Muster's last stand*

There have been, over the years, various research studies on the efficacy of different forms of psychotherapy. A stoical perusal shows that the varieties of Cognitive Therapy remain supreme. Psychodynamic therapies are also given a good bit of respect, though I’ve always sensed a weakly cheerful air of “consolation prize” whenever they’re endorsed.

I have never accepted the validity of the polls elevating the Cognitive approach, even while I know that some of its tricks, used standalone, can be a minor supplement to deeper process. My rejection comes, as many of my posts have described, from the principle and awareness that people are dysfunctional not because they think negatively or irrationally, but because they’ve been hurt, and that pushing right or bright notions cannot heal the holistic structure of the psyche.

Here I am offering an additional, though indirect, piece of evidence that the Cognitive methods are off-track. It’s neither rigorous poll-taking nor scientific evidence, and comes only from my own practice. That, though, might be considered a kind of longitudinal study, encompassing twenty years and many hundreds of clients. It is this:

In every instance when I have described to new clients the contrast between Cognitive rationale and practice and a feeling-centered regressive rationale and practice, they have recognized not merely the superiority, but the felt and factual rightness of the deeper, historical approach. It is practically common sense to them that you have to go to, dig to, pain to get it out, that you can’t simply fiddle with factual truths or erroneous thoughts or rationalizations to get better.

I am not exaggerating my experience. Every last client I have seen – those who stay mid- or long-term or leave after one session; those who have mistakenly come to me (a licensed counselor) seeking medications; teenagers through old age; those who are not even good candidates for depth work – grasps that real healing entails some level of emotional surgery, not a Band-Aid.

My “study” shows, of course, only that clients reject, when shown a bipolar alternative, the Cognitive way. It doesn’t speak to results, which will always be elusive – based on the client’s reading or misreading of himself – pending a future thorough understanding of psychology in the brain (which present-day neuroscience doesn’t come fictively close to).

Might some therapists of the Cognitive persuasion think I have mesmerized these people or misrepresented the ubiquitous paradigm? That would be their right and their safe-making delusion. Clients aren’t given rosy glasses. They learn the pessimism embedded in the optimism, the positive surviving the negative. They may rise wise to some disenchantment. But quite a few of them, maybe most, have already been through the mainstream therapies. And now they’re here.

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* It wouldn’t work to say “Musterbation’s last stand”: https://www.rowancenterla.com/new-blog/2015/6/3/musterbation-the-danger-in-shoulding-all-over-the-place.