Saw this Vice article about this controversial therapist explaining his practice he call "Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy" or "ISTDP". Reminds me of the "attack therapy" practices of LGATs.

[www.vice.com]

Confirmation bias

[www.princeton.edu]

Quotation from the Vice article

(Corboy note: we have no way to know whether the reporter accurately reported Professor Said's statements. If no studies have been done, they need to be done. And need to have good research design and be based on null hypothesis)

Quote

Has this treatment been validated scientifically?

Unfortunately there isn’t sufficient scientific data on its efficacy because randomized control trials haven’t been conducted specifically on ISTDP, although they have been done on other forms of short-term psychotherapy. And despite remarkably high levels of patient satisfaction being reported, these are only considered testimonials and can’t be used as a strong argument for its scientific legitimacy. Every one of my sessions is recorded audio-visually and this has been a strong source of validation for the treatment. There are countless recordings of patients who return for subsequent therapy years later and are visibly doing much better. As a part of the therapy, they are invited to comment on what changes they have seen in themselves. Despite the adversity it has faced, [ISTDP] has still managed to land a measurable impact on psychotherapy, and improved it.

Hello.
Quote from the article.

Quote

Does ISTDP always work?
Yes, it always works.

And

Quote

Every one of my sessions is recorded audio-visually and this has been a strong source of validation for the treatment

I do not know anything about that kind of therapie past the article, but that bold statement "Yes, it always works!" seems awfully suspicious. Seems like someone found the holy grail.
I also do not know, if it is common in psychotherapie to record the sessions.
But there is no question, that this kind of embarassing video material could be used to manipulate patients.
It would be nice to know, if the patients have to sign some sort of paper at the beginning of therapy to release their rights on the video material.

Studies are definitly needed.

(Disclaimer: I am no professional. Ran a Google search and found this just now. Listing these implies no endorsement on the part of Cult Education website or the Ross Insitute. Corboy)

If interested in purchasing books, a good way to begin is to go to bookfinder(dot)com and compare prices and shipping.

Meanwhile, one can request an item via interlibrary loan.

An important book:

Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology: [Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr] ...
www.amazon.com/Science-Pseudoscience...Lilienfeld/.../1593850700 - 339k - Cached - Similar pages

Crazy Therapies

Margaret Singer Ph.D and Janja Lalitch, 1996

[www.google.com]



Institute for Science in Medicine

Home Page--Institute for Science in Medicine

[www.scienceinmedicine.org]

Welcome!


ISM is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting high standards of science in all areas of medicine and public health.

ISM is organized as a policy institute and “think tank,” comprised of health care professionals, scientists, and researchers in many fields who agree that the best science available should be used to determine health policy and to establish a standard of care that both protects and promotes the public health.

ISM opposes policies which erode a science-based standard of care and thereby significantly expose the public to fraudulent, worthless, or harmful medical practices and products.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]


ISM Fellows — Lilienfeld - Institute for Science in Medicine

www.scienceinmedicine.org/fellows/Lilienfeld.html - 45k - Cached - Similar pages

And...a voice from the other side. The 'empirically-validated' treatments movement

[www.mspp.net]

"There are, thus, some ardent clinical scientists (e.g., McFall and Lilienfeld) who appear to subscribe scientistic faith, and believe that the superiority of scientific approach is so marked that other approaches should be excluded. Since this is a matter of faith rather than reason, arguments would seem to be pointless."

Corboy note: I did not detect any whiff of ardent emotion when reading Lilienfeld and Lohr's book.


"Scientistic faith"?

Defintion of straw man fallacy

[www.nizkor.org]

"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:


Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person. "

When evaluating any treatment modality, this book, written for professionals, may provide some insights. If interested in further reading, a medical librarian can assist you in finding articles and books published later, which contain references to this and related material.

Google Scholar may be useful as well.

Gaslighting, The Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis by Theo Dorpat, MD

Page 156

[books.google.com]

Some years ago, I made another reference to Lilienfeld and Lohr's work on this message board.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Hope the link still works.

Some places videotape sessions for interns to go over their sessions with their advisors. This is practiced by my local UC school. Other new schools use it to have evidence to the accreditation board. In these cases after time the tapes are properly destroyed.