psychoanalysis

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I respect Freuds work in that I am a great believer in learnt behaviour. I think his overall claims are valid and that a persons surroundings and experiences in life will shape them. However, I think it is recognised now that we all have our in built traits that can effect our way through life, but this does not overthrow what Freud said. Adults are often at the mercy of what they learnt during the formative years and the process of pshycoanalysis is available to tackle deep rooted issues. But I would not go for it, simply because I think it would be impossible or extremely stressful to "un learn" something that you learnt during childhood. Who really wants to have their most deep entrenched memories brought to the surface? What good would it do unless they are causing severe mental problems later in life?

I think for pshycotherapy to work well, you would need a combination of drugs and relaxed sessions to deal with things like PTSD or any childhood trauma. MDMA works well at this, and apparently LSD has been tested for it too.

I also like what Freud said about Religion and Civilisation.

some interesting responses. however no-one has mentioned what might be the point that i wanted the discussion to focus upon.

psychiatry generally considers mental health issues to be the result of chemical imbalances that can be corrected using psychotropic drugs. obviously psychiatrists accept that dysfunctional circumstances can lead to temporary episodes of mental ill-health, however the former stands true for psychiatrists generally when referring to long term and enduring mental health issues.
personally i don't think this is a very good approach. firstly, i couldn't say i've ever come across anybody whose life has been restored by the use of such drugs. they don't seem to correct the postulated imbalance that causes the issue. rather, they appear to blunt the mental faculty as a whole, which may or may not temper the underlying behaviour that is considered "illness".
secondly, and relating partly to the former, the side effects are often horrendous. often people on high doses of such drugs aren't in much of a fit state to carry out the functions required for a fulfilling life.
thirdly, it seems quite obvious to me (although perhaps not to others, and this is merely my own take on it) that mental health issues are resultant of social and environmental stress factors. it seems counter-intuitive to class medicalise mental health issues when empirical evidence for such an assumption appears scant, and in the face of the general failure of psychiatric medication to treat such conditions.
i would welcome any counter arguments to any of these points.

the approach of psychotherapy suggests that mental ill-health is the product of faulty development of the person primarily during childhood. this seems like a more plausible approach to me.

however, my personal point of view is that issues arise out of dysfunction within the collective. poor mental health is the result of a dysfunctional society and lack of strong and tolerant community. again, this is simply my own opinion. starting from here, though, would it be easy to consider psychoanalysis/psychotherapy/psychology as a means by which to project the failings of society onto the individual? would we not be better placed to start practising socio-therapy? i feel that wilhelm reich's early work touched on this notion quite a bit.

opinions are most welcome.

I have no counter arguments to your points because I agree with them. My opinion on why investments are not made in pshycotherapy is because it does not make money. Our societies want profits and creating mind numbing drugs that people are prescribed for a lifetime make huge profits (a lot directly from the taxpayer). So governments do have an obligation to investigate other methods but they are scared of any indications that the societies we live in are causing mental health problems in the population. But I think in a lot of cases that is what is happening.

It could even be said that the bankers have suffered from a mental health issue in that they knowingly risked the stability of the banks they worked for. So they were not looking after their own well being. They showed destructive traits.

But no one will say this because people just want to keep making money.

Prince Charles made an interesting comment a few years back: "It was once the case that we used a means called wealth generation in order to reach a goal of prosperity and security. But it appears now that the means has replaced the goal, and this is to the detriment of our prosperity and security." (paraphrasing).

So it is as though the whole of society has lost it, and just gone on a money grabbing spree without thinking of the consequences.

Last edited by Robdemanc on 05 Jan 2012, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's interesting for curiosity's sake but I wouldn't ever really take it seriously.

i never said you said it did. i simply asked if you thought it did.

while some or even most of it may be jettisoned as bunk, there are clearly some truths in it (in my opinion, of course). you are so cynical at times.

I wouldn't call it pseudo science. I wouldn't call it science at all, and I don't think it presents itself as that. I see it as a way of thinking, a bit like they way people try to predict market interest in new products.

You make some good points, but I worry that you may be too quick to blame society for the ills of the individual. I think the health of society depends upon how the individuals work to make it healthy. I don't think that society by nature imposes anything on anyone. Sure, society often DOES function this way, but not all societies are structured to make this happen necessarily. Western society seems to be concerned with self-determination as to what it is and what it does. But that doesn't make its constituents mentally ill. I'm of the opinion that American leadership is made up of a number of deviants responsible for the moral decline of the country. But at the same time the American people are empowered if they so desire to change that.

I know more about general psychology than psychotherapy and -analysis specifically. Current methodology in therapy is one of self-discovery. The idea is that the patient already knows what the problem is. The role of counselor is not to tell the patient what his problem is--the counselor might be mistaken, or even if the counselor is right, he can't make the patient believe him. The role of counselor is to serve as a guide to help the patient examine his own behavioral patterns and ultimately draw the conclusion that he already knows and the therapist already knows. I'm not convinced that there is any magic bullet method to do this, and most counselors I've ever known preferred an eclectic approach rather than a clearly defined method. You treat the client, not the problem. While problems are common to many clients, no two clients are alike. The same solution will fix the same problems among however many clients you have. But you won't make any of those clients actually believe it. That's a step they have to take on their own.

