Contemporary Psychology: Online "Journal"

[Mary S]

Today I came across an online "journal" called Contemporary Psychology (http://www.contemporarypsychotherapy.org/). It seems like a hybrid between a professional journal and a blog. It describes its aim as:

"With the professional community of psychotherapists and counsellors in mind, Contemporary Psychotherapy aims to be progressive, inquiring and creative, to encourage interactive debate with its international readership and to address rather than avoid the possibly contentious."

I wonder if it would be open to client perspectives.

The article that got me to the site is at http://www.contemporarypsychotherapy.org/volume-8-no-1-summer-2016/when-the-therapist-is-ill/. It seems earnest, but also seems redolent with the type of self-absorption that makes me uneasy about therapists. (I got to the article by searching on Sick Therapist, thinking of "sick" in the sense not of physical illness, but of a warped mind. So I guess I got distracted from my original intent.)

[Mary S]

Probably the thing that most got to me in the article linked above is the phrase, "the work I do is a creative process". This raises a red flag for me -- it seems to suggest that the client may be just a pawn (or a point of departure, or raw material) in the therapist's desire to exercise their creativity. It sounds so narcissistic, so arrogant to me.

The comment in question was a response to an article about the "replication crisis" in psychology. I would say that a more appropriate response to that article would be that therapists need to approach their work with more caution and humility -- not with creativity!

[Mary S]

On 09/23/2017 at 4:58 PM, Mary S said:

...

The comment in question was a response to an article about the "replication crisis" in psychology. I would say that a more appropriate response to that article would be that therapists need to approach their work with more caution and humility -- not with creativity!

Finally, the "replication crisis" in psychology has gotten into the popular press: http://www.newsweek.com/power-poses-dont-make-you-more-powerful-studies-664261

(This article is only about the replication problems in a non-therapy psychological research, but hopefully the increased attention to the problem there will extend to exposing the poor quality of research on psychotherapy.)

[Bacchus]

I've also found that research quality of most psychotherapy articles is atrocious.  I am ashamed to admit that I knew about the replication crisis before I sought therapy out. I do know that there are many phenomena in science that cannot be empirically measured. 

That being said, I've since looked at more "studies" and it is shocking how poor quality the methods are. Not being able to uphold the replication standard is one thing, but most studies use garbage statistical analysis. Most should have never made it through the peer-review process. They use qualitative statistical methods and then report quantitative inferences in the results- which in most science journals in akin to "rigging".

I think it's very shady and misleading. It also seems to depend on an uninformed consumer base (surprise surprise) because most people don't have time to dig through the studies and understand what exactly the data is saying.