Advanced analysis of the methods of psychotherapy
Enviado por blanquita1986 • 29 de Agosto de 2011 • 6.136 Palabras (25 Páginas) • 925 Visitas
The Many Secure Knowledge Bases of Psychotherapy
RAYMOND M. BERGNER, Ph.D.
Psychotherapeutic practice, while it has benefited greatly from scientific
research, rests on many further secure epistemic foundations. In the present
article, this thesis is argued in two stages. First, a brief review of some
elementary epistemologicalfindings is presented. In this review, the generally
acknowledged degree of certainty attributed to different knowledge sources,
and thus the confidence with which we may believe and act upon them, are
recounted. Second, an extended analysis of the ways in which each of these
knowledge sources enter into the practice of psychotherapy is developed. In
the end, what is proffered here is a demonstration that well conducted
psychotherapy is an activity whose judgments and decisions rest on many
secure foundations.
THE MANY SECURE KNOWLEDGE BASES OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
. . .it is, rather, of the essence ofour
investigation that. . .we want to
understand something that is already in
plain view. For this is what we seem in
some sense not to understand.
—Wittgenstein (1953, # 89)
It is long since established that the scientific method represents an
indispensable tool for answering many questions pertaining to persons,
their disorders, and their effective treatment (American Psychological
Association Task Force on Psychological Intervention Guidelines, 1995;
Chambless et al., 1996; Grawe, 1997; Newman & Tejeda, 1996). Is therapy
X superior to therapy Y in its outcome? Is disorder Z found with regularity
to have its etiology in some current or historical state of affairs? Are
therapists skilled in the implementation of process variable A more
effective on average than those less skilled in its implementation? All of
Mailing address: Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4620.
e-mail: rmbergn@ilstu.edu
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, Vol. 60, No. 3, 2006
215
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
these questions, and more, are ones that by their nature are properly
investigated via empirical scientific methods.
What seems far less appreciated, however, is the degree to which
psychotherapy rests on further epistemic bases. Granted that while
scientific evidence is an invaluable source of knowledge for clinical
practitioners, relatively little attention has been devoted to the matters
of what further knowledge sources are involved in the competent
practice of therapy and how much confidence can justifiably be placed
in these sources. The purpose of the present article is to address this
state of affairs. Its central thesis is that well conducted psychotherapy is
an activity whose judgments and decisions rest on multiple secure
foundations.
In part one of this paper, a brief review of some elementary epistemology
is presented. Recounted here are the generally acknowledged degrees
of certainty attributed to propositions yielded by differetit knowledge
sources, and the confidence with which we may believe and act upon them.
In part two of the paper, I develop an extended analysis of the ways in
which each of these differentially justified knowledge sources enter into the
practice of psychotherapy.
LEVELS OF JUSTIFIED BELIEF: A BRIEF REVIEW
The following analysis of levels of justified belief draws heavily upon
the mainstream conclusions of philosophical investigators (Hospers, 1997,
pp. 39-128; Pecorino, 2001; Solomon, 1989, pp. 117-271; Wittgenstein,
1922). On this analysis, ranked from most certain to least certain, are
propositions yielded by the following epistemic sources:
Level 1: Analytic, a priori knowledge
Level 2: Empirical observation and inductive generalization
Level 3: Established non-probabilistic scientific theory
Level 4: Established probabilistic scientific finding and theory
Level 5: AnecdotaUy based generalization
Level 6: Intuition, hunch, and impression
If this much is familiar to the reader, he or she may safely skip this section
and pass to the next one. If it is not familiar, a brief characterization of
each of these knowledge sources is presented in the paragraphs to follow.
LEVEL 1: ANALYTIC, A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE
True propositions of mathematics (e.g., the set theoretical proposition
that "if all A is B, and all B is C, then all A is C"), of logic (e.g.,
Aristotle's principle of noncontradiction:
...