Petrarchive – Psychoanalysis

In line at the grocery store so here's a quick A.

Freud's project is basically Schelling's, and as such is an extension of the attempt to complete the system of German Idealism. The point is ultimately to indicate the basic phenomena (trauma, for Freud) that provide fundamental connections between subjectivity and objectivity

Okay I have another minute to expand on this answer >>3550

I just want to point out that all modern German thought in Feud's tradition is some form of a response to the idealism/materialism dichotomy. Schelling's idea is that there are such things as self-evident meanings, things that are what they say and say what they are. Freud focuses that approach to trauma.

I think the way that you characterize its incompatibility with either of the "two cultures" is arguably the point. For philosophers it's supposed to show where and how objectivity and determinacy become undeniable strategies for the subject. For scientists, it's supposed to show how self-determination and freedom enter the objective world.

So on the grounds I don't really know how one can fairly treat it as "bogus." It seems more bogus to believe either in hardcore materialism or idealism.

>>3549 (OP)
All psychiatric disciplines are frauds. Psychoanalysis is at least interesting.

>>3554
I see what you mean. I meant by bogus, people like >>3556. I don't really hold a strong persuasion one way or the other on psychoanalysis, though I am skeptical of modern day psychiatry.

One of the lingering questions for me regarding psychoanalysis, which is potentially its reason for being pivotal in the 20th century, is its treatment of truth. Both philosophy and "scientism" (for lack of better phrase, I don't think the two are truly opposed) make objective claims, most of the time at least. Psychoanalysis toes the line between an objective, hidden truth, and a subjective, impossible to conceptualize, truth. Maybe I'm just not able to picture its claims as well.

>>3556
I see a lot of psychiatry as fraudulent, too. Reminds me of Bacon saying that the aim of science is to master and control completely all, so if the subject of science becomes man, then psychiatry is the science of controlling man. At the same time, I can see why people were desperate for answers, in the cases of insanity.

>>3556
What of the benefits in quality of life many people gain from psychiatry?

Read Kristeva, then Zizek, then Lacan.
>3568
Psychiatry is a medical discipline that classifies and attempts to treat the symptoms or mode of action of non-neurological defects in thought.

Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head.

>3564
You'll want to read Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend on the history and philosophy of science. Bacon is so "seminal" now that people wipe him off their face when they're finished with him.

>3562
Philosophy after Wittgenstein in Anal and after "french theory" in Continental doesn't make objective claims, because Wittgenstein proved it impossible, and because The Absolute ablates its own contemplation in history as a process where meaning is impossible.

Thus Lacanian psychoanalysis in a circumstance where truth claims aren't possible. Freud seems to have made truth claims. Lacan makes "useful conjectures," which never truly engage the real, the image, or the symbolic, but the symbol eats images up trying to feel real.

>>3556
All Epics are Frauds. At least Sophistry is interesting, I found the greatest of Sophists most interesting, you might know him, he was an ugly short cunt of a man who trolled the entire marketplace and begged for free gym memberships.

>>3562
WRT truth in psychoanalysis: read Paul Ricœur's writings on Freud 'De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud'. Fun fact: Emmanuel Macron worked as Ricœur's editoral assistant for a time.
>>3568
Many people who could do well if someone gave them the harsh talk and told them to get real are encouraged to see themselves as weak and helpless by psychology/psychiatry. Though some illnesses, like post-partum depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, seem to be real and they are genuinely helped.

>>3586
Thanks for the helpful names.

>>Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head.
So you think ill of the idea?

>> Lacan makes "useful conjectures," which never truly engage the real, the image, or the symbolic, but the symbol eats images up trying to feel real.
Contemporary psychoanalysis is mainly a discipline trying to make symbolic interpretations then? I probably need to just read Lacan as I feel a little short of understanding what you mean.

