The Spanish psychologist David Pulido wrote a few days ago for the newspaper The confidentialwhere he exposes in a dialogue the main reasons why we should distrust coaching.
Here are the fragments that interested me the most:
Coaching is for people who do not have serious mental problems, but for everyday life problems.
“We return again to that false dividing line that was previously drawn between psychiatrists and psychologists and that in no way adjusts to what we see in consultation or to the experience of each person: Is it perhaps an anxiety problem or a disorder? Obsessive compulsive is not serious? Is it that an everyday relationship or the usual fights with our teenage son do not deserve to be treated with all possible seriousness? It is as wrong to think that a psychologist cannot deal with complex clinical conditions as it is to invent a new professional category if the problem is considered “more mundane.”
Coaching is for giving practical advice, while therapy is for introspection.
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“That is a classic mistake now. It is true that there are therapeutic currents, such as psychoanalysis, that do not give guidelines directly, but the cognitive-behavioral treatments are short, giving an active role to the patient in the design of the intervention, and beginning to work on specific objectives and techniques from the fourth or fifth session. There is nothing more practical than that. And in addition to having scientific support, studies show that patients improve and do so permanently.”
Coaching is eclectic, using the best of different schools of psychology.
“Eclecticism has already done too much damage to psychology as a scientific discipline for it to be considered a virtue. What would you think of a traumatologist who, depending on the part of your body that was broken, would apply an anti-inflammatory, homeopathy or do the rain dance? Would you believe he is a serious professional who masters a field? Would you even trust that medicine is a science if it changes its theoretical framework based on the criteria of those who apply it? “Psychology has spent decades researching, experimenting and gathering empirical evidence to explain any type of problem with the same psychophysiological principles of learning.”
If coaching does not have theoretical support, but rather has a methodology, then why is there so much demand.
“Coaching is born from the failure of psychology to explain what psychologists do in therapy. We have trivialized our work so much that people are not able to see that behind each given guideline there is a scientific discipline behind it. With every television appearance with a polygraph, with every self-help book by authors that not a single patient has seen, with every failure to combine methodological criteria, we have encouraged anyone to see themselves as having the ability to treat psychological problems. After so many myths that we have had to dismantle to bring people closer to consultations, we now have to coexist with a new non-scientific therapeutic trend. The only way to end this penance is the dissemination and exemplarity with which we must practice our wonderful profession.”
David Pulido’s arguments are very interesting and offer concrete answers to many of the questions that people ask when they are going to take one of these courses or pay for their services. He also highlights the responsibility that psychology has in trivializing the work of psychologists in such a way that people no longer know what psychologists really do.
What do you think?
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