Review of The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science

A new book investigates the worldview of a range of fanatics who’ve dedicated their lives to holding onto to their antiscientific and antihistorical claims.

Therapists must offer abused children a different felt experience of who they are.

Romantically infatuated with the idea of psychological revelation—aka the therapeutic “breakthrough”—therapists too often ignore the fact that a life’s worth of habitual behavior often trumps, for good or ill, all the insights and emotional fireworks that we like to see as the key to therapeutic “progress.”

How do you help 200 teenagers who’ve had to flee their country find a path to peace in a new place? A psychiatrist who’s traveled across the world to help traumatized refugees from Tibet guides them to a source of wisdom and hope within themselves.

There are some clients who yell at us, manipulate us, go broodingly silent on us, have uncontrollable emotional breakdowns in session, disappear for weeks at a time, ignore our advice, and later blame us when their lives don’t improve. The normal rules of genteel reciprocity, so willingly respected by our “nice” clients, are routinely trashed by these “tough customers.” What do we do?

With all the recent developments in research, theory, and practice, we have more treatment options to choose from than ever before. Why then do so many practitioners still find client “resistance” a regular companion in their consulting rooms?

Why do we get stuck in “Groundhog Day therapy”—cases in which we spin our wheels from session to session? Before lurching on to alternative treatment strategies, the key to progress is recognizing the need to shift the therapist–client relationship.

Inevitably, given their history of trauma, many borderline clients will trigger their therapists from time to time. But forgoing the urge to blame these clients and taking responsibility for what’s happening inside you can become a turning point in therapy.

When therapy goes wrong, it’s typically because we’ve entered our clients’ trance, joining them in their myopic misery. Once there, our job is to break the spell, broaden the vision, and open ourselves to possibilities outside the tunnel.

Given their arrogance, condescension, and lack of empathy, narcissists are notoriously difficult clients. The key to working with them is being direct and transparent about the roiling emotions they trigger in us.