ABSTRACT
This is a commentary on an APA presentation by Goodman, et al. (2013) titled “The Macdonaldization of Psychotherapy.” They argued that “the marketing of evidence-based modalities and symptom reduction models have a particular bearing on persons with fewer economic resources who have access to a narrow range of therapeutic approaches.” I am in agreement with their perspective, but I argue that the concept of evidence-based treatment (EBT) is not only dangerous because it justifies a two-tiered system of care that patronizes, cheats, and uses the oppressed and the poor for its own ends. EBTs are also dangerous because they are implicated in a broad and increasingly prominent way of being (i.e., the self) that degrades and politically silences Americans in all walks of life. In various ways each of us is affected by the impoverished, instrumental, technicized understanding of human being that EBTs reflect and reproduce. Goodman, et al. have identified a problem that is a manifestation of the larger cultural terrain, and it is that terrain that I would like to address. Besides an unquestioned belief in EBTs, the cultural terrain has also produced electronic machines and their sequalae, such as the internet, social networking sites, avatars, massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), manualized therapies, psychological graduate programs built around academic competencies, and in general the broad sweep of proceduralism. In this commentary, I briefly discuss some of the moral and political consequences of those cultural artifacts and the current American self.
