Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Tue, 14 Apr 1992 17:29:50 EDT
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         "Matthew Simpson" <054340@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: curious re: exorcism

On Tue, 14 Apr 1992 12:35:33 ECT Someone       said:
>I'm curious.  Matthew, are you saying that science should not have standards
>for what type of data validate a particular area of study.  Instead I presume
>we would report what WE think is data and debate, as scientists, from there?

yes.

>If so, GOOD!  What concerns me though is that earlier you argued that no
>"standard" therapy should be questioned (I assume standard means systematic,
>well-defined, etc.??), and that my idea of good data should not be inflicted on
> yours.  But at the same time, you seem to question exorcism, and I
>expect Tarot and palmistry as well.  You say that inflicting a standard is a

No.  I need to clarify that I am responding to those on the list which
are quick to jump on the bandwagon of illigitimate-therapy bashing.  I do
not question the efficacy of exorcism in a general way.  Let me highlight
this idea.  If one wants to question the efficacy of a therapy, one has
to attach to the question "efficacy of X therapy to do ________."  This is
very important to keep in mind when addressing this issue(s).

Science, when it typically sents out to evaluate a therapy, standardized
the dependent variable.  I am not saying that science should not do this.
The result is that articles are published on the efficacy of a therapy to
change that standardized dependent variable.  THEN, the scientific\
academic\practitioner\etc. community reads the articles and naively
generalizes by saying "X therapy is not effective."  Effective to do what?
Effective to change one set of standard dependent variables. (consc. sf)

If we then set out to legislate psychotherapy methods, we then inflict on
others the conclusion that X therapy is innefective in psychotherapy in
general, and therefore is illegitimate, unethical, harmfull, and useless
to practice.  Yet, it is forgotten that the studies showed that the
therapy was only ineffective to do one set of very specific things.

Compound on top of all of this explaning of the politics of standardizing
therapy the idea that I do not propose that we set about evaluating the
therapy.  Evaluate the practitioners ability to do what he or she claims
to do.  Leave the dependent variable practitioner-specific.  Therapists
should be able to do what they claim to be able to do.  If the consumer
wants that thing done in psychotherapy, let him or her descide on that.

To illustrate, if I have a therapy that claims to:
1. Find deep potentials for experiencing that we normally do not have
access to or operate on the basis of...
2. Allows the patient to appreciate what it is like to be and act on the
basis of this experiencing....
3. Guide the patient through expereincing this new potential way of being
in a previous life scene...
& 4.  Establishes practice and commitment for behavior change which allows
the patient to leave the therapeutic session as an entirely new person who
can act on the basis of an entirely new-found way of being,

then it wouldn't make much sense if we decide to evaluate the effectiveness
of this therapy on depression.  Depression is not the dependent variable
that this therapy claims to influence.  Therefore, if a bunch of researchers
perform a bunch of studies and publish the results that this therapy is not
effective in decreasing Beck Depression Inventory Scores, they are saying
nothing.  The therapy never did claim to decrease BDI scores.  The sad thing
is that people would read the articles and conclude that the therapy is
ineffective and therefore should not be ethically practiced by liscenced
clinical psychologists.  Scary?  You bet.  Committees take the ball & run
without knowing the nature of the playing field all the time.

>It just seems, Matthew, that your arguments do legitimize exorcism as long as
>individual exorcists  hurt no one (which is fine with me except that I
>think possibly a "tool" e.g. exorcism, psychotherapy X, CAN be a bad tool in
>general), but in the same breath you deny exorcism it's legitimacy.
>Please clarify.

I hope that I did clarify that I do not deny exorcism it's legitimacy.
To make such a claim, I would have to say that it is not legitimate as
a means of doing some specific thing.  My guess is that exorcism is a very
legitimate therapy which effectively gets the bad spirits out.  I have
not yet seen a study which says that exorcism is not effective at getting
bad spirits out.  Perhaps Popper might summerize, "The theory,that exorcism
removes bad or evil spirits from the body, has not yet been sufficiantly
disproven."

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