Introduction: Evidence-Based Therapy and the Illusion of Objectivity

Evidence-Based Therapy (EBT) has emerged as the dominant model in modern psychotherapeutic discourse. EBT is defined by the American Psychological Association as “the integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences.” It promises improved clinical outcomes through scientific rigor, measurable protocols, and standardization. It has become the gold standard in mental health care delivery, endorsed by governments, funding agencies, and insurance companies.

Blake Griffin Edwards takes a very different view. In his chapter “The Empathor’s New Clothes: When Person-Centered Practices and Evidence-Based Claims Collide” (in Re-Visioning Person-Centered Therapy: Theory and Practice for the 21st Century, Routledge, 2022), he provides a trenchant critique of EBT. He describes the ways in which EBT, despite its scientific veneer, often undermines the very conditions that allow genuine healing to occur.

This essay seeks to extend Edwards’ assessment of EBT through the provocative insights of Osho. Osho’s own radical examinations of science, therapy, and consciousness illuminate the spiritual and existential limitations of a mechanized therapeutic model. Osho’s reflections challenge the fetishization of evidence and protocol, calling for a return to presence, love, and the ineffable mystery of the human encounter.

The Paradox of Standardization: The Double Deficit of EBT

Edwards draws attention to a paradox: the standardization of psychotherapeutic technique presumes scientific precision. However, the individuality of both therapist and client inevitably resists such uniformity. The human variables—personality, presence, intuition—invalidate the supposedly replicable “dose” of therapy. Thus, the promise of predictability fails, while the depersonalizing ethos remains intact. This, Edwards argues, results in a “double deficit”: science fails, and humanity is eclipsed.

Osho’s critique parallels this deeply. He warns that:

Man is not for science, science is for man.” ¹

And he repeatedly exposes how the scientific method, while useful in the material domain, becomes distorted when applied to the inner world.

In his commentary on modern physics, Osho makes a startling comparison between the behavior of subatomic particles and human spontaneity:

“The same was discovered in the innermost core of the atom: the electrons behave differently when there is no observer. And the moment the scientist and his instruments make them aware that somebody is observing, they change their rules; a sudden transformation takes place.” ²

Just as the electron becomes self-conscious under observation, so too does the human being in therapy, especially under the scrutiny of rigid clinical frameworks. The observer, when armed with protocols, changes the phenomenon.

This mirrors the experiential truth of therapy: presence changes when it is objectified.

Edwards exposes that the supposed neutrality of EBT conceals an implicit coercion: the client is subtly forced into predetermined categories and trajectories. Osho similarly warns: 

“A very sane theory cannot be right because a sane theory will be human. It will be very limited. Only a crazy theory has any possibility of being right because crazy means that which transcends human limitations.” ³

In short, human experience, in all its wildness and unpredictability, is reduced and distorted by “sane” frameworks that cannot account for the full range of being human.

Financial Incentives and Institutional Power

One cannot discuss EBT without acknowledging the economic and institutional forces that fuel its proliferation. EBT provides a product: a marketable, standardized, auditable treatment process that can be easily packaged and sold. It aligns perfectly with the bureaucratic demands of health insurance, risk management, and institutional accountability.

Edwards hints at this dimension, noting the complicity of universities and licensing boards in promoting a narrow vision of therapeutic success. Osho goes further, identifying this alignment as a form of spiritual betrayal:

“The whole psychoanalysis movement around the world is the most exploitative experiment that is going on. Nobody is helped; everybody is exploited tremendously…. The psychoanalyst, psychotherapist… they reduce you into a patient and they are the physicians. And the trouble is that they themselves are suffering from the same diseases.” ⁴

This is not a rejection of therapy itself but a rejection of turning the healing process into a mere commodity.

Healing is not a service provided by an expert to a deficient subject; it is a mutual, sacred unfolding.

When therapy becomes a transaction, its essence is lost.

