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A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

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Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#21

Post by gwd »

yomly wrote: post #4

What even is "personality" - leaving aside technical and dictionary definitions, if you --the person-- are the sum of your life experiences, can you ever truly not be you? I pose this because I encounter resistance from people to the notion that they can change themselves, lest they lose some notion of their "self", and personality is often equated with "self" from my experience.

I've always thought that "Neuroticism" was kind of a weird thing to include in "Personality". Sure, it's a long-term behavioral trait that typically doesn't change; but I wouldn't call that a part of who somebody is, any more than (say) an intense fear of spiders is a part of who somebody is.

To say that making someone less "neurotic" changes their personality is about like saying giving someone a prosthetic leg which allows them to walk again changes their personality. It may certainly change the kinds of things they do on a regular basis, but it didn't change the basic concept of self we commonly think of as "personality".

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#22

Post by Retra »

megous wrote: post #15
29athrowaway wrote: post #6

Psychology is not falsifiable and therefore not a science.

Yes, it's a helping profession. The goal is to form models of mind to be used to help people feel/live better. Not to understand the brain. That's why you can have multitudes of wildly conflicting theories and schools of psychotherapy, where most of them work to achieve the goal of wellbeing, but none of which achieve understanding of how human brain works. (of course, some pretend they do, and try to portray this to…

Psychiatry is not the same thing as psychology.

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#23

Post by sjg007 »

charleyramm wrote: post #13
calewis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who suffers from depression and has gone to therapy for over 5 years (I am also on medication), please try and force yourself to go. It will most likely change your life for the better, if not, what have you wasted? A bit of money and a few hours of your time? It could make you better at dealing with your depression and, as a consequence, make you feel happier. You might need to try a few different therapi…

Do you think it was necessary to go through this process with a therapist, or could a less expensive alternative have had the same effect?

I think a therapist is necessary, at least to bootstrap the process. You can listen to podcasts and read books by therapists. You can think and try to reason about it yourself. You can expose yourself to the ideas. You can learn about cognitive behavioral therapy and try out worksheets etc... But that takes time and you may not cover everything or know what will be effective for you. A therapist can keep you accountable but mostly it takes a long time. Plus it's hard to do that when you are depressed. Even with a therapist you will be reading a lot on your own anyway.

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#24

Post by sjg007 »

lkadr wrote: post #10

After years of depression, I'm sure my personality is one of the cause of me still being depressed. And if I went to therapy, I'd expect and want it to change. But change is scary, and I suppose that's why some depressed persons don't want to seek help. There's sometimes comfort in suffering. Another reason is that the not-desesperate me feels shallow and boring. But there's probably a hopeful me that's not. I haven'…

One thing that may help is to label your depression as it's own independent thing. Something that exists outside of your core self. Even give it a name, say Dave. Then when you are feeling depressed say, hey that's just Dave, why is Dave feeling this way? Is there another perspective that Dave isn't seeing etc...

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#25

Post by megous »

Retra wrote: post #22
megous wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a helping profession. The goal is to form models of mind to be used to help people feel/live better. Not to understand the brain. That's why you can have multitudes of wildly conflicting theories and schools of psychotherapy, where most of them work to achieve the goal of wellbeing, but none of which achieve understanding of how human brain works. (of course, some pretend they do, and try to portray this to…

Psychiatry is not the same thing as psychology.

Well, obvious. For context - the article is about therapy. The book is mostly about therapeutic schools too. Also I said nothing about psychiatry.

The book is mostly about historical context of psychological treatment in america and a critique of when people in helping professions jump from "our techniques help people" to "therefore the theoretical basis for our techniques is the truth"

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#26

Post by _bxg1 »

sjg007 wrote: post #23
charleyramm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it was necessary to go through this process with a therapist, or could a less expensive alternative have had the same effect?

I think a therapist is necessary, at least to bootstrap the process. You can listen to podcasts and read books by therapists. You can think and try to reason about it yourself. You can expose yourself to the ideas. You can learn about cognitive behavioral therapy and try out worksheets etc... But that takes time and you may not cover everything or know what will be effective for you. A therapist can keep you accounta…

This. It's similar to a personal trainer. People don't hire personal trainers because they can't figure out how to exercise, they hire personal trainers so they have someone guiding them, supporting them, keeping them on track.

In my personal battle with depression, a big part of it has been self-distrust. So I could reason about it all day but I struggled to make any actual changes because I was always questioning. Having someone there actively giving me permission to reshape my thought patterns and giving me confidence that I'm on the right track has been absolutely essential.

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#29

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

phkahler wrote: post #11
raverbashing wrote: post #2

> is associated with significant and long-lasting changes in clients’ personalities, especially reductions in the trait of Neuroticism and increases in Extraversion. Yes. That's how it should be.

Well since a common thing therapists do is (covert) social skills training, increased extroversion makes perfect sense. The was recently another one linked here that said long term therapy can increase neuroticism. My biggest complaint is that most of their studies suffer from survivor bias. They ignore people who drop out or have negative outcomes (there is overlap there).

My biggest complaint is studies being inadequately placebo-controlled. It's not just that studies often have no control group or a blatantly different control condition (waitlist, pill placebo), it's that there's no consensus on how psychotherapy works. That means there's no agreed-upon approach for sham psychotherapy, and even assertions that it's impossible to do because virtually any therapy-like experience already contains most of the beneficial elements (cf. [1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_factors_theory

Re: A little discussed effect of therapy: it changes personality (2017)

#30

Post by jonahx »

gwd wrote: post #21
yomly wrote: post #4

What even is "personality" - leaving aside technical and dictionary definitions, if you --the person-- are the sum of your life experiences, can you ever truly not be you? I pose this because I encounter resistance from people to the notion that they can change themselves, lest they lose some notion of their "self", and personality is often equated with "self" from my experience.

I've always thought that "Neuroticism" was kind of a weird thing to include in "Personality". Sure, it's a long-term behavioral trait that typically doesn't change; but I wouldn't call that a part of who somebody is, any more than (say) an intense fear of spiders is a part of who somebody is. To say that making someone less "neurotic" changes their personality is about like saying giving someone a prosthetic leg whic…

> Sure, it's a long-term behavioral trait that typically doesn't change; but I wouldn't call that a part of who somebody is

This seems like an excellent definition of "who somebody is"

> any more than (say) an intense fear of spiders is a part of who somebody is.

That, too, is definitely part of who somebody is. It is, eg, exactly the kind of trait used in novels or movies to convey something about a character. And it's something that others would notice and use to describe you in ordinary life.

How is that not part of who you are?

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