Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliviab
My objections come down to what I consider to be a dishonest or erroneous attribution of cause-and-effect and the underlying mechanism behind the change or improvement. In my experience, practitioners are rarely honest about what we know and don't know, and I have rarely had a practitioner be transparent about the placebo effect. (My therapist was an exception to that, as was my GP, which is probably why I stuck with both of them.)
I, too, am all for harnessing the body's ability to heal itself. I just ask for honesty and transparency about what it is you're selling. Anything else borders on (or crosses over) into fraud, in my opinion.
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This is my issue too. It is one thing to offer a placebo knowing full well that is what you are doing. But if you genuinely believe that water has a memory of the good substances you've put into it (but not the salt and the faeces that it has probably had in it at one point or another) seems like self-deception. I agree that placebos do work, but it's a bit condescending to sell someone such an elaborate and expensive health treatment if you know it's just a placebo. In many cases people continue for years taking these things.
In the same way it might make the whole village feel better to sacrifice a goat in order to appease the gods so that you are assured of a good harvest- should we do that?
It doesn't affect the benefit I've gotten from several years of therapy. But it has caused me to reevaluate my relationship and what I should expect from a therapist. I wonder how much I've said of my own beliefs that my therapist has quietly been disagreeing with.