It's Always Been About the Money

This is continuing TODAY at Harmony Place, Monterey with Schwartz, Schwartz, & Galperin.

In a paper that Mark schwartz co-authored, with the founder of IFS, Richard (Dick) Schwartz and Castlewood clinical co-director Lori Galperin, they are honest enough to admit that “Unfortunately, no well-constructed outcome studies testing the IFS model and methods have been completed…” they assert that “the best evidence of IFS is from empirical observations in the clinician’s office.” (p. 7-8) I would have to beg to differ with them that this is valid evidence, especially given the heavy investment that ISF therapists have made in the training itself, which would render them far from unbiased. The most basic level, Level 1 alone, according to the IFS website training brochures, costs $3400. Level 2 is $2500 and Level 3 is $1500 which comes to a total of $7400 and that doesn’t include additional expenses such as travel, lodging and textbooks. There are many reasons (which I have outlined elsewhere in my writings) why it is unwise to make claims based only on clinical successes and why it is premature, in my opinion, to be marketing such trainings when published well designed outcome studies are lacking. Schwartz, Schwartz and Galperin also maintain in that same paper, that “Until the results of these studies are in, skeptical clinicians are left to test these assertions within their own practices.” What does this mean? Are clients being informed that they are test subjects, basically guinea pigs? Have they consented to what is essentially an experimental treatment? I see nothing about suggesting this on any of the IFS sites I have read. Instead, what I see are suggestions on how to introduce IFS to a client, with no mention that it is experimental. What I do see instead are unsupported claims based not on independent research, but on the clinical experience of therapists who have a big investment in the treatment. Even without such an investment, human beings, including clinicians are subject to confirmation bias, which is the tendency to focus on successes and ignore or explain away failures."

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