Facing and Overcoming Pain Through Scientific Evidence: The Imperative of Exposure as a Psychological Technique for Cognitive Behavioral Treatments in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

On the basis of a research study on cognitive behavioral psychotherapies conducted between 2016 and 2020, this article analyzes exposure as a psychological technique focused on facing and overcoming distressing situations that interfere with everyday life and cause pain. Said psychotherapies have gained more relevance in Argentina in recent years. Their development and institutionalization continued during the first decades of the new millennium. By the late 1990s, there were social and economic transformations that modified people’s lives and produced different types of suffering. In addition, that scenario was set with subjectivity models based on the importance of being autonomous and responsible in different spheres of daily life (including healthcare). Accordingly, current social imperatives such as “you can do it” or “give it another try” become values linked to personal realization that are assimilated by these psychotherapies through techniques such as exposure. In that respect, this article aims at analyzing exposure as a psychological technology with evidence-based epistemological presuppositions and problem-solving models based on the subjects’ individual commitment. Unlike most social–anthropological studies that connect the notion of exposure to that of risk, from a cognitive behavioral standpoint, self-exposing and overcoming the cause of distress is associated with a successful therapeutic process. This study used a qualitative methodology, and the technique was the analysis drawn from 30 semi-structured interviews with cognitive behavioral psychologists from the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina.