Contra and Contra-Contra

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its many subcategories are the dominant therapies now.  Whether you go to a "counselor," a "therapist," or any of the trendier titles for professional-who-helps-you-fix-stuff, you will most likely receive some version of CBT. There are exceptions. There are still a few people who go to some descendant of psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy, and trauma therapies in particular may have more physical interventions like EMDR or mindfulness meditation. (You can find lists of literally hundreds of types of therapy, but these fifteen are a good quick summary: Different Types of Individual Therapy and Their Evidence-Based Results. More than enough, really.)

Despite its ubiquity and longevity, CBT remains controversial. I have never been a therapist, though anyone in mental health is sometimes put in a position of intervening in a way that sure looks like some kind of therapy, even if you can't call it that. It is unlikely I would ever be good add it, no matter how much training and experience I had.  I am much too interventionist rather than letting people come to their own conclusions in their own time.

Here is a pretty good debate between people of good will who simply disagree strongly about whether CBT deserves its reputation or not.  Contra CBT by Josh Zlatkus over at Living Fossils.  The most scientific psychotherapy doesn’t understand science.   Josh believes evolutionary psychology should be more of a foundation of current therapies.  That is where I ran across him.

False Advertising #1: CBT is the therapy of reason. (Final paragraph: This is the recurring problem: CBT sees the inaccurate output but often misses the functional process. It pronounces defects before understanding design. For a therapy whose central promise is to improve how clients think, that is no small problem. In answer to one of the client’s most basic questions—“Why do I think this way?”—CBT’s answer all too often seems to be: “Don’t worry about that. Just think this other way instead.”) 

There are three parts to this.  It will take you a while, but it is very readable.

In answer there is Contra Contra CBT  by Unorthodox Psychotherapist, which will be in 3 parts though only two are completed.

If therapy would deactivate fear responses, there would be many more accidents. As I like to say: “People with too much fear end up in therapy; people with too little end up in the emergency room.” Emotions are adaptive, and fear is of vital importance. However, being adaptive in origin or average for the species does not make a response accurate or harmless for the individual. Evolution does not care about happiness for its own sake. Fear belongs to a regulatory system, and like fever, cough, and vomiting, regulatory systems can become disordered. When that happens, the system designed to protect a person from real danger can escalate and confine them to their home, as is the case with agoraphobia. 

The dueling summaries are about as good an introduction as you could get. I doubt that an entire Introduction to Psychotherapy full-semester course would be better.