Posted by alexandra_k on February 5, 2004, at 3:34:30
In reply to Re: Question for gg. » alexandra_k, posted by gardenergirl on February 4, 2004, at 23:01:29
Thanks for that gg. Nope, you didn't rave I was very interested in your answer. I feel your pain with respect to CBT's superficiality. It is easy for me to switch to rational / analytic mode when doing CBT - and on an intellectual level I too think that they are not telling me anything new .. Thats why I find Linehan's DBT varient of CBT more useful to me. It focuses more on emotions than cognitions - which I consider to be more problematic for me. Once you have done a year of skills training you are also supposed to (if you are ready of course) do some trauma work. I was terminated at that point which peeved me greatly as I think that I really need to do this. I have found the CBT approach brushes this off, considering it to be in the past and better left there (If only I could).
Your variety of CBT sounds very interesting to me. In NZ clinical psychologists are all trained in traditional CBT. (thats why I figured that was what you did). For alternative varieties I am afraid it is 'joe's well intentioned but hopeless back yard councelling service'. P-docs are trained in psychodynamic stuff but as CBT (just) outperforms psychodynamic stuff it is thought to be unscientific to practice anything other than CBT (spot the cognitive error!). P-docs are funded by the public system to do what only they can do - prescribe psycho-tropic meds. This annoys me as it is a substantial leap from something JUST outperforming another to maintaining that practicing one is unscientific because of this. (and that is the reason they cite). Also there is no evidence (to the best of my knowledge) as to whether one style of therapy may be better suited to particular kinds of people).
I don't have an issue with schemata being unscientific - cognitive psychology is scientific and would seem to provide empirical support for schemas for such things as 'going out for dinner' etc. Don't need to see them in the brain, can be like a computer program that is invisible from the hardware level of description - but gets implemented on it nonetheless (as is evident in the behaviour).
CBT is funny. They want to say that no thoughts don't cause behaviours (the problem of mental causation in philosophy requires this unfortunately). They also want to say yes your disfunctional thoughts cause your disfunctional behaviour so if ya have adaptive thoughts you will behave adaptively. Unfortunately this is a fatal contradiction for CBT (in my book anyway :( how sad...).
I think that there is evidence for emotions being primary in some cases, and thoughts being primary in others. It is a bit of an overgeneralisation to consider that one must preceed the other in every possible instance.
Consider the dog hanging its head in response to electric shocks eminating from the floor of the skinner box... Do you think CBT could teach him to buck up his act??? Is the dog in the grip of a cognitive error??? People who have been traumatised have reactive nervous systems that probably process stimuli on the unconscious level for threat potential.... Working out what you were thinking on many occasions is hard because you weren't aware of thinking anything at the time. But you have to come up with something (indeed a faulty something) in order to JUSTIFY your automatic response to the CBT therapist. Then you are promptly lectured on how maladaptive that thought was (talk about a lose lose situation, the ultimate in invalidation).
Now I am the one who is rambelling.....
Thanks for that.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:309476
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/309628.html