Role of Therapist Training and Your Problems

Unlike most other health professionals psychotherapists are often self restrained by dogma derived from schools of thought.  These include psychodyanamic, Rational Emotive, Cognitive, Cognitive Behavior, Interpersonal and so on.  The consumer of mental health services needs to carefully evaluate the approach that each therapist applies and his or her ability to apply other approaches.  Very often in reviewing psychologist websites one will find statements indicating that a psychologist is psychodynamic - applying a variation of Fredian Therapy - but that they also claim to use CBT when think it appropriate.

This is very much like a physician saying that they use chiropractic healing but apply real scientific medici wehen necessary.  First, one must ask is the therapist trained in all of these approaches that they claim to use.  Second, it is helpful to know when they think switching approaches is beneficial to the client.  The recent dominance in research of CBT has led many poorly trained therapists to claim to use this approach when in reality they have had no more than a weekend seminar.  What is particularly vexing about this trend is that Cogntiive therapies are not functionally compatible with the traditional dynamic psychotherapies.  The latter predicate their treatment on giving the client insight into the origin of his or her problems.  And from this is posited that the insight cures.  Categorically, this is absurd.  If you were to find that you have low self esteem because you had poor bonding with your mother, do you really think that this discovery will make it go away?  Sadly, things are not that easy; like all major life changes it requires hard work, practice, and commitment to change. Although the therapist's talent is a key factor in therapeutic efficacy, there are certain factors that aid in healing.  Blame is at the core of most emotional disturbances such as Irrational idea (e.g., I must be loved by everyone)à internalize à self-defeating.  We have a tendency to make ourselves emotionally disturbed by internalizing self-defeating beliefs.  CBT hypothesizes that we keep ourselves emotionally disturbed by the process of self-indoctrination  CBT holds that neurotic problems directly stem from magical, “unvalidated” thinking.