Foundational Structure of Therapy and Ethical Implications
The psychological imperialism of psychotherapy (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Reasons to be therapy-free (TryTherapyFree)
Client Stories and Discussion
Bad Therapy? A disgruntled ex-psychotherapy client speaks her piece (Disequilibrium1)
Psychology Research Study Quality, Inadequate Justification for Therapy, Perverse Incentives, and Harmful Outcomes
Pop Quiz – What can we learn from an intervention study? (Dan Simons)
Psychology and Psychotherapy: How much is evidence-based? (Science-Based Medicine)
Psychology must learn a lesson from fraud case (Nature)
It’s time for psychologists to put their house in order (Guardian)
The mystery of the missing experiments (Big Think)
Nice Results, But What Did You Expect? (Phenomena, National Geographic)
The Pervasive Problem With Placebos in Psychology — Why Active Control Groups Are Not Sufficient to Rule Out Placebo Effects (Perspectives on Psychological Science)
Why waiting lists could be bad for your health (Discover)
What can we learn from an intervention study? (Dan Simons)
Is psychotherapy for depression any better than a sugar pill? (PLOS)
Comparison of psychotherapies for adult depression to pill placebo control groups: a meta-analysis (Cambridge Journals, Psychological Medicine)
A Systematic Review of Comparative Efficacy of Treatments and Controls for Depression (NIH, PLOS ONE)
Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: A thirty-year follow-up of treatment effects (Child Trends)
Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (Wikipedia)
Cognitive behavior and psychodynamic therapy no better than routine care for anorexia (PLOS)
Trust the Results, Not the Conclusions — Devil in the Data (Big Think)
Trust in science would be improved by study pre-registration — Open letter: We must encourage scientific journals to accept studies before the results are in (Guardian)
Revised Ethical Principles Have Profound Implications for Psychological Research (PLOS)
Antidepressant, talk therapy fail to beat placebo (Reuters) (NIH, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry)
Why psychotherapy appears to work — even when it doesn’t (Huffington Post)
Why Bogus Therapies Often Seem to Work (Quack Watch)
Why Bogus Therapies Seem to Work (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry)
Does Depression Go Away On Its Own? — Devil in the Data (Big Think)
The Role of Anecdotes in Science-Based Medicine (Science-Based Medicine)
Subjective “validation” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)
Therapy works? So . . . ? (Mad in America)
Burden of proof (Wikipedia)
The Burden of Proof (CUNY)
The Burden of Proof in Healthcare (Where is the burden of proof?)
The Burden of Proof — Video (QualiaSoup)
Placebo Effects: Psychology’s Fundamental Flaw? Why active controls are not enough (Big Think)
Psychotherapy research: a manifesto (PLOS)
Why there is so pitifully little evidence for psychotherapy effectiveness (Forbidden Psychology)
Re-examining Significant Research: The Problem of False-Positives (Big Think)
The statistical significance scandal: The standard error of science? (Big Think)
Whomp! Using invited editorial commentary to neutralize negative findings [Strong bias in peer-review in psychotherapy journals] (PLOS) (See here also)
Mind Games: Psychological Warfare Between Therapists and Scientists (The Chronical of Higher Education) (See here also)
Get Shrunk at Your Own Risk (Newsweek)
When it’s bad to talk — As evidence grows that anti-depressant drugs are ineffective, more of us are likely to turn to psychotherapy. But, as Kate Hilpern reports, counselling can mean being traumatised again (Guardian)
When Counseling is Dangerous — Psychological debriefing after disasters may do more harm than good. (Psychology Today)
Concerns about the effectiveness of critical incident stress debriefing in ameliorating stress reactions (NIH, Critical Care)
Therapy can drive you mad, finds study on counselling given to 9/11 survivors (Daily Mail)
Multiple session early psychological interventions for the prevention of post-traumatic stress disorder (Evidence Based Mental Health)
Escaping from the past of disaster psychology (Mind Hacks)
Randomised controlled trial of psychological debriefing for victims of acute burn trauma (NIH, The British Journal of Psychiatry)
Review in The Guardian Newspaper: A sickness called therapy (Guardian)
Manufacturing Victims (Tana Dineen)
Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People (Tana Dineen) (See here also)
Elizabeth Loftus: The Fiction of Memory (TED Talk)
Mind Games (Robert Baker)
The Therapy Industry: The Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why It Doesn’t Work (Paul Moloney)
Interview with Paul Moloney on the Therapy Industry (The Ossington Circle)
The Art of Psychotherapy [and Its Collateral Damage] (Forbidden Psychology)
The Moving Goalposts of Mental Illness (Big Think)
