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Thanks for your comments. However, I wasn’t able to determine which part of my arguments you find fallacious. My conclusions proceed sequentially starting with the finding that there are no experience and training effects for psychotherapists. Put another way, therapists do not improve as a result of training or experience. This is a robust finding and has been reported by others; Scott Miller and his associates are probably the best-known advocates of this finding. The lack of training/experience effects demonstrates both that techniques lack inherent power and that psychotherapy’s privileged knowledge is unrelated to outcomes. This suggests that we have been barking up the wrong tree in terms of figuring out how psychotherapy works. My work is not about being some kind of master therapist. Rather, it is about exploring how to improve therapy outcomes when we accept that techniques lack inherent power and that change is based on expectancies and beliefs. When we accept this different way of looking at the therapeutic process, different ideas arise about how to get better outcomes. The videos I made and my articles contain my speculations on how to move forward. I’d be happy to dialog with you about these topics if you choose to be more specific about your objections. Best, stephen

@@constructionistpsychology I understand your logic, and I do dispute those supposed research findings. No, I don't think this seemingly robust finding is the final word on therapy. I think there are real problems with the research and conclusions. You know, I have counseled several fellow psychiatrists and psychologists. I was not at all surprised that they reported have little confidence in their work, as well as little enjoyment. They were often not very advanced or balanced in their own development. Some were very abstract, aloof and intellectual -- others were dysfunctional in their own lives and were not very assertive as therapists. There would be no way to tell why their advanced training did not help so much. And despite their training, none of them knew how to do in-depth psychodynamic work, along with the more pragmatic life coaching and problem solving. So am I saying that "Psychoanalytic" is the winner for training? No, I'm saying there needs to be a blend of psychodynamic capacity, pragmatic counseling and problem solving skills, along with high personal development. People who aren't very deeply trained or personally integrated are not going to be able to be very creative or fluid in some kind of constructivist, transpersonal manner that somehow allows them to do whatever is needed for the client (which you seem to suggest is your approach). Not gonna happen. But some rare individuals are naturals and are able to deal with a broad range of issues effectively, from depth to surface. What you seem to do, in my view, is throw the baby out with the bathwater --- i.e., it's all ritual and no knowledge, technique or experience matters. I could fill a book with cases that show that's nonsense -- with patients who tried many therapists and finally found the insight, the therapeutic skill, and the effective problem solving in me or some other clinician. The claim that patients get better, essentially, "when we tell them to" is hogwash. Believe me, I've heard it all before -- we're going to charm them into wellness right? First, therapy is not just about making people "get better" anyway -- there is practical knowledge and insight imparted which improves lives in the long term but does not get measured easily. Not everyone is suffering acutely but rather, many need some timely life guidance and psychoeducation. How do you measure that? Secondly, people don't just get better because of our charisma or their placebo-effect belief in our kindness or wisdom. That is absolute nonsense. Sure, therapy as a formula derived from a medical model approach doesn't work. That doesn't mean your conclusions are sound. I would encourage you to discuss and debate with Jonathan Shedler. Thanks

@@constructionistpsychology I replied at length to this yesterday. Now it's gone. I'm sorry but your conclusions are erroneous. What you're offering therapists is based on a kind of sophistry. Everything you say, about privileged knowledge, training and experience, and techniques having no power is nonsense. You pretend there's a kind of "settled science" regarding therapy and outcomes. There isn't.

Hi Mike, I appreciate your comment. Yes, constructionism is just a modern version of the mystical/eastern insight that freedom arises from awareness about what is real and what is socially constructed. Whether we are shooting for the liberation espoused by eastern approaches or the "redemption of the world" seen in the west, we are all united by the knowledge that we are more than what is allowed by conventional thinking and standard ideas about the self.

Thanks for your kind comment. I actually took the Apollonian/Dionysian reference from Nietzsche although I took a bit of license with the way that I use them. In constructionism, there are events and understandings that align with or support the dominant cultural structure (Apollonian) and others that provoke the structure or occur outside it (Dionysian). I especially like to use this definition as the primary characteristic of an "altered state" and believe that the ability to work with both naturalistic and formal altered states is required to be an effective constructionist therapist.

