I still remember the first time I heard the acronym ACT. It was in graduate school, and the term felt both seductive and mysterious. Intrigued, I dove deeper, eventually applying for social work internship with the Southern Tier ACT Team. A few months later, I began my role as a social work intern for an evidence-based pilot program through the state university system. Back then, ACT stood for Assertive Community Treatment, a team-based approach to helping people with serious mental illness live independently in the community.
Fast forward over a decade, and I heard the term ACT used in a completely different context: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Naturally, I was all ears and full of questions. After all, this new ACT has been touted as the latest innovation in psychotherapyâa groundbreaking âthird waveâ approach for addressing emotional distress, PTSD, anxiety, and interpersonal conflict.
Iâve spent years in the mental health field, observing trends and innovations in therapy. One thing Iâve noticed is the cyclical nature of âthe next big thingâ in psychotherapy. Lately, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has taken center stage. Touted as a groundbreaking approach, ACT offers a framework that blends mindfulness, acceptance, and values-driven action.
But as someone who has seen various modalities rise and fall in popularity, I often return to a single, essential question: What truly drives change in therapy? Is it the specific techniques of a given modality, or is it something deeperâsomething shared across all approaches?
This piece is not about dismissing ACT or its techniques. Instead, itâs an exploration of the idea that common factors, rather than the intricacies of any single modality, are the real engine of therapeutic transformation.
From Assertive Community Treatment to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
The acronym ACT is used to refer to two different interventions in the mental health field: assertive community treatment and acceptance and commitment therapy.
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT)
- Developed in the 1970s
- A team-based approach that provides intensive treatment and support to people with serious mental illness
- Focuses on helping people live independently in the community
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Developed in the 1980s
- A mindfulness-based therapy that helps people accept their thoughts and feelings and commit to taking action in accordance with their values
- Focuses on helping people live meaningful lives
The two ACTs are distinct interventions with different histories and goals. However, they both share a focus on helping people live healthier, more fulfilling lives. But as I sift through the literature and hear ACT championed as the next big thing, I find myself asking: Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy truly revolutionary, or is it just a new coat of paint on familiar therapeutic frameworks?
Breaking Down the Buzzwords
ACT markets itself as an integrative therapy that merges:
- Mindfulness practices to ground clients in the present moment
- Cognitive defusion to separate individuals from distressing thoughts
- Acceptance of internal experiences, even uncomfortable or painful ones
- Values-driven action to align behaviors with deeper personal goals and beliefs
Sounds impressive, right? At first glance, ACT feels like an elegant synthesis of everything modern psychotherapy stands for. But letâs take a moment to reflect:
- Mindfulness? Similar third-wave therapies like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) already popularized this in the therapy mainstream, but mindfulness traces back to Eastern contemplative practices and its use in mental health circles has been criticized as a colonialist repackaging of Buddhism.
- Self-acceptance? Thatâs practically session one in almost every therapeutic modality, whether weâre working with depression, anxiety, or trauma.
- Cognitive defusion? Thatâs just another form of mindfulness. At this point, what therapy client hasnât done the mindfulness exercise of noticing your thoughts and letting them pass?
ACT isnât inventing these concepts; itâs repackaging them in a new wayâone that often feels more linguistically complex than clinically necessary.
ACTâs Core Techniques: What Makes It Unique?
ACT emphasizes six core processes that contribute to psychological flexibility, with a focus on shifting how individuals relate to their internal experiences. Perhaps the most unique-sounding is cognitive defusion, which encourages clients to observe their thoughts without attaching to them or treating them as truths that require action.
Rather than arguing with or challenging thoughtsâas CBT often doesâACT invites clients to take a step back and accept their thoughts as passing phenomena. For instance, a client might imagine their worries as leaves floating down a stream, allowing them to drift by without judgment or interference.
This practice shares a foundation with mindfulness, which has existed across cultures for centuries. Both mindfulness and defusion cultivate a sense of openness and curiosity toward oneâs inner world, encouraging clients to let go of the need to control or avoid their thoughts.
