Humanistic Psychotherapy and the Scientist-Practitioner Debate: An “Embodied” Perspective

Abstract

This article invites participants in the scientist-practitioner debate to reflect on the nature of psychotherapy. Contrary to the received notion of practice as “applied” theory, the author argues that practice has its own logic, the “prelogical logic” of the body. The author’s contention is that the so-called scientist-practitioner split in psychology cannot even begin to be addressed so long as we continue to hold the misguided notion that the psychotherapeutic practice is applied theory, and so long as we fail to recognize practice as instead a unique way of knowing, radically different from empirical science and technology. To correct this pandemic misperception, the author expounds the “logic of practice” in terms of the philosophy of “embodiment,”as articulated by three thinkers, Lévi-Strauss, Merleau-Ponty, and Bourdieu. Implications of this perspective for a mutually beneficial partnership between science and practice are discussed in the conclusion.