Psychotherapy as a search for truth about (your own) life

The article develops the thesis about the truth of cognition in psychotherapy. We embedded the argument in the classical view of truth and the personal–nature perspective of understanding human nature. We specified the object of cognition (the patient’s life story told for the purpose of treatment) and the method (hermeneutics) and demonstrated the validity of thinking about psychotherapy as an applied field of the humanities. We further analyzed the truth of historical and literary narratives and next extrapolated the results to therapeutic narratives. We established that the truth of cognition in psychotherapy should not be equated with its objectivity in the sense of disregarding the patient’s subjective valuations and the specific contexts of their life. Truth in therapeutic dialogue can be discovered both on a personal level, that is, the patient’s unique life story, and on a universal level, that is, inscribed in culture or transcultural truths about humans and their condition that are implicitly contained in this story. Approaching truth in psychotherapy, like in the humanities, requires honesty in the search for it and involves the acquisition of wisdom-like knowledge. In the concluding section, we discussed the scientific sense of psychotherapy research, selected areas of psychology in the humanistic paradigm, and presented postulates for therapeutic practice and methodology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)