In this way, defusion is less about changing thought patterns and more about transforming oneâs relationship with themâan approach that aligns with ACTâs broader emphasis on acceptance and values-driven action.
During my career, Iâve witnessed therapists attempt cognitive defusion exercises too early in treatment, only to watch clients become agitated, emotionally flooded, or frustrated. And again, itâs really a fancy word for a type of mindfulness.
Are We Chasing the Next Big Thing?
When I consider what actually heals in therapy, I find myself looking beyond specific techniques to the broader, universal principles that underpin all effective interventions.
I wonder if the fieldâs fascination with ACTâand other trendy therapiesâstems less from their inherent effectiveness and more from a collective insecurity about the limits of existing tools. Therapy isnât quick. Itâs slow, deliberate, and often messy. Yet, the allure of new acronyms and methodologies promises something faster, something more efficient. It feeds into the fantasy of therapeutic shortcutsâone that seasoned clinicians know rarely exists.
No modality, no matter how innovative, transforms clients overnight. These âmiracle modalitiesâ have gained significant attentionâtherapies that promise rapid, transformative change for individuals struggling with mental health challenges.
These might include innovative techniques, unconventional methods, or highly marketed treatment that promised breakthroughs where traditional therapies fall short.
I get itâthe natural allure of an approach that promises rapid relief from pain. Clients often feel frustrated with the slow pace of traditional therapies or disheartened after trying multiple modalities with limited success.
Miracle modalities offer:
Hope for Quick Fixes: The idea of resolving years of trauma or deeply ingrained patterns in a matter of sessions is undeniably appealing.
A Break from the Norm: These therapies often feel fresh and innovative, providing a sense of excitement and possibility.
Tailored Solutions: Many miracle modalities promise to address issues in a personalized way, giving clients a sense of control over their healing journey.
Yet, I would hazard to say that real healing doesnât come from mastering the latest APA-sanctioned framework but from:
- The quiet consistency of the therapeutic relationship
- Empathetic listening
- Showing up fully, week after week
Iâm not dismissing ACT entirely. Thereâs real value in refining techniques and drawing from multiple modalities to offer integrated, holistic care. But I worry that the hype around ACT diverts attention away from the simple, grounded work that already facilitates lasting change.
Therapists donât need a new acronym to validate the work theyâve been doing all along. What they need is confidence in the basicsâto trust that traditional methods, when applied with compassion and consistency, are just as powerful as the latest rebrand.
Returning to the Basics: What Actually Works?
Letâs be honestâthe fundamentals of good therapy havenât changed.
- Active listening
- Validation of lived experiences
- Building trust over time
- Empowering clients to sit with discomfort
These have always been the cornerstones of healing.
Key Takeaways: What to Focus On
Master the Fundamentals
Therapy doesnât need to be reinvented every five years. Deepening your core skillsâlistening, reflecting, and validatingâhas a more profound impact than adopting every new trend.
Know Your Client
Not every client benefits from complex modalities. Many need simplicity, grounding exercises, and tangible coping strategies. Tailor your approach to the individual, not the latest trend.
Avoid the Therapy Trend Trap
Buzzwords come and go, but the basics of good therapy endure. Donât let the allure of the next big thing distract you from what truly matters: fostering trust, connection, and a safe space for growth.
Focus on staying present with your clients, not staying ahead of the next big trend.
Context Over Hype
ACT is valuable, but itâs not a magic bullet. Recognize that many of its elements already exist in CBT, DBT, psychodynamic therapy, and humanistic approaches.
Keep It Client-Centered
Fancy terminology doesnât build trustâauthenticity does. Clients donât care if you call it ACT, CBT, or DBT. They care that youâre listening and that you show up fully in their healing process.
Therapy Without the Gimmicks
Maybe Iâm cynical. Or maybe Iâve been doing this long enough to know that good therapy doesnât require a flashy rebrand.