The Real Problems With Psychiatry — A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry’s “bible” that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous politics and bureaucracy. (The Atlantic)
Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say (New York Times)
Prevalence, Correlates, and Treatment of Lifetime Suicidal Behavior Among Adolescents — Results From the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (JAMA Psychiatry)
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (Mad in America)
The Milgram Obedience Experiment — The Perils of Obedience (About Psychology)
Stanford prison experiment — Zimbardo experiment shows the harm “good” people can cause by applying asymmetrical disempowering labels/roles (Wikipedia)
An Epidemic of Willful Blindness: Savile, Armstrong, LIBOR, HSBC… (Huffington Post, Margaret Heffernan)
The pull for lobotomy [and psychotherapy] (Mind Hacks)
The Lake Wobegon Effect (Psychotherapy.net)
Michael Lambert on preventing treatment failures (and why you’re not as good as you think): Dr. Michael Lambert’s groundbreaking work on tracking client outcomes has revealed a huge blindspot for psychotherapists: We don’t notice when our patients are getting worse… (Psychotherapy.net)
How To Tell If Your Therapist Is Crazy (Part One) (Iron Shrink)
How To Tell If Your Therapist Is Crazy (Part Two) (Iron Shrink)
Why Shrinks Have Problems — Suicide, stress, divorce — psychologists and other mental health professionals may actually be more screwed up than the rest of us. (Psychology Today)
Therapy Beyond Modernity: Deconstructing and Transcending Profession-Centred Therapy (Richard House)
Therapy is all talk — A new book argues that psychotherapy is better at recycling cultural myths than figuring out what’s in your head. (Salon)
Is Psychotherapy Superstition? (ScienceBlogs)
Why psychology isn’t science (Los Angeles Times)
Is psychology a science? (Paul Lutus)
Can psychology ever become a science? (Paul Lutus)
The trouble with psychology (Paul Lutus)
Surely the hoo-har about replication could only concern a non-cumulative science? (Idiolect)
The case against psychotherapy (Lawrence Stevens)
Vanderbilt 1 psychotherapy study (JAMA Psychiatry) Vanderbilt psychotherapy studies synopsis (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology)
Against Therapy (Jeffrey Masson)
Is The Rest Of The World ‘Crazy Like Us’? (NPR)
Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (Ethan Watters)
Crazy Like Us Part 3: Schizophrenia in Zanzibar (Psychology Salon)
Flawed meta-analyses of psychological interventions (PLOS)
Holding Therapy: Blowing The Whistle on Institutionalised Child Abuse in the UK (Big Think)
Rage Reduction Therapy (Science-Based Medicine)
“How ‘therapy’ becomes a disguise for abuse” (Tana Dineen)
Harmful Side Effects of Psychotherapy (Psych Central)
What’s the harm? (What’s the harm?)
Misjudged counselling and therapy can be harmful, study reveals (Guardian)
Could Therapy Culture Help Explain Elliot Rodger’s Rampage? (Reason)
Therapist Types: The Narcissist (Psych Gripe)
Destructive Patterns In Asymmetrical Therapy (and Other) Relationships
The asymmetrical dynamics in power-imbalanced relationships in which a person is devalued/dehumanized and dependency is fostered and exploitation follows is rampant in therapy relationships. The inherent structure of the therapy relationship, the one-way intimacy and surrounding secrecy, lends itself to emotional rape. As with domestic violence or priest sexual abuse, it’s a problem that people prefer to look away from and no one wants to think about or admit exists. There will continue to be more therapy victims until we’re ready to really take a look, and take action.
Emotional Rape (Sanctuary for the Abused)
Emotional Rape Syndrome: How to survive
Violence Unsilenced: giving abuse survivors a voice
Emotional Rape (Psychopaths & Love)
Intimacy in Therapy: Reality or Dangerous Illusion, Part 4 (Therapy Consumer Guide)
20 Indicators for Co-dependency or Co-addiction
Psych Central Forums: How can I leave therapy?
False Memory Therapy Nearly Ruined Her Life
False Memories of Sexual Abuse Lead to Terrible Miscarriages of Justice (The Guardian)
How to Avoid Getting Abused in Psychotherapy
Violation of Trust and Abuse of Authority are Keys to Pedophilia (by a child psycho-analyst)
Having emotions versus therapizing emotions (Ballast Existenz)
Stuff about the anti-political nature of therapy (Ballast Existenz)
This is how I feel when I read a lot of posts about the Judge Rotenberg Center (Ballast Existenz)
Inverse Correlation Between Happiness and Therapy
Self-focused rumination increases depression:
http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/themes/sonjalyubomirsky/papers/LN1995.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10608-005-0511-1#page-1
“The single most important factor in living a happy and fulfilled life was love. … The people with close friends and family were the happiest.”