I think the best argument for engaging Freudian or post-Freudian stuff is the absolute conceptual poverty in prevailing clinical psychology and psychiatry. You can just look at the thin vocabulary surrounding "health" and "wellness" and see immediately that these people are only suited to handing out worksheets and repeating back what you say to them. By contrast, the people from the analytic tradition are much more self-aware about therapy and the therapeutic encounter, and they tend to use a much richer vocabulary for the passions and perversities of real life.

I think the best argument against Freud & co is that no one really graduates out of their program. I don't even know that I necessarily believe "finishing" therapy should necessarily be the ultimate goal, but it is *a* goal. I would expect that if there were a successful therapeutic technique then at least some people would use it to respond to specific issues and then get on with life. That seems like a valid expectation to have for at least some cases, and yet it doesn't seem like therapeutic models on the analytic side really deliver people to those goals.

I feel like my ideal would be someone who gives you the room to be a weird little freak, points out some of the patterns in your freakiness, collaborates with you on some practical responses to those patterns, and then sends you on your way.

>>3763
The workbooks and homework-like nature of contemporary clinical psychology is indeed what puts me off (and the heavy emphasis on medication).

I would guess that psychoanalysis doesn't see a completion of therapy because the tensions and neuroses do not really resolve. The goal appears to be the remove the negative symptoms however, like anxiety, fear, hostility, etc. And pattern recognition does seem like a crucial aspect of that. It's what also sets it apart from confession, for me at least, in wondering why one would want to engage in psychoanalysis. That is, the shrink can be descriptive about the patient's problems in a way that the priest can only be prescriptive. I guess there is a question of how the patient, much like the sinner, can ever not be the patient.

When I tried therapy, that's about all I did with it (regarding your last sentence). Never went back, after talking about an event in my life with the therapist. It was helpful for releasing energy, but largely felt silly.

>>3778

One thing about the emphasis on medication: I try to frequently raise the point that there are a lot of potentially therapeutic (or IDK adaptogenic) experiences that medical professionals have sworn off. And in the case of psychological health, we know that there are somatic / physical influences on your experience. By the time a serious medical professional graduates from school, it has been drilled into his/her head that s/he can cause iatrogenic harm and so s/he needs to be super super conservative about anything that has any sort of side effects. I think that's reasonable from the provider's perspective but if the patient takes those limits seriously it limits the options available for personal transformation.

My point here is that there are a lot of moves that you, as a free person who actually pays attention to your life, might take that are verboten for a medically licensed therapist. And I think that these are most interesting / revealing when it comes to the somatic drivers of psychological phenomena. Here's my example: I had a really traumatic event and (long story short) I stopped drinking coffee as part of my response. I was going unhinged in the aftermath of the event. I was way more anxious than usual and my shrink wanted to do talk therapy for anxiety and maybe depression. I know from my own life experience that those are not really characteristic of me and that I needed to do something to undercut the anxious aspects of my daily experience. I ended up cutting out all caffeine for a couple months on the theory that my "anxiety" was just the intersection of slight chemical over-stimulation (the caffeine) and a bunch of negative shit that had happened to me. And sure enough, when I was off caffeine for a couple months and once I got back to lifting after the event, I wasn't anxious. Ta-da!

But think about how much it would take for my shrink to get to the point of demanding I go cold-turkey on caffeine. We'd have to have a bunch of repetitive conversations about other factors of anxiety before settling on this one, and then my therapist would have to very politely ask that I cut it down to one cup, and then after a while a half-cup, and so on. And in all likelihood these conversations would never happen because my shrink would first favor additive approaches (adding medication) before ever ever moving to a restrictive approach (cutting caffeine). And we'd have to spend months and months discussing whether my anxiety was due to the way that my dad was a dick to me when I was a kid (he was) and how my mom facilitated it (she did). That would have wasted my time in a period when I was sincerely suffering. Because I knew my own lifestyle (coffee was a hobby) and I knew the barest essentials of mental health, I was able to cut to the quick.