ACT, DBT, CBT, EFTâcall it whatever you want. At the end of the day, what matters most is that you:
- Hold space for your clients
- Honor their experiences
- Help them navigate lifeâs inevitable discomforts
Letâs not get distracted by buzzwords. Letâs keep showing up, one session at a time, and remember that the true power of therapy lies not in acronyms, but in connection, empathy, and the slow art of healing.
Yet one more addition–ACT–to the alphabet soup of disparate modalities that spring up every decade or so: CBT, NLP, ECT, not to mention the former “gold standard” of psychotherapy, Freudianism, and Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy, which purports to be the sole effective cure for neurosis.
I’m all in favor of genuine, unselfish concern and sincere empathy in human relationships, but remain unconvinced that mental health “professionals” are uniquely endowed with these admirable traits. My own observations, and the compelling testimony of those who have been physically harmed and/or emotionally scarred in the course of “treatment” by therapists who propagate the myth of emotional healing, underline the futility of such an approach to what Szasz rightly calls “problems in living.”
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I could not agree more. Fundamentally it is about caring and as you say showing up. I have lived on a small remote island for the last 20+ years. Sometimes the most effective therapeutic intervention taking someone who does not have transport shopping. Sharing a common experience. Having a conversation in the car. These can be times when a person opens up. Too much therapy theses days is about number of sessions and doing worksheets. Just be present and be prepared to ask the questions that you might not be asked in a superficial conversation
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Max , Interesting but where is the social in your work? Jane Addams and Florence Kelly, Abby May Alcott, Jane Edna Hunter, Ida Cannon and others like Jane Hamilton with photographs by Jacob Riis all concerned them themselves with both the families and their environments and saw the need that one to one many times was not enough. You handled therapy but with the push with private practice the social in social works as in the phrase social justice just isnât there.
Just a thought to try to expand your perspective.
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Be wary of therapists who strongly emphasise branded therapeutic approaches, often recognisable by acronyms like CBT, ACT, EMDR, DBT, EFT, etc. Apart from commercial interests that might dominate the therapeutic encounter, some may adopt these brands to project competence and professional credibility which may in fact be lacking while also potentially leading to confirmation bias where they attribute success to the therapy and failure to the client.
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“I still remember the first time I heard the acronym ACT. It was in graduate school, and the term felt both seductive and mysterious.” Oh my God. If I were you I’d invest in an adult magazine because if you find the term ACT seductive and mysterious we’re likely to find you around the back of a bike shed with your pants down, having it off with a lawn mower.
Listen mate, your writing, your intellectual life – all your social activity – is no more or less relevant then that of an administrator in a large bank to the actual real urgent issues in life, because you are so far up into the epiphenomena of the real issues that if I were to set them down here my comment would seem utterly irrelevant to this article. I’m afraid sir that nothing of what you say even skirts the major issues.
Oh dear MIA – is it just me or is everyone’s brains turning to mush? The issue of mental health treatment is looking more and more absurd every day. If the authors and intellects behind the articles and their content of the last two posts were appointed by the court to help me with my mental health, I’d very quickly burn my finger tips, dye my hair, and get a fake passport in order to fly to Outer Mongolia. This article helps me to realize that today were basically in exactly the same situation as Germany circa 1939 only with the appearance of evil being replaced by the appearance of an absolutely universal, absurd and agonizing CRETINISTIC STUPIDITY. The Western intellect has become a brain disease that makes all affected cretins.
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No-one, I really enjoy your colorful, unique style, which in its own inimitable way deflates verbose, self-serving, fallacious arguments made in favor of psychotherapy.
Your comment that “the issue of mental health treatment is looking more and more absurd every day” certainly rings true, for it is indeed nonsensical to speak of “treating” emotional distress in medical terms. Doing so confuses metaphors with reality–which can have severe consequences for unwary people who trust the advice of practitioners mesmerized by psychiatric cults.
