BRAVO!

• Psychotherapy is a science by Joe Weiss, 5/15/97
  
  

Jessica, thank your so much for sharing this with us. Joseph Weiss is so very, very right. Thank heavens there are a few people like him working in this field, people, that is, who want to study some often obscuure unconscious issues that do not lend themselves easily to direct exploration but that nonetheless can be studied with as much scientific rigor that one can devise.

Not only must the field of psychotherapy be open to criticism of its theories by a more careful examination of falsifying evidence than confirming evidence, but, as is done in Control Mastery Theory, the practitioner with a scientific approach is always alert to those disorganizing signs from the client giving the therapist information to falsify a therapist's hypothesis about a client's goals (so that the therapist's formulation may be revised as needed). This is a much higher standard of inductive inferential reasoning than is typically found in a profession that has too easily surrendered scientific rigor. The surrender is not in my opinion justified just because there are immense difficulties and severe limitations in applying experimental (control group) procedures. One can nontheless explore any observations to see how well they do or do not fit logically with one's theory while being most respectful of falsifications. And one can apply the case-study method with attention to detailed process analysis hour by hour to observe patterns of on-off occurrences of progress. And one can cross-check the reliability of one's observation with other observers. In short, one can reason logically and carefully while paying special respect to falsifications of one's theory.

Einstein said no amount of proof can prove him right but one experiment can prove him wrong. Nietzsche said that conviction has no place in science. And Bertrand Russell said one should never be willing to die for one's beliefs because they may be wrong. And I like to say that I like to learn form others' mistakes because I won't have enough time to make them all myself. I do not believe that one theroy is as good as another however, becasue confirming evidence does matter even though there are immense difficulties in determining what counts as a confirmation.

Scientific ethics maximizes the opportunity to be shown to be mistaken. Certainty about knowing the truth in matters of fact about how the world works (the phrase "about how the world works" allows exceptions for self-evident and tautological facts as well as simple direct observations or valid deductive conclusions) has no place in science. Beliefs have a place and so do competing beliefs about the would-be fact about how the world works, but in science all beliefs about matters of fact are cast under some shadow, large or small, of doubt. But the long-range, never-fully-attainable goal is to reach agreement on competing beliefs, for Truth in matters of fact about the world is an elusive goddess deserving of all the respect we can muster but who remians forever partly hidden.

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The implicit motto "if the facts don't fit the theory, good-by facts" is a commonplace way, inside and outside our profession, to cope with the Tragedy of Science. Thomas Henry Huxley described the great Tragedy of Science as the "slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." In my thrity some years working in psycholgoy in different ways, I am sometimes extremely dismayed at how often I have had to overthrow a pet theory or reflect back at how foolish I looked insisting that my students carefully understand something that I now realize was so crude an approximation to truth. It's hard not to be dogmatic when one is a just a mortal creature struggling to understand the world and the complexity that is human being.

• The Truth Hurts- sometimes by Jessica, 5/21/97
  • I Would Like to Read about It--Especially Re: CMT by Jim Duffy, 5/22/97