It is deliciously tricky and exciting – employing Dadaistic subversion as an instrument of critique, to explore the current landscape of orthodox Western psychological schools. Especially because I am a trained organizational- and clinical psychologist with a bunch of experience in different methods of psychotherapy such as family therapy, behavior therapy, analytical therapy, body therapy or gestalt therapy practiced with individuals and groups. Here my poetic and analytical arguments what makes four main “schools “of psychology fall short to serving what I call the Caring Trickster behavior repertoire as reliable and liberating.
The Core Risk
The moment Dadaistic acts of intervention are interpreted through an orthodox psychological lens- behaviorist, cognitive, psychoanalytic, humanistic, or AI based - they can lose their subversive edge. They risk being framed as symptoms, deficits, or neuroses. A Dadaist intervention, such as outperforming a power player by letting his/her mean statements grasp at nothing may be recast as a mere ‘coping mechanism,’ of having problems with authority. With this alertness on my mind I start exploring.
Four Schools under the Dada Lens
In the West we rely on four big psychological schools: Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Neuroscience, and A- based psychological interventions.
The blind spot of Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis, with its faith in uncovering repressed memories as the key to psychic truth, falters on the recognition that memory does not faithfully represent reality but instead reconstructs it, turning therapeutic insight into an act of narrative creation rather than factual recovery.
Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25(12), 720–725.
My poetic comment.
Freud digs in memory’s mud —
but memory lies.
Each recollection a forgery,
each dream is a counterfeit confession.
The blind spot of Behaviorism
Behaviorism, in its quest for scientific precision, reduces the richness of human experience to observable behavior, neglecting the inner thoughts and meanings that give actions psychological depth.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Prentice Hall. Luxton, D. D. (2014). Artificial intelligence in psychological practice: Current and future applications and implications. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 45(5), 332–339.
My poetic comment:
The behaviorist taps the glass:
rat turns, lever clicks,
meaning collapses to motion.
The blind spot of Neuroscience
Neuroscience, though powerful in mapping the brain’s mechanisms, succumbs to reductionism, translating the complexity of the mind into mere neural circuitry while leaving subjective experience unexplained.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.Searle, J. R. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
My poetic comment
Neurons spark -
scientists map the thunder
and call it thought,
but the feeling slips through the wires.
The blind spot of AI-based psychological interventions
Finally, AI-based psychological interventions, though innovative and accessible, by copying effectively the other three schools, lack genuine empathy and moral understanding essential to human connection, offering algorithmic simulation in place of authentic care.
Bendig, E., Erb, B., Schulze-Thuesing, L., & Baumeister, H. (2019). The next generation: Chatbots in clinical psychology and psychotherapy to foster mental health – A scoping review. Internet Interventions, 18, 100-276. Luxton, D. D. (2014). Artificial intelligence in psychological practice: Current and future applications and implications. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 45(5), 332–339.
My poetic comment:
AI smiles politely,
mirror made of code,
says “I care.”
Empathy.exe not found.
Beware the Psychotrenders
There are not only established schools of psychotherapy, but also single psychotrends. Think of terms such as mindfulness, psychedelic-assisted therapy, digital wellness, or trauma-informed practices. One example: Gabor Maté’s book The Myth of Normal is among the most discussed new releases in the field of trauma and healing. But the physician Maté focuses so strongly on trauma that he explains almost every psychological disorder through it. My DADA asks: “And the molecules in space? And the color of the wind?” - an ironic reminder that complex realities cannot be reduced to simple lines. Maté’s focus on individual healing potential is appealing, yet the machinery of society remains untouched. Whether a single topic or an entire model, caution is advised when applying it in psychotherapy. DADA recommends: hit pause – reality is too absurd to be squeezed into simple models.
Conclusion
I deeply respect those of my professional colleagues who are followers of one of these schools, but apply their methods in mastership thereby avoiding charlatanism. But Psychology as a science must be very sensitive to shortcuts and doctrines because we work with the human fabric itself.
Each method, in its own way, illuminates an aspect of the psyche but is undermined by the very lens through which it seeks mastery - showing that no single framework can encompass the full truth of human psychological life.
My poetic comment:
Four prophets circle the same ghost:
the self,
half myth, half malfunction.
No cure,
only echoes.
A Glimmer of Hope – Embodiment
Traditional talk therapies primarily engage cognitive and narrative processes, often neglecting the body as a site of psychological experience. Yet clinical and neurobiological research consistently demonstrates that emotional distress exerts continuous physiological strain. Many affective states arise preverbally and are expressed through somatic channels - sensation, movement, breath, muscle tone, and posture - before they are available to conscious thought or language.
Somatic approaches address this gap by working directly with embodied experience. Rather than relying solely on storytelling or rational interpretation, somatic therapy helps individuals observe how emotions, thoughts, and physiological states interact in real time. This shift from explanation to experience enables access to implicit processes that are often inaccessible through verbal reflection alone.
Bessel van der Kolk’s „The Body Keeps the Score” articulates this principle clearly, emphasizing that traumatic stress is not merely remembered cognitively but is organized and expressed through the body. From this perspective, regulation and healing emerge not from insight alone, but from restoring the body’s capacity for safety, agency, and responsiveness.
When applied as a complement rather than an alternative to talk therapy, somatic interventions reduce the risk of intellectualization and over-reliance on narrative coherence. Integrated thoughtfully and ethically, embodiment-based work represents a significant asset to psychotherapeutic effectiveness, particularly in the treatment of trauma, affect dysregulation, and chronic stress-related conditions.
Breaking Free with the Caring Trickster:Trick and Care
I have developed a few practical rules of how to break free from being caught in concepts and models that you can test and encounter in my workshops at the Shiver.Smile.Sigh.Etiquette Academy.
Do not allow acts to be codified.
Once an intervention can be named, systematized, or taught as a method, it is already halfway domesticated.
Keep interventions non-repeatable and context sensitive.
Resist execution on command and remain inseparable from the specific moment, relationship, and setting in which they arise.
Embrace contradiction.
Design interventions that cannot be resolved into a single coherent meaning or intention.
Preserve interpretive multiplicity.
Let each act invite several mutually contradictory readings, none of which can claim final authority.
Maintain poetic opacity.
Use language, timing, silence, and bodily gesture without clichéd jargon, diagnostic labels, or rigid behavioral scripts.
Challenge the observer’s expectations.
Dadaistic interventions function as mirrors: they reflect the observer’s theoretical commitments, biases, and blind spots rather than confirming them.
A Critical Mark on Dada
Dadaism (c. 1916–1924), with its anti-rational, anti-systemic, and anti-teleological stance, fundamentally opposed the notion that human experience can be stabilized, repaired, or “fixed” through orderly methods. Transposed from an artistic movement into psychological practice, a Dadaistic intervention refuses both normalization and optimization.
Rather than merely resisting imposed structures of meaning, it would actively invite the emergence of unburdened behavior - actions freed from instrumental purpose, coherent narrative, or corrective intent. In this sense, Dada can function as a “last-mile” delivery to the psyche: not a method of cure, but a behavior disruption that opens space for spontaneous, non-compliant forms of being.
Patricia von Papstein -