SESGOS DE RAZONAMIENTO Y RETÓRICA PSI EN LA TERAPIA ALTERNATIVA FLORAL

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, the popularity of alternative therapies such as Bach flowers has increased significantly. Since any effect of floral therapy is not superior to those achieved by a placebo treatment, the use of different rhetorical strategies and persuasion techniques seem to be decisive. The present qualitative study sought to describe the reasoning biases and communicative strategies that support the subjective justification of floral therapy. An open and flexible coding of the statements made by the participants of a floral therapist's blog was used. As a result, strategies related to personalization and discursive self-reference, idiographic knowledge, psychologization of therapy, fundamental attribution error, essentialization, and animistic thinking were identified. Other strategies included the use of paratherapeutic language and pseudo-scientific lexicon, relativization of therapeutic options, therapeutic holism, as well as rationalization of hope, construction of explanatory stories and retrospective confirmation. Finally, it is discussed that the possibility of effectiveness of these strategies is based on an excessive psychologism (or psy rhetoric), in an environment that favors post-truth.