one of the ideas that fucks me up the most is the possibility that people who strongly believe some psychological theory will sort of polarize everyone around them into acting in accordance with that theory
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i think this thought first vaguely occurred to me reading this bit from SSC's review of PiHKaL and it's just lived in my head rent-free ever since, accreting a shell around itself made of thoughts about self-fulfilling prophecies, evaporative cooling, etc
slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/11/boo
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also this bit from "different worlds," also by SSC
"This is worrying not just as a psychiatrist, but as someone who wants to know anything about other people at all."
slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/dif
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i suppose insofar as this sort of thing happens the decent thing to do is to err on the side of believing psychological theories that attribute people a lot of agency and fundamental goodness
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coherence therapy calls this "symptom coherence" - taking the stance that every thing you do that drives you nuts makes deep sense once you get the underlying emotional reality that's driving it. it very cleanly articulates something i've been grasping at for years and years
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also relevant to questions like "why is everyone's psych book full of case studies of patients for whom that specific psych method works so perfectly"
presumably there are multiple selection effects going on, and then perhaps more subtle influence stuff?
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I think this whole thing makes a great deal of sense, if we think of therapy as borne out of a conversation, and that conversation itself is a cybernetic feedback loop that is constantly adjusting and steering based off of the tendencies of each actor
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maybe it's not so much polarization as "we steer us towards the things we both enjoy". which is indeed pretty freaky, to be honest. which implies that therapy actually thus has affects based on the therapist, which is something I've always suspected; that therapy is never neutral
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*nods furiously*
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my dream vision of "therapy" is two human beings fully present with each other going on a journey into the vast unknown together. i would be *shocked* if therapy programs taught you how to do this. i expect that instead they teach "professionalism"
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that's what happens when you don't have a job 😂
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