What You Can Change . . . And What You Can't*: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement (55 page)

On the positive side, see M. Nichols, “Outcome of Brief Cathartic Psychotherapy,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
42 (1974): 403–10; and H. Bierenbaum, A. Schwartz, and M. Nichols, “Effects of Varying Session Length and Frequency in Brief Emotive Psychotherapy,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
44 (1976): 790–98.

In general, when it comes to how much patients like it, catharsis is rated highly. When it comes to measures of how well they do, catharsis fares badly.

There is something to be said for disclosure of traumatic events, as opposed to catharsis per se. Evidence is mounting that not keeping trauma secret helps physical health. See, for example, J. Pennebaker, J. Kielcolt-Glaser, and J. Glaser, “Disclosure of Traumas and Immune Function: Health Implications for Psychotherapy,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
56 (1988): 239–45; and M. Greenberg and A. Stone, “Emotional Disclosure About Traumas and Its Relation to Health: Effects of Previous Disclosure and Trauma Severity,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
63 (1992): 75–84. But disclosure to others does not equal catharsis, which is disclosure to the self.

There may indeed be something to catharsis, but after 100 years its effects remain undocumented and underresearched, and its adherents seem to have largely given it up. So I am not prepared to condemn it outright as a method, just to caution the reader. I do find it scary to see such an unfounded method recurrently creep into such “pop” therapies for seriously troubled people as the encounter groups of the 1960s and 1970s, and the recovery groups of the 1990s.

16
. I tried in vain to find any follow-up data at all from the recovery movement. John Bradshaw’s office didn’t have any (25 June 1992) and referred me to Mary Bell at the Center for Recovering Families in Houston. They were hoping to start such a study.

17
. Two excellent critiques of the recovery movement: W. Kaminer,
I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992); and D. Rieff, “Victims, All? Recovery, Co-dependency, and the Art of Blaming Somebody Else,”
Harper’s
, October 1991. See also J. Leo, “The It’s-Not-My-Fault Syndrome,”
U.S. News & World Report
, 18 June 1991.

18
. These remarks about the importance of therapy being forward-looking, rather than focused on the past, should not be construed as an indictment of all psychodynamic therapy. One of the most welcome developments in modern psychoanalysis is the technique of looking in detail at what past conflicts, current conflicts, and conflicts right in therapy have in common. This is done in order to isolate the core conflictual pattern and to deal with the future. (See L. Luborsky,
Principles of Psychoanalytic Theory: A Manual for Supportive-Expressive Treatment
[New York: Basic Books, 1984].) This is, to my way of thinking, a major advance.

CHAPTER
15
Depth and Change

1
. I use the locution
unchangeable
and not
incurable
because I want to emphasize that I do not believe that homosexuality (when egosyntonic) is a disease in need of cure.

2
. Peter Whybrow has argued that bipolar depression has its roots in seasonal demands on activity expenditure and activity conservation. P. Whybrow,
The Hibernation Response
(New York: Avon, 1988).

3
. But not to be forgotten is the classic story of a “Cotard” patient. Cotard is an extreme form of depression in which you believe you are dead. One Cotard patient was queried about whether dead people bleed. He said, “Of course not.” His therapist then stuck him with a pin.

“I guess dead people do bleed” was his response. Disconfirmation evaded.

4
. L. Alloy and L. Abramson, “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
108 (1979): 441–85.

Permissions Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to
the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:

Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.:
Items from “State-Trait Anxiety Inventory” from
Self-Evaluation Questionnaire
—
Form Y
by C. D. Spielberger, R. L. Gorsuch, R. E. Lushene, P. R. Vagg, and G. A. Jacobs, copyright © 1977 by Charles D. Spielberger. Modified and reprinted by permission of the publisher, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto, CA 94303. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the publisher’s written consent.

New Directions Publishing Corporation:
“The Mind Is an Ancient and Famous Capitol” from
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge
by Delmore Schwartz, copyright © 1959 by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology:
Items 10–20 from Part Two of “State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI)” by Charles D. Spielberger, copyright © 1979, 1986, 1988 by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2007

Copyright © 1993, 2007 by Martin E. P. Seligman

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States in slightly different form by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1993.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Owing to limitations on space, acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found following the index.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Seligman, Martin E. P.
What you can change and what you can’t : the complete guide to successful
self-improvement / Martin E. P. Seligman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Change (Psychology). 2. Self-actualization (Psychology).
3. Behavior modification.
BF637.C4 S45 1994
158′. 1—dc20
93014757

eISBN: 978-0-307-49870-0

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