PHILOSOPHICAL CONFUSIONS AND STRAW MEN WITHIN POST-RATIONALIST/CONSTRUCTIVIST CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Abstract

The post-rationalist approach in psychotherapy is proposed by Vittorio Guidano as an epistemology for a new era that goes beyond rationalism. However, such an approach creates a caricatured vision of "empiricism-objectivism" and then opposes it. By analyzing the seminal book The Self in Process (Guidano, 1991/1994) and writings of other theorists associated with the approach, I will argue that their disconnection with major developments in twentieth-century philosophy leads them to posit philosophically problematic theses without noticing their internal inconsistencies. I will argue that Guidano (i) fails to define central philosophical terms (process, knowledge, truth), (ii) presents an internally contradictory (if not unintelligible) definition of reality (iii) that is inconsistent with developments in his theory, and (iv) perpetuates the Cartesian dogma of first-person infallibility. I will conclude that current realist philosophies pick up Guidano's epistemic concerns, and that postrationalism's emphasis on the construction of one's own reality may hinder the understanding of the other in therapy and promote interventions that ignore social and biochemical causal factors. Finally, I will show that despite the common caricature that current psychotherapeutic theory makes of early 20th-century positivism (logical empiricism), Carnap's linguistic pluralism, Neurath's epistemic fallibilism and Hempel's aletic coherentism -among other positivist theses- are akin to several constructivist premises of Guidano et al.'s post-rationalism.