Reply to the article:
This is not the first time that I have had to respond to some criticism against gestalt therapy (TG), generally disqualifying opinions based on restricted approaches from those who wield the scientific methodology as the only quality mark to evaluate a psychological therapy, and above all those who deny validity and scientific methodology to any psychotherapy that does not conform to the rationalism of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
This is a monothematic cliché that revives the recurring problem of psychology when reason is confronted with emotions (cognition). versus emotion/affect), something that strict cognitiveists resolve from a rationalism based on the philosophical stoicism of Epictetus, which considers that all mental states (including emotions) are conditioned by the judgments that human beings make about them. In other words, cognitive therapy sublimates reason over emotions and contemplates that people suffer for interpretation that are realized from the events and not by these in themselves themselves. This is one of the reasons – perhaps the main one – that separates CBT from humanistic psychotherapeutic currents.
But there is also another aspect that cognitive therapy uses to differentiate itself from the others, and that is to consider itself the only one supported by scientific methodology. Which is still true – true that it is considered that way, not that it is the best psychotherapy —, but from there to execrate any other psychological therapy and include gestalt therapy in the same bag as false therapies and consider it a pseudosciencethere is an abyss that could only be understood based on an obsessive rejection, an absolute ignorance of the TG, a boastful pride in believing oneself in possession of the truth, or also the frequent vice of generalization based on ignorance.
I am only a gestalt therapist who is passionate about her work, and I do not consider myself relevant at all since gestalt therapy has internationally recognized eminent personalities of prestige among whom I will highlight: Jean Marie Robine, Brigitte Lapeyronnie-Robine, Gianni Francesetti, Dan Bloom, Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Gordon Wheeler, Sylvia Crocker, Philip Lichtenberg, Michael Vincent Miller and Ruella Frank, whose articles, books and academic career speak for themselves of the prestige of a serious, effective therapy with a theoretical framework that There is nothing “bad science” about it as some detractors advocate.
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If I have decided to write this article-reply it is to deny several falsehoods expressed in falsehoods that in a conciliatory spirit I would prefer to consider as errors that must be clarified.
Another reason is because of my status as , a publication in which I feel comfortable and respected, and in which I am grateful that our relationship is so endearing and fluid.
And as a third reason, I write this reply because in the article to which I respond there are five links to as many articles of my authorship: ; (named after the author of the article); ; . All these articles have been published in Psyscience, and in them I record my eclectic, open and also critical position with some aspects of gestalt therapy. My absence of proselytizing connections and my mentality, both open and respectful with other currents outside of Gestalt therapy, are thus evident.
The article says that its effectiveness is questionable based on the fact that «Studies on the effectiveness of TG are scarce and of low methodological quality.», an argument that in a certain way I share, since on multiple occasions I have regretted that at the origins of gestalt therapy, when interest in psychoanalysis began to decline while new psychotherapeutic currents emerged, the humanist and intellectual line of gestalt therapy ( which distanced her so much from behaviorism and other new currents) showed very little interest in writing articles scientists that validated this therapy (although there were countless publications), perhaps due to the inertia of not focusing attention on quantifications in a current so linked to what is not directly observable or measurable.
This circumstance has determined that cognitive behavioral therapy is the only type of psychotherapy whose results are validated by the scientific method. But let’s look closely, be validated It doesn’t mean being the only ones. valid. With this it is understood that the effectiveness of CBT is supported by a large amount of clinical work carried out with patients, something that was scarce (and continues to be scarce) in gestalt therapy and which has caused it to suffer from the endorsement scientific that CBT boasts so much, but it is not sufficient reason to completely deny its effectiveness and validity as a therapy, which it has, as much as it is proven by clinical evidence.
Censoring the “tremendous variation in the applied gestalt technique or methodology” is not a consistent argument to disqualify gestal therapy.
The inadvertence of gestalt psychotherapists to carry out and publish works adjusted to the scientific method that validate what clinical practice confirms, has been used as a weapon by the most radical sector of CBT in an attempt to exclusively appropriate the clinical psychology.
