Beware Psychotherapy That Works
11th August 2023
Quilette.
Historically, the knock on psychotherapy has been that it’s a pseudoscience perpetrated by overeducated life coaches. Their insights are so arbitrary and insubstantial that they can render diametric judgments under oath about the risks posed to society by the same accused serial killer.
Jaundiced perceptions aside, therapy’s role in modern life is no joke. America is a nation increasingly surrendering itself to the therapist’s couch. Forty-one million American adults sought therapy in 2020–21 alone, which was peak-COVID. Nevertheless, that figure reflects a therapy juggernaut not out of line with trends before or since. Nearly a quarter of America has been in therapy in the past 12 months, according to Gallup polling. It is nigh impossible to consume any form of media without being bombarded with PSAs that herd people into overcrowded therapy waiting rooms the way Japan’s oshiya herd people into jam-packed subway cars.
Obviously, then, psychology’s efficacy is a matter of some importance. Yet this is where we encounter an irony—it may be that psychotherapy is most dangerous when it works.