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<p>Despite growing interdisciplinary work on conspiracy beliefs, explicit psychotherapy research on these phenomena remains limited. This review first outlines this research gap and then examines how conspiracy thinking may affect the construction of meaning and other common factors of the psychotherapeutic process. The narrative review was chosen because literature integrating psychotherapy- and conspiracy-related themes was assumed to be scarce. In a first step, such literature (general and orientation-specific) was identified (and scarcity confirmed). In a second step, topical conspiracy research from psychology, philosophy and the social sciences was identified by adding emergent keywords and then integrated with process-relevant common factors. Sufficiency was assumed when a consistent narrative could be substantiated and further search brought up mainly sources already identified. Research directly linking conspiracy thinking and psychotherapy is rare and often limited to etiological dimensions. Integrating findings across disciplines, conspiracy thinking emerges as an intervening factor in meaning-making, alliance, narrative flexibility and social embeddedness in therapy. Generalized, trait-like epistemic mistrust can undermine credibility, while state-like conspiracy-related mistrust may signal repairable alliance ruptures. Conceptual tools such as negative capability suggest that interventions should emphasize restoring interpretative freedom rather than confronting conspiracy narratives. Apart from these process-related dimensions, also clinically relevant correlations with anxiety, paranoid ideation or personality disorders are described in literature. The therapeutic significance of conspiracy thinking appears to lie less in specific beliefs than in their relational and epistemic consequences for therapy. Psychotherapy science could benefit from further integrating research from sociology, political- and communication science and study of religion, and vice versa. Further research is needed on how therapists’ own epistemic positions and demand for authentic presence interfere with client’s conspiracy beliefs, and how practice can better understand epistemic distrust without pathologizing contextually grounded skepticism.</p>

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Conspiracy Thinking in Psychotherapy: A Narrative Review Integrating Topical Research on Conspiracy Beliefs and Process-related Common Factors

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月25日

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  • Manuel Jakab

摘要

Despite growing interdisciplinary work on conspiracy beliefs, explicit psychotherapy research on these phenomena remains limited. This review first outlines this research gap and then examines how conspiracy thinking may affect the construction of meaning and other common factors of the psychotherapeutic process. The narrative review was chosen because literature integrating psychotherapy- and conspiracy-related themes was assumed to be scarce. In a first step, such literature (general and orientation-specific) was identified (and scarcity confirmed). In a second step, topical conspiracy research from psychology, philosophy and the social sciences was identified by adding emergent keywords and then integrated with process-relevant common factors. Sufficiency was assumed when a consistent narrative could be substantiated and further search brought up mainly sources already identified. Research directly linking conspiracy thinking and psychotherapy is rare and often limited to etiological dimensions. Integrating findings across disciplines, conspiracy thinking emerges as an intervening factor in meaning-making, alliance, narrative flexibility and social embeddedness in therapy. Generalized, trait-like epistemic mistrust can undermine credibility, while state-like conspiracy-related mistrust may signal repairable alliance ruptures. Conceptual tools such as negative capability suggest that interventions should emphasize restoring interpretative freedom rather than confronting conspiracy narratives. Apart from these process-related dimensions, also clinically relevant correlations with anxiety, paranoid ideation or personality disorders are described in literature. The therapeutic significance of conspiracy thinking appears to lie less in specific beliefs than in their relational and epistemic consequences for therapy. Psychotherapy science could benefit from further integrating research from sociology, political- and communication science and study of religion, and vice versa. Further research is needed on how therapists’ own epistemic positions and demand for authentic presence interfere with client’s conspiracy beliefs, and how practice can better understand epistemic distrust without pathologizing contextually grounded skepticism.