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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Bear in mind I'm skeptical even of good therapists but the above discussion seems to downgrade therapy to having a chat with your barber.

Therapists do things like hold space, prompt you to explore connections of current problems with your past, explore dynamics of your family of origin, practice role play, see unhelpful patterns, sit with discomfort as well as make practical suggestions. This is much better in person with a human.

I don't think it's for everyone and I'm not sure of the efficacy over the whole class of therapists and the average person but I think people who are assuming chat-gtp will fulfill therapeutic needs are drastically under selling it.

What you're describing is difference in methods. Do those check out to differences in objective outcomes? The stat I remember from years ago was that fully-licensed talk therapy showed no increased effectiveness over volunteers given a two-hour class on active listening. Would be interested in better stats if any are available.

Well, it's a tricky thing to measure as it's dependent on the therapist-client interaction. I had a number of years of counselling and I would say I had benefit, but no counterfactual with another modality to compare against. I would be surprised if it was no better than active listening as I'm not enough of a skeptic to think it adds nothing beyond active listening, which it also does.

Modern approaches that teach a method like CBT or IFS could well be better, but I would guess that certain people may benefit from counselling, especially those trying to untangle weird families that could benefit from the perspective of a wise person.

I would be surprised if it was no better than active listening as I'm not enough of a skeptic to think it adds nothing beyond active listening, which it also does.

I am enough of a skeptic to say that. The Dodo Bird Verdict is not a reasonable outcome; "all forms of therapy are equally effective" should strongy increase your prior that therapy does not work the way it claims to, and at that point one needs to start entertaining the idea that what therapy's most reliable effect is to give people positive emotions about therapy.

I like this.

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