Tag Archives: psychotherapy

James Hillman & Michael Ventura

We’re working on our relationships constantly, and our feelings and reflections, but look what’s left out of that. What’s left out is a deteriorating world. So shy hasn’t therapy noticed that? Because psychotherapy is only working on that “inside” soul. By removing the soul from the world and not recognizing that the soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can’t do its job anymore. The buildings are sick, the institutions are sick, the baking system’s sick, the schools, the streets—the sickness is out there.

James Hillman & Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy–And the World’s Getting Worse, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 3-4

Robyn Dawes

Smith and Glass’s meta-analysis not only presented impressive evidence about the efficacy of psychotherapy; it concluded that three factors that most psychologists believed influenced this efficacy actually did not influence it.

First, they discovered that the therapists’ credentials—Ph.D., M.D., or no advanced degree—and experience were unrelated to the effectiveness of therapy.

Second, they discovered that the type of therapy given was unrelated to its effectiveness, with the possible exception of behavioral techniques, which seemed superior for well-circumscribed behavioral problems. They also discovered that length of therapy was unrelated to its success.

Robyn Dawes, House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth, New York, 1994, p. 52

Arthur Koestler

From a purely psychological point of view, the introduction of new hypotheses and of new terms would appear justified if it led to a system free of contradictions, and to predictions verifiable by experiment. But, to take the latter test first, analysts of the orthodox Freudian, Jungian, and Adlerian schools all achieve some therapeutical results which seem to confirm prediction by experiment, though the theories on which the predictions are based are sometimes diametrically opposed to each other. The reason for this, and for the indecisive nature of the purely psychological approach in general, is the metaphorical character of psychological terms like “repression,” “censor,” super-ego,” inferiority complex,” and so forth, and the tautologies to which their manipulation often leads.

Arthur Koestler, Insight and Outlook: An Inquiry into the Common Foundations of Science, Art, and Social Ethics, 1949, New York, p. ix

Mario Bunge

Los lacanianos se interesan solamente por la práctica psicoanalítica: no les interesa saber si esa práctica es fundada o infundada, eficaz o ineficaz. Se ponen en la posición del terapeuta que vive de su trabajo, no del paciente que le paga la consulta. Al paciente, en cambio, debiera interesarle saber qué dicen las estadísticas acerca del poder curativo de las doscientas y pico de escuelas de terapia verbal. Al fin y al cabo, están en juego su salud mental y su billetera.

Mario Bunge, ‘El psicoanlálisis: ¿ciencia o macaneo?’, en Vistas y entrevistas, 2nd ed., Buenos Aires, 1997, pp. 235-236