With reference to cognitive-behavioural therapy, this paper aims to show how the therapist-patient relationship is corrupted by systemic unknowns (related to the individual’s system of possibilities) and relational unknowns (related to the channel of communication that opens up among different individuals). Unknowns defined through an observation of the causal link that may appear uncontrollable by the method, thus resulting as subjectively constructed. Therefore, by incorporating the individual’s system into the method’s system, it may become problematic to validate the therapeutic outcome, in a way that is intersubjectively controllable and reproducible. In practice, without epistemological validity, the therapeutic outcome may be determined in a random manner, compared to the rules of the method. A mechanism that has to be identified with the purpose of an adaptation of the working hypotheses applied in psychotherapy.
Key words: unknowns, psychotherapy, method, relationship, diagnosis
DOI: doi.org/10.36131/psichpsicoterapia240402