own life. I have seen the pattern in people, over and over again, who re-enact the behaviors they learned during their youth. You particularly hear about it with domestic violence: girls that grow up seeing mommy getting beat up (somehow) (very often) seem to become attracted to violent men and repeat the cycle. Boys who grow up seeing daddy beat up mommy (tend to) become aggressive toward women when they are adults.
So I don't personally think the entire field of psychoanalysis is bullshit. The books I've read said that a good psychoanalyst can shake the patient to their core. It sounds like they are trained to sniff out the patient's malignant / self-defeating behaviors and show them how they are reenacting them in the therapeutic relationship. From there, I don't know exactly how they motivate change, but once they break you down on such a primitive emotional level, once your defenses are removed and layed before you, it makes sense that you would be weakened enough to consider making a change.
So that's my case for psychoanalysis. Now, of course someone could take advantage of that. Maybe a patient is simply bipolar and their problems have nothing to do with reenacting their mom's abuse cycle. An unethical therapist could take advantage of that and milk the patient for 3 years' therapy and then say "oh yeah actually you just need to be on meds". It's malpractice and I'm sure it goes on every day in the medical field. MD's milking medicare. experienced dr's running unnecessary tests "just to be sure" when they know exactly whats wrong. Doing an X-ray in the hospital instead of an outpatient clinic so they can charge 3X more. Malpractice will always be around both in medicine and psychology.
> Licensure is a key feature so you prohibit people from making fake therapeutic claims or quackery.
Here in Canada, diary farmers need to be licensed to sell dairy products, as do poultry producers (chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.)
Not because anyone is worried about someone selling fake milk or trying to claim ducks are chicken (quackery, get it?). If they were, they'd be equally worried about farmers producing other kinds of food, whom we do not require licensing from. Rather, the story behind it is much simpler: The government at one point found it important to disallow competition to give the people operating in these markets an advantage to help them remain viable, for similar reasons as to why the US has provided farm subsidies over the years.
Anyway, the point being that regulation does not necessarily legitimize a profession. It may simply be an indictor of what interests lobbied hard enough to get economic protection.
I dont doubt that regulation enables regulatory capture, but what if assholes started selling dairy products that weren't up to sanitary code ? Say, like, a food truck. One day it's there, one day they're gone (conveniently after selling 50gal of tainted milk that sickens dozens). what do you do about that ?
> There's presently no standard objective laboratory test
I don't know what's so special about a "laboratory". Is there a name yet for this fallacy "because a machine told me, it must be true." ? Should we name it the "calculator fallacy" or the "internet fallacy" ?
from your link: "That is why NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories." Its research, it doesn't do any good to toss DSM for treatment of mental disorders. I believe thats why they revise the DSM every year (?), is to keep up with changes in diagnosis. If a new classification system comes along, then replace "DSM" with whatever they call theirs.
that makes treatment easy then. POOF! all mental illness disappears because the book is "invalid". FYI you're using a defense called denial[1] when you do that :)
That's going to be hard to organise if no one is sure what they're supposed to be treating.
It looks like you're using a God of the Sciences argument - because we don't have a full and complete model of mental anguish and self-defeating behaviours, nothing we currently believe about them can be useful or true.
This turns out to be inaccurate. Therapies are tested regularly. Some score better than others, and statistically the results are at least as valid as the result of clinical drug trials.
It would be useful to have a complete Theory of Mind, but no such thing is likely to exist for a while.
Luckily it isn't needed to make a difference. The most useful therapies are results-oriented rather than process-oriented, and the most consistent results come from behavioural reinforcement techniques (where "behaviour" includes "persistent emotional states.")
This doesn't mean other kinds of therapy are useless. But they are less reliable - which may be because they can be more challenging for both sides, or because they don't work, or for all kinds of other reasons.
Therapy these days does not mean lobotomies.