Evaluating psychotherapy

[roger]

I'm looking for any kind of references, online or off, that discuss what scientific evidence is available for various therapy techniques.

The backstory on this request is that my girlfriend is requesting that we enter relationship counseling, which seems like a good idea to me. However, she is promoting a brand of therapy by Harville Hendrix. When she reads passages from his books to me, my BS detectors go off. Everything sounds made up, unverified, and unscientific. In fact, the paragraphs read a lot like astrology readings - vague and inclusive enough so that anyone (who is uncritical) would say, "wow, he's describing me to a T". Needless to say, I don't find this compelling evidence.

What little I can find on the web seems to support that - he seemed to have just made it up, and I can't find any clinical trials or other scientific verification on medline, etc. I can find lots of anecdotes and testimonies, but that's all.

Fortunately my girlfriend is open to my scepticism and understands that therapy will be of little help if I am bristling at everything the therapist is saying.

So, I am looking for
1. evidence that Imago therapy is scientific (I don't want to dismiss it just because my gut is telling me it is BS - intuition is often wrong)

or

2. references for therapy models which have more than anecdotal support. I'm aware that there is really not a lot of this kind of support (all therapies test about equal for effectiveness in clinical trials, for example), so therapy models which are less woo-woo are fine.

Thanks, and sorry for the long post/detailed request.

Roger

[roger]

I don't know if it is bad form to answer your own question, but I came across [url]http://www.scientificmentalhealth.org/SRMHP/raisond'etre.html which seems to offer a lot of useful information. Specifically, it mentions Imago Relationship Therapy as a technique for which "essentially no published controlled research exists".

But if anyone has more info, I'd still be interested in it.

[hammegk]

Each to his own, but if I pay someone $100/hr I expect a little more than a good listener with some canned uh-huhs.

Spend the $100's on dinner, flowers, and have your own conversations.

OK, back to the regularly scheduled program; sorry.

[Pyrts]

Speaking from personal experience, Rogerians would probably be more suited to your style. Rogerians with a good grounding in transactional analysis would be even better, IMHO.

[kitsune]

There's this strange thing with therapy called the "Dodo bird effect" Basically, all types of therapy work about the same, but it does depend on the relationship with the therapist, as well as your own belief system. The main schools of thought are:

Psychodynamic (find issues in childhood, focus on defense mechanisims)
Cognitive (Find patters of behavior and extinguish bad ones and condition good ones)
Behavioral (very similar to Cognitive, but more focus on the individual person and their thoughts and less on conditioning)
Humanistic (Focusing on becoming the best person you can be)
Biological (not much help, unless you think that drugs will help )
Trans-Personal (More of a spiritual approach)

Since your're looking for something less woo-woo, I'd suggest looking for something a little bit more cognitive (maybe behavioral) therapy-based. I think you'll have the best results with that, as it is more rooted in empiricisim. (So's the biological. the others are more theory-based and harder to prove in lab settings)

Here's the American Psychological Association website http://www.apa.org/

You can look up people in your area that are associated with them... I'd certainally trust them more.

Dr. Hendrix seems to be using either a more a trans-personal/psychodynamic approach. (This is a common pairing of schools, incidentally)I personally DON'T like the ammount of psychobabble I see on his website (http://www.imagotherapy.com/about.html, nor do I like the "Imago match". I think that's potentially harmful. One should not rely on a test to see if a couple is compatible... We're not so neat and easy to predict, and our responses change over hours, days, and even weeks.

I'd look for books with a bibliography, ones with clear theses, concise and specific instructions on how to change your behavior, no wild claims that "THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!!", and that are clear and easy to read.

As far as therapists are concerned, I'd ask potential therapists how long they've been practicing, if they're acredited by the state (liscence), what their specialties are, how any insurance claims are worked out, if there is a sliding scale and the qualifications for it, what they expect from clients, if you will have homework (Projects done outside the clinican's office), how often they prefer to meet clients (some (psychodynamic) want frequent sessions over a short time, others want weekly sessions or biweekly sessions over a longer period of time), and how long the sessions are.

Well, lots of information, but I hope this helps, and good luck!

[roger]

Thanks, kitsune, that was very helpful. I agree that cognitive and Behavioral are best for me. I'm familiar with Beck's work, and he doesn't set off my BS alarm at all. The more I research Hendrix the worse I feel about him. I can't find anything explicitly calling him a quack, but many therapists who use his techniques also use techniques that ARE clearly quack-based - that eye movement stuff, etc.

Pyrts, I'd forgotten about Carl Rogers, I'll do a little research on him.

Thanks for the helpful answers.

Roger

[iain]

My recollection is that only cognitive and behavioural therapy have been shown to work (and then, of course, only in treatment of problems appropriate to those types of therapy).

Of course, just because some people who have therapy X get better does not mean that it works. If the proportion of people getting worse, better or staying the same is equal between those who have the therapy and those who don't the therapy isn't doing anything (except extracting money). This means that, for example, a therapy which cures 90% of people from a condition is not doing any good if 90% of those suffering from the same condition recover with no therapy.

[FutileJester]

Thanks for the summary kitsune! That was helpful.

Quote:

Originally posted by iain
My recollection is that only cognitive and behavioural therapy have been shown to work (and then, of course, only in treatment of problems appropriate to those types of therapy).

I find this fascinating (and understandable). My personal experience has led me to the conclusions that (1) some psychotherapy is good, (2) much psychotherapy is useless or worse, and (3) I'm no good at predicting if any particular therapy will be (1) or (2). I don't suppose you know anywhere to get more info about controlled studies and their results for a layman?

[Pyrts]

Rogerian psychotherapy is cognitive therapy -- as my brilliant (studying to be a psychologist) daughter, Kitsune reminded me.

I've had some experience with that and Transactional Analysis... quite effective for my needs and my situation. As Kitsune said, though, there's the "dodo bird effect" -- it depends on how well you and your counselor (and your girlfriend and the counselor) interact.

[xouper]

bump