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Don’t tell me that, because I’ve got a linguistic crush on your comments and you might make me fancy you. I honestly enjoy every comment you make too. And like a couple of others on here I agree with every word you say!
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Here is the truth of healing. It’s what the ancients, both East and West. Know yourself. Nobody can know you unless you know yourself, and you can only know yourself by watching yourself in freedom, and you can only watch yourself in freedom if you are free, i.e. yourself without intellectual direction or control, doing what you’re inclined to do in the moment, expressing a nature which has been deranged and traumatised by social experience, social conditioning, and compromising with an ever more demanding and insane social reality. So you are dealing with a mixture of repressed, exhausted, inactive and explosive energies. If you allow yourself to freely express your nature you don’t know what you’ll find, but getting here means you’re already advancing beyond your social conditioning, and by observing and understanding, without criticizing or praising what you see, you begin to understand your underlying nature and this makes your brain and consciousness intelligent in relation to that nature.
I say this because it’s important, whether or not anyone wants to hear it. So nobody can know you unless and until you are free, and until that time you’ve never even been. That is the truth people, so trying to be anything at all means no-one can really know you and you will be isolated, lonely, unhappy, which is most of the human population. You don’t have to like me at all – you can hate me – but I’m free, simply because there is no intellectual self-regulation anymore, which means no policeman in your head – no real social control.
And also you shouldn’t give a fuck about shocking or upsetting people today. How do I know all this? I don’t know anything, that’s how. I observe reality intensely and this observation sculpts the brain without any conscious action on my part. Do it otherwise you’ll be a socially conditioned production line human being right into your grave. You may have a great computer brain and a plush mechanical existence but you won’t ever know what happiness or freedom is, just at most a bit of power or pleasure which always dies before you do. Ask anyone in an old people’s home. None of them have power or pleasure, but they could have freedom and happiness simply by understanding and becoming who they are like any animal of nature. This ain’t theory, philosophy, or anything like that. It’s the blindingly obvious but you’re caught in this total global social process, this prison of intellect and society, and if you are honest with yourself really don’t know how to live or what to do in life. Even the politicians who set out clear plans have no clue what life is about, but life is about being you and being free and understanding yourself and your life in that freedom, simple as that. Any authority, including parent or teacher, who denies that freedom and tells their kid what they should be unconsciously destroys this freedom and happiness and this is the almost universal tragedy of our times. If it ever sounds like I’m criticizing a person you don’t understand that any one person is all people. They all have awareness, thoughts, feelings, opinions, emotions, bodies, brains, hearts etc, and although all opinions contradict each other this still means everyone is the same if you think about it. It’s the narcissism of petty differences to imagine otherwise. Because we are not the physical body, obviously – we are human consciousness within which the body and the world take place, and that consciousness has exactly the same structure in everyone. Understanding that silences thought and brings you into the clarity of perception and awareness, and if this is the first time you’ve heard this stated then it is probably too late for you to discover it for yourself because the whole world is destroying itself as we speak. So this is the most urgent problem of your life. There is no value in having children if we turn them into what we are, which is confused, frightened, destructive greed machines, so nothing has meaning until you understand yourself as consciousness, or this conscious life, this existence (fuck what am I talking about. If this is gobbledigoock ignore.).
What I say is not controversial to growing millions around the world, and I meet them every day. The normal socially conditioned human being is looking more and more like a person whose brain and consciousness have been enslaved, overwhelmed and dominated by the almost infinite lies of our culture, the falling for which inevitably makes you unhappy. I won’t be repeating this again and it’s no good believing anything I say. You have to dig deep and ask these questions of yourself, and penetrate much more deeply into what you are, i.e. what this thing called consciousness is, this illusory self made of thought, these emotional reactions to thought and environment etc – you have to just see it an begin to make sense of it. No book or teacher can help you do that. There is a small chance one or two of you might understand what I’m saying, but don’t shoot the messenger because he is you. He’s human consciousness just like you.
