Psychotherapies and the space between us

There’s an in-depth article at The Guardian revisiting an old debate about cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) versus psychoanalysis that falls into the trap of asking some rather clichéd questions.

For those not familiar with the world of psychotherapy, CBT is a time-limited treatment based on understanding how interpretations, behaviour and emotions become unhelpfully connected to maintain psychological problems while psychoanalysis is a Freudian psychotherapy based on the exploration and interpretation of unhelpful processes in the unconscious mind that remain from unresolved conflicts in earlier life.

I won’t go into the comparisons the article makes about the evidence for CBT vs psychoanalysis except to say that in comparing the impact of treatments, both the amount and quality of evidence are key. Like when comparing teams using football matches, pointing to individual ‘wins’ will tell us little. In terms of randomised controlled trials or RCTs, psychoanalysis has simply played far fewer matches at the highest level of competition.

But the treatments are often compared due to them aiming to treat some of the same problems. However, the comparison is usually unhelpfully shallow.

Here’s how the cliché goes: CBT is evidence-based but superficial, the scientific method applied for a quick fix that promises happiness but brings only light relief. The flip-side of this cliché says that psychoanalysis is based on apprenticeship and practice, handed down through generations. It lacks a scientific seal of approval but examines the root of life’s struggles through a form of deep artisanal self-examination.

Pitching these two clichés against each other, and suggesting the ‘old style craftsmanship is now being recognised as superior’ is one of the great tropes in mental health – and, as it happens, 21st Century consumerism – and there is more than a touch of marketing about this debate.

Which do you think is portrayed as commercial, mass produced, and popular, and which is expensive, individually tailored, and only available to an exclusive clientèle? Even mental health has its luxury goods.

But more widely discussed (or perhaps, admitted to) are the differing models of the mind that each therapy is based on. But even here simple comparisons fall flat because many of the concepts don’t easily translate.

One of the central tropes is that psychoanalysis deals with the ‘root’ of the psychological problem while CBT only deals with its surface effects. The problem with this contrast is that psychoanalysis can only be seen to deal with the ‘root of the problem’ if you buy into to the psychoanalytic view of where problems are rooted.

Is your social anxiety caused by the projection of unacceptable feelings of hatred based in unresolved conflicts from your earliest childhood relationships – as psychoanalysis might claim? Or is your social anxiety caused by the continuation of a normal fear response to a difficult situation that has been maintained due to maladaptive coping – as CBT might posit?

These views of the internal world, are, in many ways, the non-overlapping magisteria of psychology.

Another common claim is that psychoanalysis assumes an unconscious whereas CBT does not. This assertion collapses on simple examination but the models of the unconscious are so radically different that it is hard to see how they easily translate.

Psychoanalysis suggests that the unconscious can be understood in terms of objects, drives, conflicts and defence mechanisms that, despite being masked in symbolism, can ultimately be understood at the level of personal meaning. In contrast, CBT draws on its endowment from cognitive psychology and claims that the unconscious can often only be understood at the sub-personal level because meaning as we would understand it consciously is unevenly distributed across actions, reactions and interpretations rather than being embedded within them.

But despite this, there are also some areas of shared common ground that most critics miss. CBT equally cites deep structures of meaning acquired through early experience that lie below the surface to influence conscious experience – but calls them core beliefs or schemas – rather than complexes.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the CBT vs psychoanalysis debate is it tends to ask ‘which is best’ in a general and over-vague manner rather than examining the strengths and weaknesses of each approach for specific problems.

For example, one of the central areas that psychoanalysis excels at is in conceptualising the therapeutic relationship as being a dynamic interplay between the perception and emotions of therapist and patient – something that can be a source of insight and change in itself.

Notably, this is the core aspect that’s maintained in its less purist and, quite frankly, more sensible version, psychodynamic psychotherapy.

CBT’s approach to the therapeutic relationship is essentially ‘be friendly and aim for cooperation’ – the civil service model of psychotherapy if you will – which works wonderfully except for people whose central problem is itself cooperation and the management of personal interactions.

It’s no accident that most extensions of CBT (schema therapy, DBT and so on) add value by paying additional attention to the therapeutic relationship as a tool for change for people with complex interpersonal difficulties.

Because each therapy assumes a slightly different model of the mind, it’s easy to think that they are somehow battling over the ‘what it means to be human’ and this is where the dramatic tension from most of these debates comes from.

Mostly though, models of the mind are just maps that help us get places. All are necessarily stylised in some way to accentuate different aspects of human nature. As long as they sufficiently reflect the territory, this highlighting helps us focus on what we most need to change.