Errors in Modern Psychotherapy Theories and Beliefs
Belief is the builder or destroyer of the individual and empires. It is my intimation that parasitic ideas conceived in the humanities have made their way into psychology, corrupting the discipline and risking the individual health of patients. I care deeply about the relationship between psychology and culture. Certain therapeutic modalities are closely related to biological science and motivation. Therefore, here’s a short scholastic dissection of psychological theories and therapeutic modalities for other psychology lovers and students of theory.
Dr. Sigmund Freud with his daughter, Sophie
Psychodynamic Fathers
Freud – being the progenitor of psychology in the scientific language, the first translator of religious heuristics, and the originator of language for sexual discourse – is forgivable for incomplete theoretical orientations later contradicted by scientific discoveries. Similarly, Neumann updated Jung's simplistic "Extroversion/Introversion" dynamic with "centroversion," the prophetic orientation of self-deepening attributed to ENXP/INXJ types rooted in Freud's psychodynamic theories while incorporating scientific investigation and religious respect. This is the way of great culture. It is a building towards natural patterns tested by science. Freud drew from Rank and Jung and Adler who in turn drew from Freud and yielded four different approaches to psychopathology, including animalistic, spiritual, individual, and objective.
Cognitive-Behavioral Expansion
This adherence to scientific testing and natural outcomes explains the success of Ellis and Beck with REBT and CBT, as well as the various joint efforts resulting in Behavioral therapies. These theories recognize biological mechanics and both short/long term outcomes. Yet to keep only thought and idea while rejecting nature and outcome is to fly too high; it is to become a mind that cannot volitionally reproduce or self-assert.
Humanism vs Existentialism
While Rogers, Frankl, Gestalt, and other existential therapies may be unreasonably used to deny biological or ontological limits on reality, the centrality of the individual experience (will to power and meaning) and the use of the therapist as a catalyzing tool is an important extension of Jung and Adler’s work. Frankl’s Logo Therapy and Rogers’ Person-Centered Therapy acknowledged circumstances and individuals while recognizing the impact of personal orientation on the self and others. They accepted limited possibilities rather than asserting infinite possibilities and absolute will-to-power of thought. They are improperly grouped with the arrogant, mental deification of the existentialists, who nevertheless also helped the individual find meaning through the establishment of personal philosophy in the tradition of Socrates and Adler.
Post-Modernism Foolishness
While useful in the therapy room, Gestalt and other existential therapies of this nature as they are taught in universities share the same false ideology of (Social) Narrative Therapy and Solution-Focused therapy, a foundation in the self-contradictions of post-modern social constructivism. They deny biological and natural patterns ordering physical reality, belief, and action, preferring identity politics, benevolent racism, and benevolent sexism – ultimately fundamentalist, religious ideologies. Their position is so far beyond secularism that even Darwin's theories of sexual selection have no place. While existential therapies can err into an excessively open denial of reality, post-modernist views strip life of orientation altogether, rejecting the science of biological encoding and the orienting reflex. These are the very things required for the organism’s action and existence. Their rejection interjects internal doubt in place of success heuristics and creates a neurosis of victimhood.
The resulting inverted focus is an eisegesis of reality, an unrefined pragmatism that imposes logical fallacies to maintain false utopian ideals rather than build a functional behavioral pathway as the great religions have done, testing knowledge with outcomes. It is a mental sickness that self-replicates among therapy clientele. Social narrative therapies begin as a Hobbesian survival mechanic that leverages group membership (in-group/out-group tribalism) for personal upward movement then self-sabotages, moving towards nihilism and decadence as it produces denial, social blame, victim narratives, and linguistic obfuscation of responsibility. This hurts clients and encourages them to behave as religious proselytes, to attack and objectify others in the name of a “white knight” or savior-complex ideology, or to exploit others even once they become successful. Solution-focused therapy is likewise rooted in denial of problems and psychopathology but is infantilizing and self-deceiving, producing countertransference (arrogantly projecting the therapist's assumptions of harm and trauma onto clients) for the sake of supporting idealism. This leaves the therapist open to exploitation by sociopathic and Machiavellian individuals and promotes weakness in struggling clientele.
While these therapies can impact clients, they do so as tools, with soft applications normalized to CBT/REBT processes and archetypal ontology. Exclusively utilized as they are in the humanities, post-modern constructivism tears down science and other beings' individuality to feel sated by will-to-power. This is the spirit that gave rise to the great wars, communism, and the French Revolution/subsequent Napoleonic Wars. It will always end in vengeance followed by authoritarianism. It is better to focus on pragmatism from a cognitive or psychodynamic position that is founded in a meaningful humanist perspective – the theories learned from the failures that produced these wars. Narrative and Solutions-based therapies are historically blind, momentary salves that endanger long-term good for fleeting personal gain obscured under social justice virtue signaling. Many choices end badly, and therapists are responsible to clients to educate them on probable outcomes even while supporting self-discovery.
Summary
My main point is this – psychological adherents to the Narrative and Solution-Focused therapeutic view dishonor heuristics gained from progenitors by the inclusion of such therapy modalities as equal players, with or without recognition of the philosophic extreme. Before blindly trading science, the social subconscious, and meaning modalities for social constructivist's power games of blame and denial, our community ought to hear Freud's caution, "Identity is conflict; each generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead," before we find ourselves repeating the mistakes of the past.
