4 ms·

> It's not completely clear whether there are any psychotherapies that are better than placebos. What can be said for sure, and which was my original point, is

> It's not completely clear whether there are any psychotherapies that are better than placebos. What can be said for sure, and which was my original point, is that regardless of which one is "better", they are not the same thing at all. They are two very different distinct concepts that describe two very different existing phenomena. Incidentally, it is very clear to me, based on my life experience (and that includes using critical thinking to approach life) and experience of many other people I've met that in most cases real psychotherapy is quite effective, unlike most uses of placebo. Although there seem to be cases of placebo that are exceptionally effective too, so who knows? This is of course just an anecdote and I don't have any studies at my fingertips right now that somehow calculate and compare the relative effectiveness of the two. I would imagine that using and especially scaling placebo in effective manner is difficult because it relies on active ignorance of the user.

eru 7y ago
In some sense the broader question is what about psychotherapy actual does the work. So when I mentioned talking to some random high status individual who lends a sympathetic ear, that's one way to separate the factors. Another one, with lots of practitioners, is looking at pastors and other religious figures. Pastoral care is a big deal. Whether you want to treat that as placebo or a special kind of psychotherapy is a judgement call. If these examples work just as well (or badly) as Freudian psychoanalysis, then that's good knowledge to build on. Perhaps they work better or worse than Freudian psychoanalysis. That's also useful to know. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therapy-books/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therap... for how basically every kind of therapy can claim lots of life experience and critical thinking evidence in its favour.

eru 7y ago

In some sense the broader question is what about psychotherapy actual does the work. So when I mentioned talking to some random high status individual who lends a sympathetic ear, that's one way to separate the factors. Another one, with lots of practitioners, is looking at pastors and other religious figures. Pastoral care is a big deal. Whether you want to treat that as placebo or a special kind of psychotherapy is a judgement call. If these examples work just as well (or badly) as Freudian psychoanalysis, then that's good knowledge to build on. Perhaps they work better or worse than Freudian psychoanalysis. That's also useful to know. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therapy-books/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therap... for how basically every kind of therapy can claim lots of life experience and critical thinking evidence in its favour.