Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Thoughts on Negativity in Psychotherapy Research

The ways in which we relate to ourselves and the world are constituted by negative dimensions: not knowing, indeterminacy, and contradiction. It is precisely this ambiguity of things, this sometimes fundamental irritation, that draws us closer, drives us, and makes us want to know more. In this article, I critically engage with what I regard as an overly positive stance that currently prevails in some fields of psychotherapy and psychotherapy research. Here, data accumulation and a general movement toward “computational psychotherapy” are presented as cornerstones of a new personalized form of psychotherapy based on a precision paradigm. Against this backdrop, I seek to reintroduce the relevance of negative dimensions that are intrinsically tied to psychotherapy’s origins. I suggest that, although positive research programs in psychotherapy aim for prediction, integration, and progress, an unexamined orientation toward the positive risks flattening complexity, assimilating contradictions, and obscuring those elements that resist straightforward representation.