And I’m not preaching. I couldn’t care less if you all fall off the edge of the cliff because we ARE all falling of the edge of a cliff and nobody is steering this crazy world. There are 8 billion people trying to with appalling and destructive results, and you have to be blind to not see that this is the end of civilization as we know it. Ask your colleagues or friends or schoolmates if they imagine society will survive another 50 years, and you’ll see. I don’t think it even survives today. A corpse which is cannibalizing itself is not surviving, even though movements and transactions are involved in the catabolizing process. Couldn’t care less if you don’t get this and die in petified misery because unfortunately it is happening right now to millions every day. Think of Gaza or the starving people in the Horne of Africa as one of innumerable examples. You can wake up to this or not – I don’t care. The only person that should care is you, and if you don’t – oh well. Have a nice life as they say.
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Thank you everyone or reading and commenting. Your feedback has prompted me to further consider important thoughts and feelings that were unaddressed in my article.
Hopefully, the following link supplies any deficiency:
https://mentalhealthaffairs.blog/beyond-the-acronyms-defending-the-work-of-therapy-and-social-work/
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Ah Max! You used my name! But never addressed how I knew the human beings I mentioned! So to inform you and then you can take a snapshot once again and post to your blog.
I am a trained and graduate educated social worker. As was my mother before me. She went to St Louis University in the heart of segregation and Jim Crow laws. The Jesuits there taught of Cleveland Metropolitan Parks because well yes nature is an important factor. She also so important had a scholarship from the National Polio Foundation with a small monthly stripend. No strings attached but after graduation she went to work in the Polio Pediatric Ward with Dr Fredrick Robbins
and Dr John Enders. No private practice options. Child Guidance yes and Lutheran Aid and Children’s Aid Societies again no private practice.
In our house my parents had John Howard Griffinâs Black Like Me not taught by my graduate classes and a weird but vital expose on racism. She was aware of Michael Harringtonâs book The Other America. And I did hear Michael speak but he was not sponsored by the NCSSS of Catholic University of America.
I was taught about Saul Alinsky by a priest who worked with immigrants. I did volunteer work at House of Ruth then sponsored by the Lutheran Church.
I worked on a medical floor and then adolescent unit and adult psych unit along with helping start a Pediatric Sexual Abuse Team that I think is now defunct because they went with a clinic operation instead of a multi professional team approach.
I knew many private practitioners and did some work but couldnât get into the selling and marketing. I went for some for help with multidimensional trauma because of primary childhood trauma suppressed and repressed and then secondary or tertiary workplace trauma. Not that helpful and actually with the push toward bio psychiatry that use created more problems than not. For some folks it can end in a downward spiral and I found little to no follow through with any therapists. So I would not at all be surprised that you received negative commentary here.
These are folks who through no fault of their own fell into a very broken system of care and support.
I am sure some BSWs and MSWs go to meetings and are active. What exactly do you do outside the office? Are you a NASW member? For awhile I found NASW to be useless.
It was broken. Many of my peers left the profession in utter despair. The agency progress notes and fierce need to get paid was like being in a paperwork war.
Insurance Boards and Regulations and Rules at least in the early years of private practice were beyond cumbersome.
I too walked away.
However in these times we need if we care a new paradigm and structure. And looking back at Settlement Houses is one way. Selma Fraiberg MSW essential as well as Mother Jones and Mary Richmond. Just to see what worked for them and what didnât. And yes all females and many coming from more elite backgrounds than not.
Males have usually been the heads of Social Work management. In grad school my friends and I even the males would joke about the short male problem of social work. No basketball players! It is an issue as in the acceptance of the CEO and CFO mind set.
The fact that folks engaged with you important. If they didnât care they wouldnât have taken the time and in the very years here lots and lots of strong anger!!!
Buck up. Grow up and remember what drew you to the profession and open your eyes to the broken structures of now in the field. What would a new Henry Street House look like? Think and Walk up and over the cardboard box.
