It is slightly heartening that a CBT practitioner is trying to distance himself from GET and the whole psychosomatic view. Maybe they are starting to wonder if that ship is sinking?
In the end he seems to say "this research was was seriously flawed, but we can still use some of it if we squint." The part that he wants to use:
Of the three successful CBT trials that utilized more objective actigraphy-based physical activity outcomes,[17] none found improvements in actigraphy from pre- to post-treatment or between intervention and control groups.
So in the better studies they found no objective proof that the therapy worked but some of the patients reported feeling slightly better. Why the disparity?
One plausible interpretation of this finding is that ‘recovered’ individuals may have replaced illness-exacerbating activities with illness-moderating behaviors, resulting in no net increase in total activity levels.
Ya, that and response bias
. (The article he cites is a reanalysis of three studies--but it doesn't mention which they are in the abstract, which is all I can get to. Does anyone know if the three studies avoided response bias?)
I recognize that he seems to be a good person trying to be a sort of peacemaker...and I do think that large parts of the article cover important points. But he never seriously considers the possibility that CBT doesn't do much for us beyond the human contact. It seems like because he personally believes in it, he finds CBT innocent until proven worthless. I wish I could see the "good" studies he cites, because I wonder if they use follow-up studies to check if there was any long-term gain, and I wonder if they use control groups where the participants spoke to someone who just listened.
And like many people here, I wonder if he sees false illness beliefs as at least 25% of every organic disorder.
Sigh. Why can't they leave us alone and go help people who want it?