In the article to which I respond, it is also criticized «that the available articles on gestalt therapy sometimes include global humanistic approaches, and at other times a specific gestalt technique, there being a tremendous variation in the gestalt technique or methodology applied», something that is obvious if we consider that there are different orientations – or schools – in gestalt therapy in the same way that we find them in other branches of mental health.
I will give as an example the different therapeutic approaches with which psychiatrists of different tendencies use or discard some treatments such as the use or not of lithium or antipsychotics in resistant depression; the preference for one or another SSRI in OCD; and thus, so many protocols with which different medical teams could apply different treatments to the same patient without necessarily one of them being the only valid one and the rest having to be disqualified.
Censoring the “tremendous variation in the applied gestalt technique or methodology” is not an argument of consistency to disqualify gestalt therapy, nor to disavow any discipline, since the discrepancies are samples of the plurality of criteria, but not premises of the that it be concluded that everything that deviates from a trend must be condemned as anathema or pseudoscience.
For this purpose, I refer to a section of “The bad science of gestalt therapy” where the « dialogue therapy with», article in which I argue my disagreement with this technique without disqualifying those who use it. I therefore insist on the importance of contemplating discrepancies as a sample of plurality of criteria that enriches and dignifies the heterogeneity of any activity.
Although this article is not the most favorable context to describe what it is, what it is based on and what the aspects of TG are, it would be good to clarify that it is a humanistic psychotherapy (which some include within existential psychology) in which We find two well-defined trends (or schools).
One of them is the atheoretical schoolknown as West Coastemerged in California in the late 1950s and early 1960s, from the moment when Frtiz Perls began to consider gestalt therapy as a Lifestyle more than as a therapy model adjusted to the theoretical substrate born in 1951.
The second trend is theoretical schoolknown as East Coast ( ), which after the split brought about by Perls remained faithful to the theoretical framework contained in the publication of —1951— (Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality)extensive compendium also known as P.H.G.. From this moment on, Gestalt therapy expanded widely, although without making any effort to enter academic centers. Meanwhile, the cognitive stream mid-twentieth century used universities as a platform and aligned itself with the scientific methodsomething that the Gestalts did not consider a priority and that today takes its toll on them when they receive attacks from cognitivism with which they try to discredit it by calling it pseudoscience.
An unfortunate consequence of this confrontation is that, if mental illnesses already suffer from an ancient stigma that affects those who suffer from them, and psychiatry and psychotropic drugs are the object of attacks by anti-psychiatry (in which many psychologists are active), contrary to administer chemistry to patients), we only need that psychotherapy professionals also judge and question each other, and that the many cognitive-behavioral psychologists who, after several years of training, become gestalt therapists, are disqualified by the omniscient orthodoxy of their professional colleagues who call them unscientific assigned to a pseudoscience.
Let’s be clear and brave. At least I am going to be, as I will also be critical when stating that the scientific method It cannot—nor should—be used as a patent of marque to validate any practice—whatever it may be—without first recognizing that it is a method susceptible to fallibility, subjectivities in its interpretation, manipulation and submission to interests outside of science such as, for example. For example, economic interests.
In this sense, a large percentage of the medical profession is very critical when evaluating the results of certain Scientific work that meet all the requirements to be so—to be scientists— and who praise the benefits of new drugs. Work behind which are often hidden barely detectable biases that benefit spurious interests of the pharmaceutical industry.
It is also a common fact that the differences between drug and placebo in double-blind scientific works are often minimal, a quantitative detail that the pharmaceutical industry does not usually emphasize by focusing only on the studies presenting more favorable responses to the drug than to the placebo. All of this, without moving one bit away from the criteria of scientific research methodology.
It could affect other details such as the cultural vice according to which nothing is given seriousness or credibility if it is not scientifically validated. Also the obsessive quantification that turns into scientific only that which can be transformed into mere statistics. And above all the cultural problem of sublimating the scientific test as a synonym for a unique truth and exclusive of any other approach or approach to a hypothesis.
With all this, at…