Counselling versus Couple's Counselling

[erudito]

I am deeply sceptical about counselling and "talk therapy". Partly, it dates backs to having read Jeffrey Masson's Against Therapy years ago. Partly, it is based on observing counselling that seems to have either being extremely ineffectual, or made things worse

Comments

[quatrefoil]

Hmmm. You're attempting to look at counselling from an objective external viewpoint. From that viewpoint, 'worse' and 'better' are external measures - perhaps the counsellor's, perhaps a doctor's, perhaps that of someone simply observing the therapee. Problem is I don't think this is a realm where objective research tells you much about what's going on. While there can be some objective measures of success - e.g. has not hit anyone with an axe since he went into therapy - on the whole the only person who can tell you whether the therapy was or wasn't effective is the person who has experienced it, and who has experienced, from a purely subjective view, its effects. This is about life, not science, although I understand that there is some research being done about the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy on brain wave patterns

[catsidhe]

My own experiential evidence anecdote:

One therapist, a psychiatrist, seen for almost a year for (as my wife will attest) relatively severe depression.

I was not impressed. We talked. A lot. To very little end, as far as I could tell. I have no idea what he actually thought of me or my issues, and to a large extent his feedback was all very nice and fluffy, but not very helpful.

It probably doesn't help that Asperger's Syndrome was a brand new shiny diagnosis, which still squeaked if you turned around too quickly. I had certainly not heard of it, and I wonder if he had either. I suspect I had given him enough ammunition to diagnose me with then, if he had.

In any case, there's a term: Alexithymia, meaning the inability to describe one's own emotional state. It's common to many, if not most Aspies, myself not least. What I went in there for was not warm fuzzies, it was explanation. I was fully aware of the likelihood of self-deception, which was why I wanted an independent opinion in the first place. I didn't want my own ignorant

[quatrefoil]

Yes. The one piece of advice I'd give to anyone seeking a therapist is keep going till you find the right one, and to acknowledge that that can be incredibly difficult. And if you're a few standard deviations beyond normal in the IQ department, that can make it a lot harder. I imagine that Aspergers has a similar effect. A bad therapist can be worse than useless; a good one is gold.

[catsidhe]

And if you're a few standard deviations beyond normal in the IQ department, that can make it a lot harder. I imagine that Aspergers has a similar effect.

Worse: I'm both.

[quatrefoil]

You're really stuffed, then :-)

[findalexh]

Never found a good one but I think you're right.

I get the very definite impression that counselling is much more of an art than a science, and maybe much less of a science than say water diving or astrology...