What it Takes to Live a Happy Life: A Harvard Study Answers the Question (Examined Existence, Your Brain at Work)
“Data indicate that when reporting therapists make inferences about [clients’] significant others, they predominantly couch them in critical terms. These results also suggest that blame-and-change maneuvers are alive and well in psychotherapy. When therapists disregard the strengths and resources of their clients’ significant others, they may resort to the therapeutic relationship as their primary vehicle for treatment.”
Therapeutic relationships and iatrogenic outcomes: The blame-and-change maneuver in psychotherapy (APA, Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Training, Practice)
“Strikingly, more than half of them were getting therapy before or during the period when they became suicidal. Some clinicians e-mailed Nock to express anger that he would make such statistics public. Their position, he said, was that if you tell people treatment’s not effective [or increases suicide], they’ll stop coming.”
The Suicide Detective (New York Times)
“Most suicidal adolescents (>80%) receive some form of mental health treatment. In most cases (>55%), treatment starts prior to onset of suicidal behaviors …”
JAMA Psychiatry
Client Stories and Discussion
Bad Therapy? A disgruntled ex-psychotherapy client speaks her piece (Disequilibrium1)
On Mutual/Reciprocal Vulnerability, Openness, Connection, and Wholeheartedness
Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability (TED Talk)
Brene Brown, Listening to Shame (TED Talk)
“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they [both] feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” ― Brené Brown
“One of the greatest barriers to connection is … we’ve divided the world into “those who offer help” and “those who need help.” The truth is that we are both.” ― Brene Brown
Ethics
“Always act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, at the same time as an end-in-itself and never merely as a means.” — Immanuel Kant
Kant’s Formula of Humanity, by Christine Korsgaard (Harvard University)
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” — Immanuel Kant
Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, by Christine Korsgaard (Harvard University)
“Every time you do an activity, or have a thought, you are changing a piece of yourself into something slightly different than it was before.
… a human life is not just a means to produce outcomes, it is an end in itself. When we evaluate our friends, we don’t just measure the consequences of their lives. We measure who they intrinsically are. We don’t merely want to know if they have done good. We want to know if they are good.” — David Brooks
The Way to Produce a Person, by David Brooks (New York Times)
Psychology Association’s Torture Link Fails “Do No Harm” Ethics
Two Lovely Little Stories About The Meaning of Life
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams)
Relevant TED Talks and Other Miscellaneous Links
Margaret Heffernan: Dare to Disagree (TED Talk)
Elizabeth Loftus: The Fiction of Memory (TED Talk)
Margaret Heffernan: The Dangers of Willful Blindness (TED Talk)
Onora O’neill: What We Don’t Understand About Trust (TED Talk)
Stuart Firestein: The Pursuit of Ignorance (TED Talk)
Thomas Goetz: It’s time to redesign medical data (TED Talk)
Richard Feynman and Pseudoscience (BBC video)
Feynman and Scientific Method (video)
Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science (Caltech commencement address)
The Role of Anecdotes in Science-Based Medicine (Science-Based Medicine)
Science-based Medicine: Answering Our Critics
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/answering-our-critics-part-1-of-2/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/answering-our-critics-part-2-of-2-whats-the-harm/
The Science of Clinical Trials (Science-Based Medicine)
Why “Science”-Based Instead of “Evidence”-Based? (Save Yourself)
Why Pseudoscience Belongs in the Psychology Classroom (APS video)
Dan Ariely: Beware conflicts of interest (TED Talk)
Policy: NIH plans to enhance reproducibility (Nature)
David Puttnam: Does the media [and other industries] have a “duty of care”? (TED Talk)
Therapy is a con reading list (Therapy is a con)
Leave the nail where it is (The other 999 rooms)
Becoming more authentic (Tiny Buddha)
Why does nostalgia feel so nice? (DNews)
The power of empathy (Brene Brown)
The power of outrospection (RSA)
A hug a day keeps the doctor away (Scientific American)
TryTherapyFree
Reasons to be therapy-free
Art, Science, and Ethics
Playing Dice With Human Lives: Intervening Without Evidence
Mission and Tenets
Links and Resources
Media and Commentary
Tidbits
TryTherapyFree 
Whores of The Court a book about the misuse of psychiatric testimony in American courts is available as a download from this site –
http://whoresofthecourt.com/
The harm these people have caused!