17/09/2026
Interesting read about cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) 🧐🤔
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BtqTEFzDC/
Compelling book suggesting that "CBT’s narrative about itself is a political narrative that masquerades as a scientific one", whose aim is to complement and promote neoliberal capitalism through "a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world":
"Author and psychotherapist Dr. Farhad Dalal's book 'CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Politics, Power and the Corruptions of Science' deconstructs the ideology of cognitive therapy, suggesting that CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.
The rise of CBT has been fostered by neoliberalism and the phenomenon of New Public Management. This book not only critiques the science, psychology and philosophy of CBT, but also challenges the managerialist mentality and its hyper-rational understanding of 'efficiency', both of which are commonplace in organizational life today.
The book suggests that these are perverse forms of thought, which have been institutionalized by NICE and IAPT and used by them to generate narratives of CBT’s prowess. It claims that CBT is an exercise in symptom reduction which vastly exaggerates the degree to which symptoms are reduced, the durability of the improvement, as well as the numbers of people it helps."
The central question tackled by Dalal is: "Is CBT all it claims to be?" In response to this, Dalal outlines several arguments that illustrate the falsities underlying CBT’s support. First, he argues that CBT has arisen out of an entrancement with hyper-rationality and a very confined notion of what is included under the umbrella of 'science.' CBT’s attempt to understand human distress is modeled after the notion that everything must be precisely measurable in order to count, and further, that it must be documented to be legitimate.
In this way, CBT is presented in a way that denies cultural embeddedness. Dalal also conveys the connection between this approach and a culture of efficiency that promotes neoliberal capitalism.
Neoliberal institutions and structures promote efficiency through forms such as austerity measures that effectively result in greater levels of distress. However, human distress is then conceptualized as illness, through a CBT framework and, as such, the same cultural policies that contribute to distress are the ones that offer CBT as a solution.
CBT’s grounding in a positivist scientific framework dictates the conditions by which CBT is studied and promoted, argues Dalal. He asserts that the CBT narrative is one that uncritically accepts the existence of 'mental disorders' in the DSM. CBT as a treatment is studied and promoted alongside the reification of mental disorders. He writes: 'The fact is, CBT’s narrative about itself is a political narrative that masquerades as a scientific one.'
Further, he deconstructs the politics of identity formation. This refers to the ways in which the psy-disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy) have wielded positivism to medicalize and individualize suffering. In doing so, they have accepted diagnostic framings of distress as individual disorders.
Dalal goes on to explain the genesis of cognitivism and its connection to neoliberal economics. He relays one example of this, describing the conceptualization of distress (framed as depression) as the inability to work. Governmental bodies fail to see the ways in which this 'burden' is a result of austerity measures.
The logical solution to this problem, when framed in this way is, according to Dalal: 'Treat the illness and they will get back to work. On the back of this, new diagnostic categories have appeared in speeches and papers emanating from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), for example "psychological resistance to work" and "entrenched worklessness." The DWP is offering lucrative contracts for providers of treatments for ‘mental illness’ of this kind.”
'When stripped of jargon,' he writes, 'CBT treatment amounts to little more than the injunction: think different, feel different.'
In his conclusion, Dalal warns against the third wave of CBT which includes the promotion of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCBT). Although the evidence of this approach as an efficacious remedy for depression has been embraced by NICE and the IAPT, he points out that it is not the CBT success story that it may appear to be on first glance."
'CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Politics, Power and the Corruptions of Science' (published by Routledge) powerfully critiques the philosophical and scientific bases of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).' -review in Mad In America
Dalal's compelling thesis is also disturbing because it suggests how some of the current ‘mental heath’ awareness debates and campaigns are actually linked to this regressive, neoliberal, ideological platform - get Prince Harry or Oprah to break the ‘stigma’ about you admitting that you have a problem, and that you are unproductive (aka ‘distressed’ or ‘depressed’), and you can then be ‘treated’ by the system that is distressing you.
BOOK AVAILABLE HERE: https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/cbt-the-cognitive-behavioural-tsunami-politics-power-and-the-corruptions-of-science/93746/
