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The Death of Psychotherapy: From Freud to Alien Abductions

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There are something like 500 varieties of psychotherapy. One thing most of them have in common is a lack of scientific evidence to support their effectiveness. Yet people spend hundreds of hours of their time recalling their childhoods, describing their dreams, reliving miserable experiences, all without any reason to think it will help. And they pay dearly for it. Eisner takes a hard look at a great many of these therapies and concludes, "There are no empirically supportable therapies."

He overstates his case. There ARE some therapies that have been demonstrated to be highly effective: Behavior therapy and behavior modification have proven their usefulness in the treatment of severe behavior disorders, such as autism and mental retardation, in dealing with disruptive students, in treating phobias, anxiety disorders, compulsions, and a variety of other problems. Non-directive psychotherapy has also been shown to have some value for people with personal problems who need support. Cognitive Behavior Therapy is another that is supported by research (although there is some evidence that the effective part of the therapy may be the behavior therapy). So, there are SOME forms of therapy that have evidence to support their effectiveness.

But Eisner's overall point is valid: Most therapies are spun from someone's imagination and have little or no empirical support. Most therapists can't hand you a stack of articles from scientific journals showing the effectiveness of the therapy they offer, and if you ask them to do so they will either show you case studies and anecdotes or they will dismiss your question as proof of your neurosis.

This book is therefore important to anyone who is in or contemplating therapy. For the price of one therapy session (more or less), they can read about the kind of therapy they are receiving or contemplating and be better equipped to decide for themselves whether it is therapy or snake oil.