WHAT COMES TO ‘MATTER’ AS EVIDENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH DR ANASTASIOS GAITANIDIS “It is not a matter of fact(s); it is the facts that matter”

Empiricism Recognition of the underlying moral impulse in Sceptical Empiricism’s critique of prevailing dogmas (Hume, Locke etc.). One needs to be aware that one should not make general assertions about one’s claim to knowledge without feeling the responsibility of satisfying certain demands of empirical rationality.

Positivism 18 th and 19 th Sceptical Empiricism faded and replaced by 20 th Century positivistic ideology. The majority of research carried out in the field of psychology and psychotherapy today is influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the 20 th Century ‘positivistic’ paradigm. This is particularly ‘ironic’ as most of the so-called ‘hard sciences’ have moved away from the positivistic paradigm and onto a post-positivistic one.

It is a Matter of Fact(s) Therapeutic knowledge based on ‘facts’. These facts are given directly, or indirectly, in observation and experimental investigation and are the only objects of knowledge. This creates a structure of knowledge and a type of therapeutic ‘reality’ which is fixed, rigid and dogmatic. Privileging of one type of (hegemonic) truth/ discourse over and above any other truth – the truth of empirically verifiable ‘facts’.

It is the Facts that Matter ‘Facts’ are always our facts – the products of our interpretations. Facts cannot be seen in isolation but only as aspects of a total social situation caught up in the process of historical change. Evidence-based practice cannot be perceived only as a ‘neutral’, ‘objective’ process. It is also needs to be seen as an aspect of the general neo-liberal tendency to privilege certain practices and exclude others.

It is the Facts that Matter (cont.) 1. ‘Freezing’ certain therapeutic moments and interventions. 2. Subscribing to the ideals of ‘objectivity’ and ‘value- freedom’ (i.e., the strict separation of fact and value) 3. Claiming to root out competing therapeutic interventions which are supposedly value-laden and biased and hence illegitimately used to justify therapeutic practices. 4. Developing methods which stipulate in advance what is to be ascertained. 5. Promoting uniformity of method for the evaluation of disparate types of therapy. 6. Fetishising the immediately given 7. Losing the category of potentiality and possibility

Conclusions Research can become one of the ways of engaging in political action but not when it duplicates and perpetuates the instrumental practices that it seeks to criticise. Different types of ‘evidence’ and methods need to be developed which instead of prescribing the object of their inquiry, they will be adequate to the complexity of the psychotherapeutic process. It is important to realise that there are different types of truth – empirical research is only one of them and should not be totalised and prioritised over the others. Psychotherapy should not only aspire to live up to the standards of what constitutes ‘good’ science but also to the standards of ‘good’ art – the art of living, the art of loving and the art of de-narrativising and re-narrativising one’s life.