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Oh, Mary! Thank you for your thoughts, energy, and focus, as well as for sharing who you are, where you come from, and your hopes for a better future.
I identify as a Prosumer first. I studied language and later became a social worker. I am passionate and convinced that anyone can help relieve unnecessary suffering and change the way things are doneâenough to spark reform, challenge beliefs, and strengthen our ability to make healthy, self-directed decisions as independent thinkers contributing to collective progress.
I hope you’ll learn more about what this means in my blog, Mental Health Affairs, and contribute.
My business page offers more information on my career: https://mindful-recovery.com
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Max , well you are continuing to engage- the problem many on this site and myself included is that many here and in the last and those lost to death have multiple and many failed experiences trying to get support or those forced into support and ( many ways that happens!)
most so called therapeutic interactions were not that great or just bad. I had some real humdingers no idea what they were doing folks. With the advent of private practice despite NASW having an ethical statement not much supervision. On the community mental health and or community service side massive issues with paperwork and frameworks that pushed for clients to move upward always. That was seen the those agencies that worked with the developmentally disabled and sometimes those in the vocational rehabilitation agencies and workshops with hard mental health dx. One could not remain in a workshop shelter. So if you were doing well then the next step was competitive employment. It was never the clients choice it was numbers as in numbers for hospital beds or nursing homes etc etc etc.
So your take as kind as you try to be leaves startling gaps .
Many supportive services for all kinds of people in need both adult and children became literally shadow agencies. More hidden or above ground profit with little to no sense of what is best for the community of people in need. Private practice is a form of profit business enterprise. No other way around and why I left after two years and a big family crisis. It looks and seems like freedom from the moribund agencies but no it has its own chain and weights like Jacob Marley wore after his death.
A non for profit system might have worked better . Because there is a need and again the lack of dance therapy, art therapy , music therapy, poetry therapy, occupational therapy , physical therapy horticultural therapy, bibliotherapy , yoga therapy not to be integrated as a whole and available to all and for folks to be able to experiment and pick and choose what interventions work best for them is beyond tragedy and again this lack and so obvious lack of creativity and imagination and genuine care – the hallmark a tragedy or water mark of our times as the land of greed is better than good.
Think on this please.
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I just checked out NASW website not only oral history projects but I found the Guamâs Chapter actions inspiring.
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Mr. Guttman, I just read the link to your blog and wish to pose a few questions.
You assert that mental health professionals such as social workers are trained not only to listen emphatically but to guide wisely.
May I therefore ask what could be the source of this superior guidance, for which clients are presumably paying a considerable fee? By now the DSM has been widely criticized and discredited as a scientifically invalid compendium of fictitious behavioral disturbances (one notable example being the prolonged grief disorder) voted upon by a panel of supposed experts, whose totally subjective judgments are more often than not influenced by crass financial considerations. That being the case, what exactly ARE the objective, VERIFIABLE criteria on the basis of which you or any other therapist, counselor, LSW, clinician etc. can legitimately lay claim to superior knowledge, insight, and wisdom? You mentioned, but failed to present, “evidence-based” research findings in support of your viewpoint, but that is nothing but a hackneyed, evasive response. EVERY pseudo-scientific cult can and does make similar claims of efficacy (I’m thinking here specifically of Scientology, Primal Therapy, Freudianism, Jungian psychology, and similar movements created by charismatic guru-like figures).
In summary, unless you can better substantiate your argument, I see no reason whatsoever why any so-called mental health practitioner deserves more credence and respect than a non-hierarchical support group of intelligent, empathetic peers.
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Hi Joel, I am a skeptic too and understand that the ‘truth’ and what is ‘verifiable’ are very different. I also suggest that specialized training and education are not the driving forces in facilitating healing. So-called experts and leaders in our industry, like many others, are invariably influenced by significant financial and ethical considerations that often go undisclosed.
In my small circle of colleagues and allies, I look for authenticity, transparency, and compassion. Needless to say, I donât have many friends or allies in the field. In the end, I focus on my own work, adhering to my values, and ensuring that I approach my work the right way.
