I don’t know a ton about Burns or his work, but for things in the class of stuff like psychotherapy, meditation, and other ways to work with your problems and (hopefully) improve your life so you more live the life you want to live, two claims can be simultaneously true:
Psychotherapy-like-stuff can and should be able to fix acute problems in short order, and if it’s not you’re using an ineffective technique for the problem at hand
Psychotherapy-like-stuff has to be done ~forever because there are always subtle ways you’re getting in your own way that you could work on to get marginal gains
The trouble is we don’t do a great job of making these two competing claims clear, nor do we often make clear for any particular intervention, technique, practice, etc. whether it is intended for acute or chronic use.
My guess is that some versions of psychotherapy are a scam if you have to pay for more than 5 sessions, and some versions are doing exactly what they should be if you are paying to go every week, and that’s because they are serving different purposes. Alas, we don’t make this clear, and I think sadly there are enough unscrupulous providers who profit from the ambiguity that there’s not a strong push to clear this point up with the general public.
Exactly right. However, I am extremely doubtful about anyone who claims that all their patients are cured within a few sessions. That sounds very unlikely unless they screen out people with anything more than minor hang-ups. Sure, in many cases, the root cause of the psychological problem can be identified and the patient can learn a few techniques and then they no longer need further therapy. However, lots of people in therapy are dealing with negative mental processes that were baked into them by a difficult childhood or a traumatic experience. Those sorts of issues can require on-going therapy to keep the patient on track and in a positive mindspace. One quick tricks don’t work on someone with severe codependency or agoraphobia or anorexia. Maybe, with time, they can work through these issues and no longer need therapy, but this could take years.
The rapid cure stuff is mainly about depression and anxiety disorders, I guess agoraphobia should count (with the caveat that the patient has to be well enough to reach the therapist’s office). Certainly whether it “could take years” is the crux of the matter; David Burns very much denies it should ever take nearly that long.
I don’t know a ton about Burns or his work, but for things in the class of stuff like psychotherapy, meditation, and other ways to work with your problems and (hopefully) improve your life so you more live the life you want to live, two claims can be simultaneously true:
Psychotherapy-like-stuff can and should be able to fix acute problems in short order, and if it’s not you’re using an ineffective technique for the problem at hand
Psychotherapy-like-stuff has to be done ~forever because there are always subtle ways you’re getting in your own way that you could work on to get marginal gains
The trouble is we don’t do a great job of making these two competing claims clear, nor do we often make clear for any particular intervention, technique, practice, etc. whether it is intended for acute or chronic use.
My guess is that some versions of psychotherapy are a scam if you have to pay for more than 5 sessions, and some versions are doing exactly what they should be if you are paying to go every week, and that’s because they are serving different purposes. Alas, we don’t make this clear, and I think sadly there are enough unscrupulous providers who profit from the ambiguity that there’s not a strong push to clear this point up with the general public.
Exactly right. However, I am extremely doubtful about anyone who claims that all their patients are cured within a few sessions. That sounds very unlikely unless they screen out people with anything more than minor hang-ups. Sure, in many cases, the root cause of the psychological problem can be identified and the patient can learn a few techniques and then they no longer need further therapy. However, lots of people in therapy are dealing with negative mental processes that were baked into them by a difficult childhood or a traumatic experience. Those sorts of issues can require on-going therapy to keep the patient on track and in a positive mindspace. One quick tricks don’t work on someone with severe codependency or agoraphobia or anorexia. Maybe, with time, they can work through these issues and no longer need therapy, but this could take years.
I think anorexia is in a different category because the patient often doesn’t want to get better. David Burns talks about it a little on https://feelinggood.com/2019/11/25/168-ask-david-the-blushing-cure-how-to-heal-a-broken-heart-treating-anorexia-and-more/, where he mentions that some sort of therapy with a 50% success rate is good.
The rapid cure stuff is mainly about depression and anxiety disorders, I guess agoraphobia should count (with the caveat that the patient has to be well enough to reach the therapist’s office). Certainly whether it “could take years” is the crux of the matter; David Burns very much denies it should ever take nearly that long.