Praxis as a Radical Alternative to Scientific Frameworks for Psychotherapy

This article propounds that formal clinical frameworks do not provide answers to the significant technical problems that typically confront certain types of psychotherapists in their daily work. Specifically, it is claimed that for a certain class of therapies “normal science s” theoretical frameworks cannot logically entail (i.e., lead deductively to) therapeutic technique and clinical practices. Earlier publications explained this failure of formalized theories as stemming from structural features, i.e., from the impoverished representational capacity inherent in mathematization. Now a second kind of explanation focuses on functional limitations inherent in theories of the “behavioral objectives” type. Such models do not address the issue of values inherent in process and in goal selection, focusing instead on quantifying predetermined goals and measuring outcomes to assess whether the goals had been reached; process is reduced to an instrumental function. To counter both kinds of limitations—structural and functional—a radical and still largely unfamiliar framework, praxis, is proposed and introduced as an alternative to conventional theorizing.