Psychology, Psychotherapy - Coming to Our Senses?

Abstract

Critical scrutiny of the evidence base in support of the practice and theory of the talking therapies shows that it suffers from serious and systematic methodological flaws, to the extent that it is rational to conclude that the vast majority of psychological treatments, including the most popular brands, are indistinguishable from well-designed placebos. Researchers and theorists have ignored this issue because it is professionally inconvenient and because it challenges the neoliberal orthodoxy of our time, which says that if we are miserable or confused then it is we alone rather than our socially noxious surroundings that are to blame. With a little help from an expert, we supposedly have the mental powers to extricate ourselves. This fashionable belief, which the late David Smail called 'magical voluntarism' (Smail 2005), benefits those who gain most from an exploitative social system. However, the talking treatments reflect more than shape the power structures of our world. Neither a more honest recognition of their limitations nor the creation of more thoughtful and rigorous approaches to researching them are likely to flourish until those power structures themselves begin to change.