Link to article HERE.
This article from the New York Times Magazine entitled “The Therapy Issue: Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack that” addresses author Susan Dominus’ struggles with finding success in therapy and then the research that followed to answer the question of how effective modern talk therapy really is, as well as what some of the different ways professionals in the field envision the current model of psychiatric care being advanced forward. One of the key points Dominus made was that there is this reluctance to consider the idea that talk therapy is not always beneficial to the patient both within the field itself and within the popular opinion of those who utilize or seek therapy; this immediately was reminiscent of the point that a number of readings have made including Tomes and Sadowksy that there was never one single patient experience within the asylum system and that more recent works on psychiatric history tend to focus overwhelmingly on the very negative experiences. This article proposes that a similar phenomenon occurs regarding modern talk therapy, but rather than rejecting ways that early treatments were helpful for some, the idea that therapy can be unhelpful or harmful are frequently dismissed. This article also discusses the patient-therapist bond as an important component in the success of therapy and indicative of how beneficial a client will find working with a specific therapist to be; this concept appeared similar to what Shorter’s identified as a key aspect of the asylum: the doctor-patient relationship.