Consider weight loss for a metaphor that's a bit further afield. We know that fasting causes people to lose weight. Cavemen knew it. Furthermore, in today's obesogenic world we know that fasting is pretty sustainable and that no one is seriously at risk of accidentally starving to death. But MDs will not prescribe fasting and will throw up lots of roadblocks to a patient who wants to discuss it in all but a few rare cases. It's good that they're worried about reinforcing potentially-harmful eating disorders. However for an adult male of 270 pounds in middle America I think his chances of developing an ED are small and his chances of a preventable death due to heart disease are high. And if that 270-pound man has his shit together, he should just start fasting and let the doctors deal with it.

So overall my advice to you is that at the end of the day you're actually in charge of your own life, and that includes what you do in response to a person with a credential who wants to medicalize your mental health.

>>3781
Yeah, true, in my life medical professionals have always been more of a hindrance than not. I wasted a lot of time and money trying to figure out a GI disorder, which I still don't know much about, because the mid levels and MDs told me to kick rocks as they considered anything too risky for a young male who didn't have a debilitating illness. So, I basically just had to DIY it. Easy to see why people fall victim to snake oil and crystal healing.

Maybe that is why I consider older forms of psychoanalysis more interesting or beneficial than what is around today. Freudian psychoanalysis, for what its worth, feels like an uncovering of the limitations and strengths of willpower.

>>3748
>>>Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head.
>So you think ill of the idea?
No, I think so little of "science." Psychoanalysis can be useful, but associating with "science" is like the company of fools.

>Contemporary psychoanalysis is mainly a discipline trying to make symbolic interpretations then?
All the terms I mentioned are specific terms in Lacan. Psychoanalysis has always involved the manipulation of symbols: language. It isn't so much a matter of interpreting symbols, as using the interpretation of symbols as a way to uncover "the lack" that drives a personality, so that someone can understand why or how they try to temporarily fill rather than to resolve their lack.

If you read Zizek on the uses of perversion as an alternative to neurosis and psychosis it is interesting. Whether one can become perverted is another question.

>>3791
I see, so psychoanalysis would be better if it were more removed from the scientific methodology for you? Do you disagree with the intensity of scientific claims (i.e., certainty) or something else?

That's a good, simple explanation. Guess I'll have to hit the books to get it more.

I am reading Triste Tropiques, by Claude Levi-Strauss. Not a psychoanalyst, but an anthropologist, Claude remarks anecdotally that the three disciplines which greatly opened his mind and affected the way he studies the world were psychoanalysis, geology, and Marxism. I thought not only was it an amusing grouping, but his argument made sense. These three disciplines involve distorting our idea of time and space to a significant degree. The reason things occur is not only from what we see, but beyond that as well, coming from some other reality behind the perceived. The other day, I was driving along the highway, and looking at some outcrops nearby which excellently showcased the different segments composing the landscape. At some point in time, one might've looked at that and assumed it was ready-made, not that some ongoing process that you cannot even conceive of lead to it being that way, and eventually that same process will render it completely different. Similarly, I became more sympathetic to psychoanalysis with that comparison. That is, instead of considering our behaviors as simply occurring randomly, we must assume there is a reason for it, even if we cannot see or perceive that reason immediately.

>>4544
There's a lot of good stuff about how much geology / geological time revolutionized the Victorian mind. It makes sense that Levi-Strauss would be impacted by it. FWIW it seems like the common element of all 3 is a minimization of anthropocentrism.

>>4551
Did you ever read about the fern craze of the Victorian era? Pretty interesting

>>4561
Thanks for introducing me to this!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteridomania

>>4551
Yes, that and Darwinism really expanded the idea of where causes can be found, where one should even look, and how reality may be interpreted.

It's interesting that you say anthropocentrism is minimized in all three. I agree with you, but it's funny because, except geology, two of them are focused entirely on humans and their logic. I suppose really, the disciplines shift the focus of their studies from individual causes (whether single persons or some sort of scientific point) towards patterns and narrative.

I guess really Darwin himself was greatly influenced by the advance of geologic thought, so maybe it is just rocks at the root of it all lol

>>3781
>because my shrink would first favor additive approaches (adding medication) before ever ever moving to a restrictive approach (cutting caffeine)
Nassim Taleb uses the same principle under the name Via Negativa (better to act by doing less of something you know to be harmful, rather than add some unknown that might be useful).

