If what I say that follows is considered below the belt, then so be it.
therapists like to pretend they're doing lots of really important empathetic stuff based on brain science but theyre just secular priests
There’s no pretence. Psychology determines your cognitions. Working with negative, self sabotaging behaviours supports growth. You can never truly empathise with a client, only partially. Everyone’s life maps are different in nuanced ways. Humanity is quite a broad spectrum, as is the broad spectrum of evidence and therapies to get that client into a place where they’re more balanced and have adapted life skills to negate future problems. They learn to create their own ballast and flow states. They learn what ego states “feel” like and establish recognition of how these thought patterns can be countered. My own bias is I don’t work with mildly neurotic clients, but highly traumatised ones.
The Christian form of confession was pre-scientific. Of course it can negate “bad behaviour”, but it descended into corruption through the faith’s denial of responsibility and its own abuses, of which there are tens of thousands of victims.
Working with traumatised clients is more akin to a form of secular shamanism. That might sound a bit New Thinking Allowed/Jeffrey Mishlove, but I see it every working day.
The attempts to cast it as a science are risible
I really don’t know how to dignify this logic with a response other than to counter it with something like Ezra Pound wasn’t an artist. Except of course he was.
Why are these “attempts“ risible? What is unscientific? Can you distinguish between mild neurosis and childhood sexual abuse? If so, you may be reaching the threshold where the body of wisdom that has developed over many decades to treat and support these experiences can then be applied accordingly.
If you understand shame, or if you understand the concept of shame, if you understand abuse and how corrosive it is to the human being’s well-being, then the therapeutic practices relevant to
healing shouldn’t be much of a leap of logic to enter this discourse with a more open mind. They work.
If you’d like, if the world ever adjusts to a Covid infused world I can arrange a day pass to one of our main conferences in London. All you have to do is attend and listen. You’ll get a lunch and bunch of convivial professionals to chat with. If you go away from that with the same opinion that you stated above, well, at least we tried.
Prove me wrong. The Talker talks, the Prover proves.