6 Comments
author

"Permanent personal baggage" -- a nice, succint way of putting it. Anyway, thank you for reading and for commenting. At 63, you have plenty of data behind your opinion :)

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Very insightful post. I interpret it as pointing to the risks of a theory-free psychological approach combined with clinical psychologists' potential incentives to self-aggrandise the effectiveness of their discursive interventions.

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author

Thanks for reading and commenting, and yes, totally agree with your assessment. Lacking a coherent, accepted theory has resulted in clinical psychology having way too many theories. Last time we checked Psychology Today, there were 70+ different therapeutic techniques, each with their own ideas of how mental illness is caused and cured. As if practitioners weren't overwhelmed enough...

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The theoretical profusion is clearly a problem in academic psychology (I share this view: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0522-1). I can understand how this issue would be even worse in clinical psychology, where old ideas are likely to linger for a long time.

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Yes, agreed, and that article puts it well. Personal intuitions and folk wisdom are going to linger longer, too, among those who only practice, as opposed to those who at least have some foothold in research.

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Thanks for clarifying the distinction between the current clinical psych perspective - emotion as permanent personal baggage - and the alternative on offer here. The twists and turns of life (I’m 63) have provided compelling evidence that the latter is legit.

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