Yeah, the theory isn't right. It is rarely stated explictly like that but it isn't all that hard to assess therapists implicit beliefs around the theory... I think I might be offering something of a straw man / caricature of the view, but I will say that that is how it strikes me. I think most now acknowledge that there is a cyclic process with respect to thoughts and feelings and thoughts and feelings it is just that they try to target the thoughts primarily... It is the focusing on 'faulty cognitions' that really gets to me, because, like you, I am pretty sure rational me does alright and I simply can't accept my thinking is irrational / distorted (unless the domain of irrationality is very limited indeed).

There are psychiatric theorists who take an experiential / phenomenological approach. There is something of a long tradition of that, apparantly, though I don't know all that much about it. I think Karl Jaspers was thought to be the founder of the phenomenological approach and current theorists like Sass (not the anti-psychiatry guy!) and Brendan Maher have continued on with an approach that takes conscious experience rather than scientific studies on behaviour to be the most relevant...

Sounds like you have had a pretty crap time with your encouter with clinician's in the past :-( It can be hard to find a good psychiatrist who can listen and empathise etc.

> Jung, Freud, Maslow, Perls, Reich, Alexander Lowen, etc etc.

Cool :-) I don't really know anything about those theorists. Though... I was trying to learn more about Freud and Jung at some point and I remember learning about Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

> But....sheeeesh....none of this talk helps me. I'm quite serious, and sincere, in what I initially said.

I know you are, I really wasn't meaning to doubt that. I'm sorry if it came across as my doubting that.

I was raised in a pretty hostile world too... It can be hard to shift the lens... I really don't believe it is a matter of logic or illogic I think it is about shifting the lens... But it can be hard to view the world as full of affordances and people who are basically okay when one has been raised in a hostile world. I do understand that. I'm good at *talking* about validating others but I'm not so good at *demonstating* validation, so I'm sorry about that. I live in rational mind much of the time... Retreat from the general hostility of it all... I don't know... Anyway, welcome to psychcentral. Some of the people here can be wonderfully supportive so welcome, I hope you like it here.