If you're taking aim at society, then you need a person capable of listening to society and rather than telling society what to believe, leading that society to come up with the solution they already know is the right solution. My belief is that God can lead society back to what it already knows is the truth. You just can't make society admit to it. Without consistent human spiritual leadership to hold such a society together, society will just go back to its own way of doing things with its own problems. Until you can either break human will or you can unify all human beings into a permanent, cohesive unit with like beliefs, you'll never fix the problems of society as a whole or even the individual.

And that's where individual desires are the primary influence over the ills of society. That doesn't account for genetics. I don't think society can MAKE someone schizophrenic from behavior alone. Or bi-polar disorder. Or autism. All you can do, if you're seriously taking aim at those kinds of things, is cull all individuals who are disordered or non-uniform to the rest of society. Western society won't stand for it, and I'm not suggesting that's the right thing to do. We generally believe in giving everyone a chance. But if society came around to believing in and practicing eugenics, I think that's about the only way forward if you're trying to cure society of all its physically driven ills. You can pass laws that require in vitro and selective embryo implantation. If you're unwilling to kill human beings that are anomalous to the ideal, you could restrict them to certain areas and have them sterilized. Merely saying to a secular society, "ok, boys and girls, y'all play nice" isn't going to cut it.

what is your take on the notion that psychoanalysis is individualising social issues?


this is sort of what wilhelm reich was looking at with his early work. he is generally discounted as a crank because he lost the plot somewhat in later life, but i find his early work hugely interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Last edited by peebo on 05 Jan 2012, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh Doktor Freud, Herr Doktor Freud
How we wish you had been differently employed
Instead of curing sclerosis, you fiddled with neurosis
Oh what a shame, Herr Doktor Freud.

ruveyn

I am not sure. What do you mean by "individualising social issues"?

His early work seems to tally with Freud, they think sex was the main motivator of people and neurotic reactions came about through repression. I can agree with that. But bare in mind they came along just after Darwin, so huge weight was placed on the "sexual imperitive". I think for younger people sex is vitally important. However, "sexual energy" can be channelled eslewhere.

I know that when I have a good sex life I feel much better

People knew that long before Freud.

ruveyn

Yeah but Victorian England had forgotten so it was good that he wrote it all down, in a very intelligent way, for them to remember again.

Let's be careful not to equate the terms, "psychoanalysis," and, "psychotherapy." The former is a small subset of the latter, while the latter includes the medical discipline of psychiatry along with a range of allied professional practices.

Since when did you stop believing in the freedom to contract?

And who does the vetting? And who gets to decide when the technique passes muster?

I actually have time for this particular idea of Freuds. I understand that Freud theorised that the paternal enjoyment of the mother and the rule the father lays down to prevent the child from fully enjoying the mother is the starting point of civilisation. For Freud, I understand that the basic desire of people is to finally break free of this primary rule and obtain full enjoyment of the mother. Instead, this libido, through being suppressed, must express itself through numerous other civilised causes or be frustrated in the form of psychological symptoms. I think this idea has a lot going for it and at least gets one thinking about what's really going on beneath the surface of civilised existence. I think the idea, even today, is as much a taboo subject of discussion as it is an idea that has been found to be factually ridiculous.

well you seem to agree with my thinking that a lot, or the majority, even, of behaviours that are considered to constitute poor mental health are social and environmental in nature, or at least that people with such tendencies as to display or develop such behaviours tend to do so under the duress of having to survive within the capitalist system. or at least that there is a clear economic and social root much of the time. but it seems that rather than locate the problem as such, psychoanalysis/therapy/ology considers such problems very much on an individual basis. it appears to examine the "individual mind" rather than the "social production of mind".



i think most would agree with this!

Of course, we are shaped by our upbringing, our culture, and also determined by our genetic inheritance. This all takes place within nature and at the same time within the particular civilization in which we find ouselves.

A first question to ask is: is there any such thing as 'mental health'? There just is what there is. From an evolutionary perspective there is no necessity of what we might call healthy mental functioning. That's within the wider sphere of nature. Within the particular culture 'within' that nature comes the definition of 'mental health'.

Our western civilisation, or even any civilisation that I can think of, is inherently problematic when it comes to aggregating our interests as natural individuals. On the one hand cicilization has many benefits for basically everyone e.g. law and order, health care, technology, economic systems. On the other hand, our natural self-interest must be sublimated in order that the benefits of civilisation be sustained and, even, improved. Within civilisation, that self-interest still manifests itself in many ways that become more or less socially acceptable e.g. individual pursuit of wealth and power, pornographic entertainment. And so on, and so on. This is Freud's picture in Civilization and it's Discontents. The only serious way forward is to gradually alter civilization so that each person gets what s/he wants out of it, so that each person feels that they get their natural desires more or less met.