One can receive "psychotherapy" from a variety of different people with DISTINCTLY different trainings: a clinical psychologist, working with people with severe psychological disorders; a counselor, working with relatively normal people with relatively minor dysfunction; a psychiatrist, with medical training (and most psychiatrists tend to mainly be pill-prescribers and horrible therapists); a social worker; a high school guidance counselor; or even a clergy-person with proper state certification. They all do radically different things, but still some in each camp insist that it's "psychotherapy." Lay-people would be wise not to indulge in the same conflation.
And this is all quite separate from "psychoanalysis," which is a FAR more humanistic and philosophical field of study in the line of Freud, Jung, Lacan, Zizek, and so on. Every psychologist I've talked to has never heard of Lacan or Zizek or French post-structuralism in their professional training. (It's just as well; I'd hate to go get treatment for depression and be told, "Enjoy your symptom!")
To talk about all these different fields of study as if they were the same would be to describe research chemists, pharmacists, rocket scientists, and science fiction writers as "technologists" and write them all off as frauds for the same flimsy reasons. Take a gander at the official divisions of the APA at <http://www.apa.org/about/division.html>, and then tell me that exactly how you're able to write them all off as "bullshit." Or, better yet, go to a university library and browse the APA journals, or, if you're feeling adventurous, the back issues of Psychometrika.
In fact, psychology is one of the most tightly governed disciplines out there. More than its counterparts in economics, sociology, or anthropology, the APA is pretty anal-retentive (!) about accreditation, licensing, publishing guidelines, and disciplining its members -- all for better or worse.
Cheers, Robert
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On Apr 11, 2005, at 1:31 PM, Thomas Seay wrote:
I agree with Tully with qualifications....Of course, I might be partly wrong since my opinion is just basedupon my own experiences. I think "talk therapy" is just bullshit. It might or might not help, in the same way as talking to a friend might help. Look at all the various talk therapies and, if I am not incorrect, they all have much the same percentage of effectiveness...which is pretty low. Of course, I dont know how levels of effectiveness are quantified.
[snip]
Let's face it, psychotherapists in general (I know there are exceptions) are a new caste of priests. You go to school, get a bullshit degree in psychotherapy and then you are fit to mold the world according to the theory of [Melanie Klein...put in your fav psycho-guru here].
[snip]
-Thomas