I certainly agree that therapy can make clients feel worse it can be ineffective. I quote Scott Miller extensively in some of my videos on just this issue. Also, many therapists would join your critique that psychotherapy is a western process that systematically neglects certain minority/liminal clients. Narrative therapy and constructionism in general have written extensively about this problem. However, I do feel that the research shows a modest, reliable positive effect for more than half the clients who participate in it. There are two main questions that endure in spite of this success. First, given that all therapies get the same outcomes regardless of their varying underlying philosophies and techniques, it's appropriate to argue that psychotherapy techniques lack inherent power. Second, the finding that beginning psychotherapists do as well as experts suggests that the field of psychotherapy is confused about how it works. In sum, I can agree with many of your critiques. In fact, the purpose of my youtube channel is to pay attention to this kind of feedback and use it to push the field forward.

The fact of "real world inequality" does not negate individual problems. That is absurd. The vast range of personal and relational life problems cannot be said to all be caused by "inequality" --- are we all supposed to be materially equal, or are you really referring to poverty? --- nor is the supposed "oppression of minority groups" a clear fact. Oppression, how? Which groups? What nation? Your division of society into "the rich" and "the victims" is facile. While we should surely not take a utopian view of therapy, you have an entirely uninformed one. Therapy is effective.

@@constructionistpsychology The man's critiques are facile in the extreme. Meanwhile there is no evidence that western therapy systematically neglects, or is not helpful for, certain minority clients. That's just another oft-repeated myth. I have had many clients who are immigrants to America, often from Arab and Asian countries -- and the last thing they wanted, or needed, was some kind of therapy that adhered to their home country's values -- and it would be hard to imagine what that even means. In fact they were relieved to be understood as individuals with unique personalities that their family or community often couldn't accept or understand, including being gay, atheist, etc.

Hi Phillip, Your journey sounds very fruitful and in many ways, parallels my own. Yes, I also loved solution-focused and strategic therapies and they both got me thinking about how therapy really works. Fortunately, I'd spent quite a bit of time with eastern philosophy and spirituality, which is heavily committed to constructionism, so that made my own evolution much easier. And, yes again, our whole field has a deep debt of gratitude to Scott Miller.

Thanks for listening to it!

Hi Harry, Yes, there is a lot of variability depending on what the client brings to the mix. In fact, research shows that client variables--like what you are calling the Psychological Immune system-- are significantly more important than therapist variables. That's common sense in that virtually every therapist notices quickly the capacity of their client and adjusts their expectations accordingly. Obviously, my work is about moving from being an average therapist to above average and in that sense, the above average therapist has a better chance of helping more clients--especially clients that the average therapist fails with. In sum, client factors matter significantly but the hope is to affect positively more clients with weaker "psychological immune systems."

Hi, I’m not sure that I understood your full argument but I’ll try and respond as best I can. I agree that some natural language references can be helpful but social constructionism typically predicts that typical language use is much more representative of the confusion between what is constructed and what is fundamental. As a result, most constructionists have to place an ongoing emphasis on deconstruction. The oldest formal deconstruction practice from the Vedas is called “neti-neti--not this and not that-and its practitioners are enjoined to eliminate everything that is “not real.” That said, it would be wrong to throw out all folk wisdom as constructed when a certain percentage of it is cross-cultural, taps into universal principles, and hence is part of fundamental reality. Similarly, some folk wisdom refers directly to the fluidity inherent in constructionism and some of your examples, e.g., the golden rule, refer to a path of the heart that eventually arrives at the same place as the more wisdom/deconstructionist path described above. I guess I’d say that there’s so much variability in folk wisdom that it needs to be evaluated on an individual basis. Thanks for your comment.

Hi Mani, Thanks for your kind words.

Hi Mike, Yes, in the biggest frame it's always correct to say that personal growth or psychotherapy are individual-centered activities. But in the perspective I'm articulating on this channel, the central distinguishing feature is how to explore the freedoms and potentials unleashed by understanding the prevalence and qualities of constructed reality.

Hi Jake, Thanks for the kind words. You can find the citations in this article: Bacon, Stephen. (2020). A Constructionist Extension of the Contextual Model: Ritual, Charisma, and Client Fit. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 30(4), 506-521. doi.org/10.1037/int0000188

sophistry.

Thanks, Peri. Yes, it seems to me that video is a good medium to express these ideas. I'm hoping to move past these introductory videos and produce another series that takes on the challenge of how to use these ideas to alter the way we perform psychotherapy.