The Observer Effect: Witnessing Versus Watching

The therapist’s role in EBT is framed as that of a skilled technician who “delivers” therapy. Yet this very framing initiates a performance. As Osho points out:

“When you are taking a bath, with the door closed, nude, enjoying the freedom of being alone…. Suddenly you become aware of a noise near the door and you see two eyes looking through the keyhole. Suddenly you are no longer the same, you have changed.” ⁵

This analogy is not merely humorous; it is profound. The very act of being watched changes our behavior. In therapy, when the therapist becomes a protocol executor, and the client becomes a monitored subject, the space of authentic vulnerability is lost.

Edwards acknowledges this in his discussion of how evidence-based practice may crowd out genuine attunement. A protocol-driven session may satisfy institutional demands but fail to nurture the mysterious alchemy that occurs when one soul meets another in the present moment.

Therapist as Friend, Not Expert

Osho exhorts the therapist to take a position of humility and equality in the therapeutic space, presenting themselves in a narrative such as:

“‘These are the techniques I have learned, and a little bit is my experience. I will give you the techniques, and I will share my experience…’ but you are just friends in need. ‘I have some understanding, not much, but I can share it with you.’” ⁴

This stance rejects the hierarchical model of the expert and patient.

It is a relational ethic grounded not in superiority, but in a shared humanity.

Further:

“Make it clear from the very beginning…

There is nothing more therapeutic than love.

“Technique can help, but the real miracle happens through love.” ⁴

Technique is not abandoned—but it is dethroned.

Love, presence, and humility become the true ground of therapeutic transformation.

Science Without Soul: The Limits of Methodology

Osho consistently exposes the limitations of the scientific method when applied to the inner life:

“It is just as if you ask the scientist, ‘Please watch this roseflower, it is so beautiful’ – he can analyze the roseflower…. But he will not be able to find any beauty in the flower scientifically.” ⁶

Here, the essence of the rose—the poetry, the presence, the felt beauty—is invisible to the tools of science.

So too is the essence of the therapeutic encounter. The more we subject it to observation, categorization, and measurement, the more it slips away.

Osho is not anti-science. He calls for a new science, one rooted in consciousness:

“Man can have inside him a pure religiousness – that means love, that means silence, that means meditation – and also a sense of pure science, so that no branches of science go on doing work unnecessarily which is destructive to other parts.” ⁷

In other words, therapy must be a marriage of clarity and compassion, method and mystery. Only such a union can respect the irreducible depth of the human psyche. 

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Encounter

To return to Edwards’ metaphor: the Empathor’s new clothes are no more real than the Emperor’s in the Hans Christian Anderson story.

The garments of evidence and objectivity, while necessary in some domains, become absurd when they eclipse the very humanity they claim to serve.

The reclamation of therapy is not a rejection of science, but a rebalancing. Osho calls for a “new way of science,” one that dares to include the immeasurable.

Therapy, in this view, is not a system to be administered, but a presence to be embodied.

“Truth is so vast, it cannot be reduced into a syllogism. You can sing about it, but you cannot argue about it…. You can dance it, but you cannot make a dogma out of it.” ⁹

Therapy, too, is closer to dance than doctrine. It is not a map but a meeting. And it is in this meeting—in the unpredictable, unmeasurable, and miraculous moment of encounter—that healing, at last, begins.

END

Dhyan Tadhg

References

Edwards, B. G. (2022). The empathor’s new clothes: When person-centered practices and evidence-based claims collide. In D. Murphy, S. Joseph, & B. G. Edwards (Eds.), Re-Visioning Person-Centered Therapy: Theory and Practice for the 21st Century. Routledge.

1. Osho, Om Mani Padme Hum – The Sound of Silence: The Diamond in the Lotus, Talk #30 – “A New Way of Science
2. Osho, From Darkness to Light, Talk #10 – Not Spiritual Guidance but Spiritual Presence
3. Osho, The Divine Melody, Talk #4 – How Can I Be Myself
4. Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, talk #14 – A Very Delicate and Complex Affair
5. Osho, From Darkness to Light, Talk #10 – Not Spiritual Guidance but Spiritual Presence
6. Osho, Philosophia Perennis Series 2, Talk #7 – Live Moment to Moment
7. Osho, Om Mani Padme Hum – The Sound of Silence: The Diamond in the Lotus, Talk #30 – A New Way of Science
8. Osho, The Divine Melody, Talk #4 – How Can I Be Myself