Radical Essays That Contradict This Site’s Point Of View

I come from a completely different psychotherapeutic background and experience. I am a strictly here-and-now psychotherapist, implying that I have little interest in a person's social history or any explanation that might enlighten a person's present personality on the basis of past experiences. Having been the victim myself of "mental" illness, suffered from most symptoms of mental illness such as agoraphobia, PTSD, uncontrollable anxiety attacks, depression and so on. I also have experienced treatment by psychiatrists and drugs, plus unending psychotherapy dealing with my colourful past (in WWII).

My ultimate healing came about because I studied psychology which really did not much to help me, and then discovered the wonderful world of biochemistry of personality and its relation to nutrition. I was seriously addicted to iatrogenic drugs and once I understood the biochemical underpinnings of drug addiction. I was able to recover from my illness putting into practice what I had learned from my studies. I became a professional drug counsellor.

The main reason why I became a strictly here-and-now counsellor was that when I started working as a Probation and Parole Officer and run "rehabilitation groups" I was literally overwhelmed by the number of clients. They ran into the thousands!! 75% of prisoners and offenders appearing before a Court of Law, have addiction as a comorbid condition to their offences. It was simply impossible to go into the social history of each individual client and try to "rehabilitate them" by psychoanalytic means.

So I took a teaching approach. My approach was to teach to groups of offenders the tools of nutritional therapy AND psychotherapy in the here-and-now, in exactly the same way I was taught over the years.

Thus clients became their own therapists with remarkable a success, without me knowing anything about their social history or even "their problems" of clients. Thus the kind of psychotherapy I teach does not require a person to go into their past history, or me having to know a person's past. In fact, although I would not stop a person wanting to talk about their past, I do not consider this as having any psychotherapeutic value. Talking about the origin of one's emotional mood disorders may provide an interesting explanation about its history, but does nothing to "cure" it. Explanations are not necessarily "cures". In fact it may reinforce it, and this may explain why so many clients experience a deepening depression and hopelessness after a few sessions of such "psychotherapy".

The advantage of this approach is in its simplicity centering about present-day biochemical influences on the mind, its nutritional treatment and a psychotherapy dealing only with lack of social skills that can be treated in the here-and-now.

So I seem to be at one end of the spectrum of the philosophies in support of one's particular psychotherapeutic approach.

The summary of this approach has been explained in:

Assumptions in Psychotherapy

Is it even possible to heal a problem that happened in the past, as such?

Obviously the symptoms that come about because of it can be treated, such as personality defects, low self confidence ect, but can you really treat the cause if it is burried in the past?

I didnt have a brilliant childhood, with no real part of it being of my parent's fault, but I dont see how what happened a decade or two ago can be rectified so long after the occurance.

Yeah, I don't really think it matters what happened in the past, as in a person can along with their future without "healing" their past bad experiences. Take successful people for example, whatever your definition of success is, and most of them all probably went through tough times and events, but that stuff doesn't matter anymore once you move on...