Hmmm... I'm pretty skeptical of the premise that "All therapy books start with a claim that their form of therapy will change everything."
My wife practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and the foundation of her approach and all CBT books on her bookshelf is that CBT in fact doesn't change anything at all. You will still have symptoms (depression, anxiety, etc.) after CBT, but the goal of CBT is to help you manage those symptoms and live a meaningful life despite those symptoms. It's reasonable to doubt that such an approach can work, but Scott's article entirely misses that this approach can even exist. I suspect that this is a latent bias due to his psychiatrist training. (Psychiatrists are trained to use medicine to reduce/eliminate symptoms, and that is their primary measure of success; psychologists use therapy, and the reduction/elimination of symptoms is not necessarily their primary measure of success.)
I just did a quick search on amazon for CBT books, however, and found that most results are things like "CBT for Dummies" and "Teach yourself CBT in 7 weeks". These are not books for doctors, but books for laymen that are merely self-help books with a veneer of science/therapy to help the book sell. Who knows what sort of crap is in these books.
My wife practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and the foundation of her approach and all CBT books on her bookshelf is that CBT in fact doesn't change anything at all. You will still have symptoms (depression, anxiety, etc.) after CBT, but the goal of CBT is to help you manage those symptoms and live a meaningful life despite those symptoms. It's reasonable to doubt that such an approach can work, but Scott's article entirely misses that this approach can even exist. I suspect that this is a latent bias due to his psychiatrist training. (Psychiatrists are trained to use medicine to reduce/eliminate symptoms, and that is their primary measure of success; psychologists use therapy, and the reduction/elimination of symptoms is not necessarily their primary measure of success.)
I just did a quick search on amazon for CBT books, however, and found that most results are things like "CBT for Dummies" and "Teach yourself CBT in 7 weeks". These are not books for doctors, but books for laymen that are merely self-help books with a veneer of science/therapy to help the book sell. Who knows what sort of crap is in these books.