The Counseling Myth
"Perhaps the most enduring but unsubstantiated theoretical belief among therapists is the timeworn notion that difficulties in adulthood stem from childhood misfortunes. Almost all therapy approaches, from psychoanalysis and Imago therapy to the emotion-focused and sensorimotor methods, embrace some version of this dogma. Given its venerable pedigree, this belief in the potency of childhood events is one of the most difficult to deconstruct. Nevertheless, as a general clinical hypothesis, it's deeply flawed.
"The simple truth is that a preponderance of the evidence mitigates [sic] against assigning any great importance to childhood experiences and memories- processed, unprocessed, or reprocessed. Martin Seligman, the former president of the American Psychological Association, puts it this way: 'Childhood events-even childhood trauma-and child rearing appear to have only weak effects on adult life. Childhood, contrary to popular belief, does not seem, empirically, to be particularly formative. So, contrary to popular belief, we are not prisoners of our past.'
"In their book, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse, James Hillman and Michael Ventura argue that this mythology persists partly because our culture has bought into an idealized image of the pure, innocent, and wholesome child. Therefore, it follows logically that any troubles the adult experiences must be due to corruptions in that child's upbringing. Because it's in tune with our cultural paradigm, the belief that adult problems are the residue of a faulty upbringing is an easy sell to both therapists and their clients. In this regard, they're members of the same cultural 'club' and therefore unwittingly reinforce each other's beliefs. Nevertheless, two distinct lines of evidence mitigate against accepting the 'my parents are why I'm such a mess' ideology"
(excerpted from Psychotherapy Networker, Vol. 39, No.2, p. 33, and printed in the Psychoheresy Awareness Letter, July-August 2015, Vol. 23, No.4)
