Re: thoughts on psychotherapy

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jul 06 2000 - 10:28:36 MDT


> Jonathan Reeves wrote:
>
> I believe it was Timothy Leary (pre-LSD) that did the original study
> and found that of people that received psychotherapy roughly a third
> got better, a third stayed the same, and a third got worse - exactly
> the same as a control group which did not receive any therapy

I hadn't heard of that study. If so, I'm surprised that the results
were the same as a differently controlled study.

Of course, the results you report would make sense if the patient group
had schizophrenia, or a similar organic dysfunction, rather than minor
personal problems. Neither psychotherapy or talking to someone would
have any effect on that.

-- 
        sentience@pobox.com    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
              http://singinst.org/beyond.html



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