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The title of David\'s TEAM-CBT eBook for therapists is Tools, Not Schools, of Therapy. David explains that the field of psychotherapy is dominated by numerous schools of therapy that compete like religions, or even cults, each claiming to have the answer to emotional suffering. So you\\u2019ve got the psychodynamic school, and the psychoanalytic school, the Adlerian school, the Beckian cognitive therapy school, the Jungian school, and tons more, including EMDR, behavior therapy, humanistic therapy, ACT, TMT, EMT, and so forth. Wikipedia lists more than 50 major schools of psychotherapy, but there are way more than that, as new schools emerge almost on a weekly basis.

David describes several conversations with the late Dr. Albert Ellis, who argued that most schools of therapy were started by narcissistic and emotionally disturbed individuals. Ellis claimed that most were self-promoting, dishonest individuals who claimed to know the true \\u201ccauses\\u201d of emotional distress and insisted they had the \\u201cbest\\u201d treatment methods. And yet, research almost never supports these claims.

David, who is a medical doctor, points out that we don\\u2019t have competing schools of medicine. Can you imagine what it would be like if we did? Let\\u2019s say you broke your leg, and went to a doctor who prescribes penicillin. You ask why he\\u2019s prescribing penicillin for a broken leg, and he explains that he\\u2019s a member of the penicillin school. He says he always prescribes penicillin\\u2014it\\u2019s good for whatever ails you!

That would be like an Alice in Wonderland world. And yet, that\\u2019s precisely how psychiatry and psychotherapy are currently set up. If you\\u2019re depressed and you go to a psychiatrist, you\\u2019ll be treated with pills. If you go to a psychoanalytic therapist, you\\u2019ll get psychoanalysis. Or if you go to a practitioner of EMDR, TFT, or Rational Emotive Therapy (RET), you\\u2019ll get EMDR, TFT, or RET. David argues that this just doesn\\u2019t make sense.

David argues that the fields needs to move from competing schools of therapy to a new, science-based, data-driven psychotherapy. He emphasizes that we\\u2019ve learned a lot from most of the schools of therapy, and that many have provided us with valuable insights about human nature as well as some useful treatment techniques. But now it\\u2019s time to move on, leaving all the schools of therapy behind. David acknowledges that this message may seem harsh or upsetting to some listeners, and apologizes for that ahead of time.

David and Fabrice also discuss the spiritual basis of effective psychotherapy, and David describes the reaction of his father, a Lutheran minister, on the day that David was born, as well as a tip his mother gave him when he was in third grade.

In the next Feeling Good Podcast, David and Fabrice will describe Relapse Prevention Training, since the likelihood of relapse after successful treatment is 100%. But if the patient knows what to do, the relapse doesn\\u2019t have to be a problem.