To the editor: The opinion article of the guest collaborator Jonathan Alpert overcome when it comes to the state of mental health treatment (“The therapy of AI is not improving. The therapists are simply failing,” September 30). Of course, there are some bad therapists such as bad surgeons and bad lawyers. However, there are many excellent therapists who make more than just listen to their patients.
I am a licensed psychologist in California and I have used behavioral cognitive therapy for almost 50 years. TCC is evidence -based therapy that is taught widely in postgraduate schools. Listening to patients is, of course, very important, but it is not the only thing that well trained therapists do. I teach my patient skills to overcome their fears, stop having panic attacks and reduce or eliminate compulsive obsessive symptoms. Patients learn to challenge their irrational thinking.
I, and my trained colleagues in TCC, are not in the “professional hand business” as Alpert indicates. What we, as professionals, must do is teach consumers how to identify competent therapists and not move people away from seeking the help they need.
Gerald Tarlow, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Excellent piece of Alpert on the sometimes risky consequences of psychotherapy that does not go beyond empathy and validation. Fortunately, cognitive behavioral therapy has focused, for many decades, on the type of active strategies, of often confronting problems that encourage people to face their fears and learn resistance and flexibility. I teach my students in clinical psychology and my patients the importance of old Chinese wisdom: “Go directly to the heart of danger, because there you will find security.”
Gerald C. Davison, Los Angeles
This writer is a psychology professor at USC.
