Contrasting Licensed Psychotherapy &
Unlicensed Coaching With Education In
Mental & Emotional Development

Since the middle of the twentieth century “therapy” has become a staple of normal American life.  It may be a surprise to people outside the field that in fact there is no agreed upon definition for what constitutes “psychotherapy.”  In fact, once a person has a state issued license—whether as a Marriage & Family therapist, Clinical Psychologist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, or Psychiatrist (MD licensed in Psychiatry)—whatever he or she decides to do, is now legally “psychotherapy”.

This means there is no agreed-upon protocol for treatment, and no objective criteria for measuring effectiveness.  As a result, in this highly-regulated profession pretending to be scientific, in real-life practice it is in effect the wild-west where almost anything goes.

So if a therapist believes in reincarnation, and that we carry inside ourselves memories of past lives, then he can offer “past life regressions” where the client is induced into a hypnotic state to help her remember who she was in the past.  The theory is that our experience in past lives affects our mental/emotional states in the present, and that connecting the two will help us understand ourselves and make needed changes.

Less fanciful but no more substantiated are more traditional forms of therapy that range from Behavior to Reality therapy, from Psychoanalysis and Ego-psychology to Neuro-linguistic programming and Positive Psychology, to advice giving and problem solving that we could get from an insightful friend.  To date, there is no therapy style that can experientially define and objectively measure precisely what it offers, or even define specifically what is gained if the therapy is successful. 

The consequence is that as a healing profession, “psychotherapy” is strictly a faith-based enterprise—just like religion.  Of course, in our feeling-based world, for most people, this is not a problem.  Often, all we want is a therapist who makes us feel good, so real-life effectiveness is not a consciously defined criteria.

Mostly, we are hungry for energy and attention offered in a context of real or feigned interest by someone who at least pretends to know more about life, living and intimate relationships than we do, and mostly that is exactly what we get!  Feigned interest, and the pretense our therapist knows more than we do.

Coaching, in a sense is more honest.  It is un-regulated, and anyone who has the balls to pretend they know more than other people, or who simply offers some level of warm interest and undivided attention, or perhaps is a charismatic “know-it-all” who makes people feel special just because they know him/her—much like Jim Jones who got nine hundred people to “drink the Kool-Aid” based solely on his personality and say-so—can virtually, literally, or figuratively “hang-out his shingle” and be a coach.

The problem is that as individuals, and as a species, we need objective training in all the “internal” dimensions of real-life human experience so we can fulfill our potential to become consciously content ourselves, and developmentally competent to first understand, and then effectively respond to the complex problems of modern human existence.

Anyone can review the major issues of modern life—whether the personal happiness of each individual, or the well-being and even survival of our species—and see that the global problems of resource depletion, climate change, economic inequality, political strife, religious conflict, species extinction, etc. etc., are far beyond our developmental capacity to either understand, or resolve.

Clearly, as individuals and as a species, we need the mental and emotional development necessary to think through complex problems until we understand what is both true and needed—for ourselves, mates and children, as well as the global healing of Nature, and the well-being of all people.

We need an objective and measurable level of training that clearly defines our own and everyone else’s universal internal needs and potentials, as well as developmental tasks, so we can embark on an educational process to acquire the skills and awareness necessary to think for understanding, build emotional bonds, and master the ability to express love, pursue truth, experience beauty and develop wisdom.

Neither therapy or coaching can offer a single step toward objective internal development, and while each may feel good emotionally, like a body massage can feel good physically, if we observe the objective results there is no real change in our ability to think for understanding, or master internal needs, potentials, and developmental tasks that occurs because of a mental and emotional massage, i.e., psychotherapy or coaching.