In this vein, my clients benefit from my humanity and the insight and skills that a Prosumer brings. I firmly believe that had I assimilated and followed a more traditional career path, my skills and lived experience would lack the depth and history required to inform the passion and dedication that continue to chart a path I can be proud of: https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/05/prosumer/
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The authenticity, transparency, compassion, humanity, and insight you ascribe to yourself are certainly commendable, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that practitioners in the mental health field, whatever their training and credentials may be, possess these qualities to a superior degree that warrants the undue status, credence, and institutional financial backing they enjoy. What exactly constitutes the legitimate basis of their social authority to determine the desirable and permissible bounds of normal thinking and conduct? Are they wiser and better informed, for example, than anthropologists or philosophers?
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“Maybe I’m cynical. Or maybe I’ve been doing this long enough to know that good therapy doesn’t require a flashy rebrand.”
Maybe I’m cynical. Or maybe I’ve lived long enough to know that so-called “good therapy” doesn’t require a therapist.
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Neither necessary nor sufficient!
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Thank you, Steve. It gets lonely at times out here in Sanity Land.
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Bravo Birdsong – we’ll have to call you Angelsong soon!
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Why thank you, No-one. I think you’re pretty nifty, too! đ
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Mr. Guttman –
The Common Factors that you have outlined are of central importance to the healing process. I would add that Psychotherapy can be made profoundly more effective when therapists use Multiplicity of Self as a core framework – which is transformed into Parts Work in actual clinical practice.
Parts work has a long history in psychotherapy. It has been an important part of Freud’s Structural Model, Jung’s Archetypal Psychology, Object Relations Theory, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, Redecision Therapy, Voice Dialogue, Emotion Focused Therapy, Schema Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, Dialogical Self Theory, Internal Family Systems, and my own work with Chairwork Psychotherapy (https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/02/four-dialogues-chairwork/).
Parts Work is a very profound and effective way of working with patients. While I think that we are still in the early stages of understanding our internal parts, modes, or voices, and how to work with them, I also believe that each of these therapeutic approaches is providing us with their own unique perspectives on working in this manner. In short, there is a creative evolution taking place.
To conclude, I think that integrating the Common Factors that you have outlined with some form of Parts Work can help us to better serve suffering people.
In any event, I hope your efforts prosper.
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Having a person who genuinely cares at all can be very helpful. And yetâŚ
Speaking only about my own situation Iâm finding that escaping poverty is extremely therapeutic.
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Excellent point!
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That alone is what makes “therapy” the height of hypocrisy.
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As one whose main experience with psychological therapy was having a psychologist function as a funnel, into the psychiatric industry.
But, decades later, I did also have the misfortune of dealing with a computer hacking psychologist, who tried to steal everything, and more, from me … according to the appalling take a percentage of gross contract, combined with the conservatorship contract, he wanted me to sign.
I most definitely believe both psychology and psychiatry have lost their way.
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Amen to this! I totally agree with your comments!
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To add another “view”… I am a thirty year veteran psych RN with graduate education supplanted with heavy-duty music and art careers.
Late in my life I took religious vows as a “religious in the world.”
My mental health care started in 1969. I wanted to be a healer. What a mess I experienced, but becoming more and more convinced that my gifts of being able to listen and validate others seemed to help, I continued to work in the field. For myself I was finding that my career and accomplishments were being called “delusional” by some physicians-leading to heavy doses of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, which made me worse and creatively empty.
I turned to the Church, using spiritual tools and teachings (incl. frequent confessions) to ameliorate my painful thoughts. The story doesn’t end there, but is too complicated for this blog. The continuing prayer and little ministries have exposed me to the incredible Love available from my Saviour. I have been renewed, my creativity has returned, I see.a priest spiritual director, and take a minidose of medicine (the dose I requested). As my body is breaking down with 76 yr. of life, heaven doesn’t seem far away. Thank you all for your attention.
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