On Symptoms vs Causes in Therapy

There are legitimate concerns about the medical model and the capitalist logics that have bled into and shaped this area of work over the last century - and the othering potentialities therein. The counselling and psychotherapy industry can, as a result of its inescapable rooting in the capitalist structure of society at large, tend to focus on symptom reduction as a goal rather than exploring causes, with an aim to just get you functioning again – to get you back to work, essentially. And this is why I love psychodynamic work - because it makes space for the question why are these symptoms occurring - what is making them occur?
 
You can hack away at weeds with all the energy you are able to muster, but unless you get to the roots they will be sure to grow back, time and again, and without getting at those roots you risk being left dealing with the problems they represent for a lifetime.