Chris and Mirella

Chris and Mirella stood together high on the cliff top with majestic views over the whole valley below. As they looked yonder they could see the slaves of the science paradigm each heaving huge blocks of stone into place, there was a multitude, each with a very specific role in the construction of the pyramids built to honour and preserve the evidence based scientific paradigm. Each slave laying the block of stone that was to become their prison, and each slave learnt to see the pyramid as they had been told to see it by the wise teachers in the schools of learning without realising that they had forgotten how to question.

“¿Why should one question?” declared Mirella and it was true, because engraved on each of the pyramids were the words p=<0,05,  thus it was written from that moment on all knowledge must be p=<0,05 as a testament to it’s objectivity and all other knowledge which does not bear this sign shall be rejected and ridiculed, and so it came to pass.

As Chris and Mirella looked on an old man Kierkegaard came to them and declared “The people still suffer!” “¿Do you not see?” “The people no longer exist, but are lost completely to objectiveness.” Kierkegaard sunk deeper into his cloak and turned mumbling “mark my words!! Objective madness is the worse type of madness because one regards oneself as just another fact. People with objective madness have no soul.”

Chris turned to Mirella and asked “maybe the time has come to be authentic and admit our incoherencies.”

“I am always coherent!!!” cried Mirella, to which Chris answered “That may be so, but isn’t it also true that when we claim to be something we shed responsibility for our actions?”

Chris paused, “we can never just be, we chose and do”.

Mirella sunk deeper into her woollen jacket, for it was beginning to get cold, her voice trembled either from the cold or because it was the first time she felt uncertainty “But if I step outside of the scientific paradigm, what shall become of me?”

Chris wished there was a way to offer certainty but the truth must be told “Life will become meaningless; this is the price one must pay for being a free thinker. To be free means to assume freedom, for it is through our choices that we really become free. Accept the unavoidable, the here and now and assume the responsibility of our choice in every situation. For if we are what we do, then we are nothing but the choices we make.

“Are you suggesting that you and I..my life are all nothing?” despaired Mirella.

“On the contrary, we can only strive to be nothing; nothingness is a state which is never permanent, even if we achieve it, it cannot be maintained; It would be false to believe we are nothing, but striving to be nothing frees us from the restraints of dogma and paradigm.. When we lean on scientific paradigm we flee from our choices and our responsibility, the same as our ancestors relied on religious doctrine to avoid choices and responsibility. Who does evidence based intervention serve? Does it help the patient or does it help free the therapist of responsibility...?”

Chris turned up his collar as the winds began to chill his spine. “In the vain hope of becoming a CBT therapist, we shed our responsibility. The moment we make our bed with any school of thought we are relieved of all choice and responsibility and thus lost”.

Just at that moment the pyramids began to tremble. “You see? A theoretical framework is a fortress that we build for security, but beware for it is built upon the moving sands of uncertainty and change; any feeling of control is at best fleeting”.

“We must embrace freedom, for as much as we try to hide behind dogma and paradigms, we can never be liberated of our responsibility. We do not take an exam, there is no certificate, we cannot become, only strive to become without becoming. Once we become we stop striving and just are, we are safe in the knowledge that never again must we make another decision”.

Mirella shook her head and muttered “But being and becoming makes me feel good, should I reject that?”

“Feeling good is only temporary, it is doing that is important. What is more important to you, to feel good or live well? It is futile to try to be at one with oneself. Anxiously holding onto our theoretical framework enables us to avoid this truth and any thoughts we may have of being “right” are just thoughts and we should abstain from attaching importance to them”.

Mirella once more shook her head and replied “Surely we owe it to our clients to follow those who have gone before and what has proved to work?”

“But if I can’t make a decision free from dogma, what right have I to make decisions for others? Surely we need a committed response to each situation, not just a manual to follow. When we create our own values, we encourage our clients to be the artists of their own lives and not just followers of what has gone before”.

“When our clients come with anxiety, we should encourage them to embrace anxiety as bearer of the ultimate truth, that life is pointless. Temporary avoidance quickly disappears like sand through our fingers and objectivity can never be obtained because to understand something is to interpret it.”

Mirella turned to go as now it was getting dark, Chris thought he heard “You’re out of your fucking mind” but the wind carried it away