{"id":399,"date":"2017-10-12T17:09:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T17:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/?p=399"},"modified":"2017-10-12T20:29:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T20:29:14","slug":"the-worst-comparitive-psychotherapy-study-ever-published","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/?p=399","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Comparitive Psychotherapy Study Ever Published"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Wilson<\/p>\n

While reading through several newspaper obituaries on Arthur Janov, one name kept coming up over and over: John C. Norcross<\/a>, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. According to Norcross, primal therapy is little more than a trendy psychotherapy that arose in the fevered sixties, and Janov was \u201ca classic instance of being the right charismatic therapist at the right time<\/a>.\u201d And to further demonstrate his ignorance, Dr. Norcross says in the New York Times<\/a>, \u201cThere is no evidence that screaming and catharsis bring long-term emotional relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comment is repeated again and again in obit after obit, merely parroting the NYT review. But the review also states:<\/p>\n

Much of the psychotherapeutic establishment now regards the therapy as marginal. A 2006 article by Dr. Norcross and colleagues in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice <\/a>reported that their survey of more than 100 \u201cleading mental health professionals\u201d had found primal therapy to be \u201ccertainly discredited\u201d \u2014 together with treatments including angel therapy, crystal healing, past-lives therapy, future-lives therapy and post-alien-abduction therapy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s both a discredited theory and treatment in mental health,\u201d Dr. Norcross said. \u201cToday, I look back at it as an unfortunate but understandable product of its time: believing that pure emotional release would prove therapeutic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those are pretty strong words. After all, if you deem something to be \u201cdiscredited\u201d you should have extensive evidence to back it up, right?<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

This survey<\/a> enrolled 101 so-called mental health experts to assess 59 treatments by questionnaire. \u201cExperts\u201d were decided by criteria such as doctorate-level education, fellows of the American Psychological Association (APA) or American Psychological Society (APS), current and former editors of scholarly journals in mental health, members of the APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice, and chairs or editors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders <\/em>(DSM). In other words, no one who had ever practiced primal therapy was included. Overall, 66% of respondents were supporters of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or \u201ceclectic\/integrative\u201d therapy. In other words, these \u201cexperts\u201d represented the dominant wing of the psychological establishment, which has always been critical of primal therapy and the notion of repressed memory.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cdiscredited\u201d was based on the following criteria:<\/p>\n

We operationally define discredited as those unable to consistently generate treatment outcomes (treatments)\u2026beyond that obtained by the passage of time alone, expectancy, base rates, or credible placebo. Discredited subsumes ineffective and detrimental interventions but forms a broader and more inclusive characterization. We are interested in identifying disproven practices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The criteria for making the discredited ratings were left to the respondents on the basis of \u201cseveral types of evidence: peer-reviewed controlled research, clinical practice, and\/or professional consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a scale where 1 =not at all discredited, 2=unlikely discredited,\u00a03=possibly discredited, 4=probably discredited, and 5=certainly discredited, \u201cprimal scream therapy\u201d was rated as 4.51, i.e. \u201cprobably discredited\u201d and halfway to \u201ccertainly discredited.\u201d Primal was regarded\u00a0as less<\/em> credible than \u201cstandard prefrontal lobotomy for\u00a0treatment of mental\/behavioral disorders (4.44),” “Erhard Seminar\u00a0Training for treatment of mental\/behavioral disorders (4.29),” and\u00a0“Psychotherapy for the treatment of penis envy (3.60).\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapies deemed as \u201cunlikely discredited\u201d included “eye movement and desensization processing (EMDR) (2.88)”, “laughter or humor therapy for treatment of depression (2.83)” (I kid you not!), “psychosocial (nonbehavioral) therapies for ADHD (2.85),” and thought-stopping procedures for ruminations\/intrusive worry (2.25).” The only therapy regarded as not at all discredited, by a narrow margin, was “behavior therapy for sex offenders (1.97).”<\/p>\n

Echoing the NYT obit, the authors concluded,\u00a0“experts considered as certainly discredited 14\u00a0psychological treatments: angel therapy, use of pyramid\u00a0structures, orgone therapy, crystal healing, past lives therapy,\u00a0future lives therapy, treatments for post-traumatic stress\u00a0disorder (PTSD) caused by alien abduction, rebirthing therapies,\u00a0color therapy, primal scream, chiropractic manipulation, thought\u00a0field therapy, standard prefrontal lobotomy, and aroma therapy.”<\/p>\n

Stunning ignorance, I know. But take a deep breath.<\/p>\n

In all<\/em> the therapies listed, except the cognitively based therapies, cognitive behavioral therapists were more likely to rate them as discredited. Not only that, but most of these \u201cexperts\u201d were not even familiar with many of the treatments. And yet they felt competent to judge them. With regard to \u201cprimal scream therapy,\u201d 6% were not familiar with the therapy. Actually, I would say zero percent were familiar with the therapy because it is not called primal scream therapy!<\/em><\/p>\n

Nowhere is the \u201cevidence\u201d mentioned that substantiates these \u201cexpert\u2019\u201d decisions. I assume they just cherry picked whatever papers fit their therapeutic orientation, or perhaps they just gathered around their virtual water cooler and made up that \u201cprofessional consensus.\u201d As for \u201cprimal scream therapy\u201d they had obviously done no research to find out that primal therapy has nothing to do with screaming.<\/p>\n

So this is the sort of misinformation about primal therapy that is circulating around the psychological community and the mainstream press. Decades ago, Art Janov decided to distance himself from the mental health establishment for this very reason. Despite his many efforts to convince his colleagues that his therapy worked, he was met with ridicule and outright defamation. Since then, primal therapy has existed on its own, quietly advancing as the decades have passed, and some respected psychologists, physicians, and neuroscientists have come to appreciate its effectiveness: Louis Cozolino, Justin Feinstein, Jaak Panksepp, Paul Thompson, and Gabor Mat\u00e9, to name a few. And although the therapy still needs to be researched, it will be done without the participation of these \u201cexpert\u201d clowns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Wilson While reading through several newspaper obituaries on Arthur Janov, one name kept coming up over and over: John C. Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. According to Norcross, primal therapy is little more than a trendy psychotherapy that arose in the fevered sixties, and Janov was \u201ca … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Worst Comparitive Psychotherapy Study Ever Published”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,43,27,4,15,38],"tags":[50,8,48,32,31,52,36,40,53,11],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arthur-janov","category-bruces-posts","category-catharsis","category-primal-therapy","category-psychology","category-science","tag-arthur-janov","tag-bruces-posts","tag-catharsis","tag-gabor-mate","tag-jaak-panksepp","tag-lou-cozolino","tag-primal-therapy","tag-psychology","tag-psychotherapy","tag-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}