Oct. 1, 2025 8 AM PT
To the editor: Visitor contributor Jonathan Alpert’s op-ed overgeneralizes in terms of the state of psychological well being remedy (“AI therapy isn’t getting better. Therapists are just failing,” Sept. 30). In fact there are some dangerous therapists as there dangerous surgeons and dangerous attorneys. Nevertheless, there are lots of glorious therapists doing extra than simply listening to their sufferers.
I’m a licensed psychologist in California and have utilized cognitive behavioral remedy for nearly 50 years. CBT is an evidenced-based remedy that’s extensively taught in graduate faculties. Listening to sufferers is after all essential, however it isn’t the one factor that well-trained therapists do. I educate my sufferers abilities to beat their fears, cease having panic assaults and cut back or get rid of obsessive-compulsive signs. Sufferers learn to problem their irrational pondering.
I, and my CBT-trained colleagues, will not be within the “enterprise {of professional} hand-holding” as indicated by Alpert. What we as professionals must do is to show customers easy methods to determine competent therapists and never flip folks away from looking for the assistance they want.
Gerald Tarlow, Santa Monica
..
To the editor: Wonderful piece by Alpert on the typically dangerous penalties of psychotherapy that doesn’t transcend empathy and validation. Happily, cognitive behavioral remedy has, for a lot of many years, centered on the form of energetic, problem-solving and sometimes confrontative methods that encourage folks to face their fears and study resilience and adaptability. I educate each my scientific psychology college students and my sufferers the significance of the traditional Chinese language knowledge, “Go straight to the guts of hazard, for there you will discover security.”
Gerald C. Davison, Los Angeles
This author is a professor of psychology at USC.
