A (long) Comment on Scott Alexander’s Review of “Unlearn Your Pain”

My son Ben texted me the other day that his favorite blogger, Scott Alexander, had published a post reviewing Howard Shubiner’s book Unlearn Your Pain.  Despite being a psychiatry resident, Scott manages to be a prolific writer in areas of interest which appear to be TNTC.  Ben knows him through Effective Altruism, and sent me the review because it mentions ISTDP (Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy), the kind of therapy that I do. I had read some of Scott’s other posts with interest, always wishing I had more time to keep up.

I enjoyed the review, and sat down to email a response to Scott, since my thoughts seemed a little long to post as a comment. Scott asked me to post them as a comment anyway, at which point I discovered that his blogging platform agreed with my initial gut feeling.  So I am posting them here, and will post a link to this post in the comment section of his review.

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