https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lH4FNW0TqZE
What is your advice for finding a sane sound therapist? And do you think a fruitful psychotherapeutic relationship requires a therapist to have specific temperamental compatibility or even literacy and interests that align with the patient? Well, I would say with regards to finding a sane and sound therapist, there’s some practical things you can do. I guess this is more relevant if you live in North America and I’m not sure exactly what the training requirements are in other places in the world. But your best bet, I would say, is to find someone who’s appropriately trained. And I would regard someone who’s appropriately trained as a psychotherapist to be someone who’s… I think you’re safer if you go with someone who’s trained at one of the big research schools and you have a therapist who’s well versed in psychotherapeutic practice, but who’s also sufficiently educated scientifically to be able to understand the scientific literature. And you can be pretty certain of that if you find a therapist who’s got their PhD rather than a Psy.D. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with Psy.Ds. If they got received their PhD from an American Psychological Association approved School of Clinical Psychology, and those schools operate under what’s called the Boulder model. And the Boulder model promotes science practitioner as the optimal ideal combination for a psychotherapist. So someone who’s trained psychotherapeutic but also has research experience and can understand the relevant scientific literature as it pertains to mental health. So that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is, well, go to see your psychotherapist once and maybe go to see a couple of them and find someone that listens to you. Because the psychotherapist shouldn’t be someone who solves your problems for you or offers even really offers you advice, although sometimes that can be helpful. Really what the psychotherapist should do is be someone who can help you understand what problem it is that you’re facing so that that can be delineated properly. To help you articulate what it is that you want. So what your vision of mental health might be and what you’d like to attain in psychotherapy. And then who helps you strategize towards that end. And so you want someone who will really listen to you that you feel comfortable telling the truth to. Because that’s also incredibly important. If you can’t tell your psychotherapist the truth, then you’re not going to get anywhere in therapy because you won’t be able to actually outline the nature of your fundamental problems. So that’s vital. And go see someone and see if you’re happy with the way that you’re interacting with them. That’s the most relevant issue. So that’s the first question. Now, the next one was, do I think a fruitful psychotherapeutic relationship requires a therapist to have specific temperamental compatibility or even literacy and interests that align with the patient? I think it’s difficult to work with a therapist who is less intelligent than you are. That’s kind of a rough way of conceptualizing it. But a lot of what a therapist does is help you strategize. And the person has to be able to think analytically and probably at least to some degree to the same with the same degree of complexity that you’re capable of. It’s not necessarily a good idea to be able to outthink your therapist. So was there ever a time when you saw a therapist of some kind? Well, no, actually, I haven’t ever seen a therapist. And that might seem strange, I suppose, given that I am a psychologist. I don’t really like talking about my problems with other people, as it turns out. I’d rather keep them to myself. But what I would say, having said that, is that I’ve read an awful lot of the writings of the great clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. And I would say that I’ve used them as psychotherapeutic aids. And I think that that plays a very similar role, that can play a very similar role. .