Placebo insight: The rationality of insight-oriented psychotherapy

It is widely believed that the insight-oriented psychotherapies provide the ir clients with valid methods of self-exploration that lead to bona fide se lf-knowledge. II also is widely believed that clients' insights must be tru e in order to be therapeutically effective. Both these claims are implausib le. I argue that because clients face significant epistemic pressures in th e therapeutic encounter, the insight-oriented psychotherapies are highly su sceptible to generating placebo insights, that is, illusions. deceptions, a nd adaptive self-misunderstandings that convincingly mimic veridical insigh t but have no genuine explanatory power. The insight-oriented psychotherapi es also are highly susceptible to generating therapeutic artefacts that app ear to confirm the insights acquired by clients. The powerful treatment met hods to which clients are subjected generate some of the very psychological and behavioral facts that clients claim to "discover" in their exploration s. This impugns the scientific status of the insight-oriented psychotherapi es. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.