Have we overestimated the effectiveness of psychotherapy?
I happen to have some knowledge and experience with something called &quot;Neuro-Linguistic Programming&quot;.  It&#x27;s a rigorous but unscientific body of ideas and techniques that roughly amounts to an &quot;operating system&quot; for the human mind.<p>(From the POV of a computer programmer it is interesting to note that the origin of NLP involved the analysis of videos of therapy sessions of a few highly effective therapists[1], done with the aid of Chomsky&#x27;s Transformational Grammar, which of course is related to the Chomsky hierarchy of grammars...)<p>I&#x27;ve always been disappointed that whenever people &quot;do science to&quot; NLP it seems to fall flat.  I have to assume the studies are flawed somehow because I personally know damn well the techniques work.  Yet the wikipedia entry is all about how it&#x27;s a pseudoscience.  It&#x27;s a very frustrating situation.<p>[1] Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, I believe were the main ones.