Episode 414 - "Placebo"?: No.

Now I was struck by a book that's come out.

The book came out, I think, in 2024 in Germany.

And I won't give you the German title, but it's by an author named Steve Ayan, A-Y-A-N.

And it has literally just this month been translated very expensively in an English version.

And it's already on Kindle auf Deutsch, but it'll come out fairly soon.

But it is entitled Soul Magic.

A Century of Psychotherapy, as I said, by Steve Ion, who's a relatively well-known commentator on issues related to psychology in Germany, but he's done a few others.

But there's a sentence in the review in the Times Literary Supplement August the 21st of this month this year that is extremely I want to say fructifying it's full of possibilities both negatively and positively and it's really worth our attention if you're in the pastoral ministry or in the attempt of any sort to help someone heal through honest and complete expression of a tragic wound, this sentence will, in my opinion, blow your mind.

And this is what the reviewer, whose name is Jack Golder, says in the review of Ion's book, Soul Magic, A Century of Psychotherapy.

Listen up.

The reviewer concludes his review by writing this.

Ion finishes the book, goes the review, with some reflections on the notion that the various different forms of psychotherapy all seem to work as well as each other, and that most of this is due to the placebo effect of there being a kindly listener in the room.

Let me repeat that.

All the different forms of psychotherapy seem to work as well as each other, and that most of this is due to the placebo effect of there being a kind of listener in the room.

He goes on to say that there have been a lot of studies of this, of researchers and randomized controlled trials, and it appears that the positive effects of almost all schools of thought within psychology or psychiatry psychotherapy, have roughly the same possibility of effect or failure.

So in other words, what is that saying? I've not gotten to the main point.

The first point is that whether you're a student of Arthur Yanov, like John Lennon was in Yoko Ono, birth trauma therapy, or Frank Lake, who became very interested in the same form of therapy, but also was involved in at a very early phase in psychedelic therapy.

And believe me, there are people listening to this cast right now who have been prescribed psychedelic drugs as a way of coming through a difficult internal script.

Or simply talk therapy, long-term talk therapy, a psychoanalysis, which is a particular form of talk therapy, which is almost unending.

and goes towards certain particular issues, or Gestalt therapy, or I'm okay, you're okay, or all the different forms contemporarily of psychic concern.

Now we talk about narcissism 24-7. or we talk about boundaries 24-7.

These are all passing away because it turns out, according to this authoritative book, Auf Deutsch, but now making a full page in the London Times Literary Supplement, the Times Literary Supplement, that, um, statistically almost everybody who does any of these therapies has about the same chance of feeling better the benignity of the schools of thought is basically flatlined it's basically equal there may be some differentials but this means that if you've been doing birth trauma therapy well and you feel better that's good but it's not that different if you were doing long-term psychoanalysis and the common denominator as the reviewer says is the placebo effect of there being a kindly listener in the room.