Here is a thought from the late great director Federico Fellini ” labels should go on suitcases, nowhere else.” What might this have to do with therapy?

§ 5 Responses to “A thought for the day”

• David Godot says:

  November 5, 2009 at 5:00 pm

  I had a supervisor who would quickly become convinced that certain patients were “borderlines.” From the moment the label was used, every additional piece of diagnostic data was used to support the initial assumption, even when the new data contradicted a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. “This is a different type of borderline,” he would say.

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• Scott Hoye says:

  November 7, 2009 at 1:09 am

  Jay Haley got into a big argument at the Evolution of Psychotherapy conference. He was convinced that the new DX of Borderline Personality Disorder was nonsense, and that there were just very difficult clients.

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• Scott Hoye says:

  November 7, 2009 at 12:03 pm

  I might add, Haley stated in debate with another therapist, that he had never met a Borderline, and that the new DX was totally concocted by the medical profession.

  Aren’t all DX concocted by the medical profession, which, in the US at least, has largely dropped the profession of psychotherapy?

  What would a DSM crafted by crafty, creative psychotherapists look like?

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• David Godot says:

  November 9, 2009 at 11:53 pm

  The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual?

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• Scott Hoye says:

  November 10, 2009 at 5:07 pm

  Hmm…I think that is where the DSm started out from, no?

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