From Aeon: “Though this psychotherapy monoculture cloaks itself in the mantle of science, time is revealing flaws in the research itself. The avalanche of research belies weakness within. For example, brief CBT treatments have been found to be ‘ineffective for most depressed patients most of the time’, according to the American psychologist Jonathan Shedler.
. . . Claims of a ‘gold standard’ teeter on a cracked foundation, bearing marks of influence by profit-seeking industries and their PR tools – from pharmaceutical companies selling drugs, to insurers looking for the lowest-cost solutions they can find. So perhaps it’s time for a little heresy: endorsing the value of depth therapies, including psychoanalysis and humanistic, experiential and family systems therapy, to name a few. According to the prevailing biomedical, evidence-based narrative, therapies of depth, insight and relationship are ineffective, antiquated, never-ending, and excessively expensive – lacking scientific basis to boot. Yet these more individualised, open-ended, in-depth treatments are evidence-based, too.”
