The rejection of natural science approaches to psychotherapy: Language and the world

Many postmodernists appeal to theses about the relationship between language and reality as one basis for rejecting natural science approaches to psychotherapy. The theses include one or more of the following. (a) There are multiple worlds rather than just one, (b) worlds are constructed rather than discovered, and (c) worlds are not independent of mind and language. I refer to the conjunction of these three propositions as the multiple worlds-constructionist view. After examining the most systematic defense of the multiple worlds-constructionist view. I conclude that it fails, and that each component of the view is false. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, inc.