An Impossible Profession

• A Different Slant on CMT, Part I by Vic Comello, 11/14/98
  
  

A psychotherapist would be wise to have a sense of history. He or she would be even wiser to be able to step out of their usual boundaries when thinking about this history and this profession. We simply move from one 'preferred' way of theorizing to another. Methods of validation are as grossly poor as they've ever been. We are all playing wonderful tricks with ourselves when we go on and on and on with how adept we can be at analyzing this or that, and proposing promising new concepts and therapies, and writing, often eloquently about all kinds of complex ideas. What we abjectly refuse to do is to recognize the 'bottomless" pit nature of both these inquiries and the nature of psychotherapy. What we are doing is becoming 'entrenched' in lots of verbiage and then think through clinical observation and treatment we are 'proving' something, when in fact we fail to see time and time again the lack of true provable substance to all these things we say. It's little wonder that we seek out our groups and institutes to convince ourselves how right we are. At least we can come to be emboldened in that way. And our young students are so willing to staunchly defend our ways of thinking.The stark truth of this profession will always be that without some real biological understanding of how the brain works- how it thinks, how it feels, how it remembers, how it 'has' consciousness, how 'it' establishes "I-ness", we are simply playing at understanding. Obviously I don't expect anybody to give up on the quest but I always find it stunning how few people acknowledge the really primitive state our understandings. Never once do I find textbooks really, really discussing the incredible complexity of what we try to do, and where the stumbling blocks are. The research courses some of us took attempt to teach us about controlling variables and the nature of experimental science, but we quickly give all that up for our profession identity as psychotherapists. What we come to accept as 'doing research' or having 'clinical findings' is really amusing. Then again, medical science was not much better off in the early 20th century- but just as with us- I guess you just have 'to do' something, and then try to justify it.

• Or falsify it... by Jim Duffy, 11/18/98
• Agreement, to an Extent by Vic Comello, 11/19/98
  • Friendly rapport and conflict... by Jim Duffy, 11/20/98
    • This WAS Surprising by Doug William, 11/20/98