5 ms·
One alternative viewpoint for understanding why therapy is so effective for mental health issues, goes as follows: Humans evolved in closely knit groups, where
by rzmmm 3y ago
One alternative viewpoint for understanding why therapy is so effective for mental health issues, goes as follows:
Humans evolved in closely knit groups, where social relationships were extremely important. Good, close friendships were essential for survival. Humans evolved to innately feel better, when they feel that they have formed a close bond with another person.
Common Factors Theory posits that successful psychotherapy needs: alliance, empathy, genuineness, affirmation...
The school of the psychotherapist is not relevant(!), it's much more important that the patient and therapists are a "good match".
Having this viewpoint makes psychotherapy more understandable, and also explains why depressed people can't just read psychotherapy books and self-heal.
- strogonoff 3y agoAs a counter-example, one can read sources that provide logically coherent reasoning/research into how humans require human interaction and “self-heal” by exposing oneself to more of it. Which, in fact, I have done and I do. (I am also somewhat fond of the “recursion” theory of self-awareness, in which modeling humans around us requires us to create a model of ourselves within their model, and which more or less requires other humans for human consciousness as it is generally understood to even occur.)