>>4697
Exactly homie that's who learned me "iatrogenic"

>>4704
It is worth a read? Or is it just the latest Silicon Valley fad with a pair of good ideas stretched over hundreds of pages?

>>4727
1. No one is as smart as Taleb thinks he is.
2. He's a catastrophically bad writer and the first press editor who started accepting his dumb anecdotes or the the "Fat Tony" character deserves to go dig ditches.
3. You're better off reading the sources that Taleb is aping (badly): to replace Taleb's stuff on markets read Mandelbrot's *Fractals and Scaling in Finance*; to replace his weird health stuff read *Medical Nemesis*; to replace his anti-modernism stuff read James Scott; to replace his aphoristic stuff just read Nietzsche. Nothing else really has value.

>>4740
IDIOT!!!!

>>4740
I should have recognised Illich, makes sense.
Thanks for the recs.

I need that pic of Taleb and Rippetoe. Such a perfect duo of overly aggressive guys who have figured out one (1) gimmick in life.

Bump

>>3564
psychiatry is necessarily the science of man qua man, its the science that seeks to provide a medial good for the soul of man, so its aim isn't to control man, but to give treatment to him insofar as the soul is concerned

I suppose the issue lies in the definition of treatment, and what it means to treat the soul. Also, in the assumption that the soul can be scientifically dissected.

>>5472
>qua

Are there any contemporary psychoanalysts worth their salt today? Feels like a dead field. Sure, there's fellas like Zizek, but they treat psychoanalysis as a philosophical niche, not as a prescriptive, medical discipline.

>>6013
Alessandra Lemma

and Dana Amir

>>6039
>>6040
Ok, the field is dead, got it, thank you.

>>6045
So, if it's dead, can it be brought back? Or has everyone stopped believing in the magic? I mean, maybe psychoanalysis only had any staying power because, like religion, the client accepted it had effect and so it did.

>>6045
You do not know who Lemma or Amir are.

>>6064
True

What's the German word for the air of superiority displayed by heavily CBT'd people who condescend when the untherapised have normal emotional variations?
The scene: Normie T Normieson experiences a very distressing event and reaches out to close friends and family. One of those people has spent years paying someone to be his/her friend and memorized a CBT workbook. The therapized person treats Normie's experiences as a clinical event and drops really heavy references to "talking to a professional." As of "talking to a professional" isn't just a poor substitute for having a community of loving, caring adults.
If these people had any self-awareness, they'd see it as just as inappropriate as recommending a hobbyist club for RC cars.

>>6598
Narcissismus?

>>6598
>As of "talking to a professional" isn't just a poor substitute for having a community of loving, caring adults.
I kind of agree, but some adults, even with good friends and family, need a community of paid, licensed therapists.

>>6623
It's true that some people need paid therapists. But it's equally true that any school of psychotherapy has its limits. CBT people, for example, can deconstruct maladaptive thought patterns if the patient is fairly typical and cooperative. But CBT can't take away all negative experiences, and no one should say that it does. Pain and suffering are simply part of the human condition. What I object to is when people generalize from their experience of being relieved from disordered thoughts. An anxious person who learns what catastrophizing is will enjoy benefits that are not generalizable to all experiences of negativity. That's what I beef with.

>>6629
Yeah, seems reasonable.
I kind of like the 12-step programs because they're flexible that way. Everyone follows a general path and picks what they need (be it psychoanalysis, CBT, community, spirituality, service, etc.)

I am more annoyed by the psychoanalytic omnipresence in literature. The idea that the root of every character trait is in childhood is interesting, but very limiting. By design, what's a character's action worth if everything was decided years ago?
It's one of many "systems" most writers apply to their story out of habit and convention.

>>7037
yes, I know it's cliche to krisspost but this was one of his better essays

https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-repulsive-crust

>>7040
>Spending too much time around prestige entertainment is like talking to one of those first-year psychology students who think their course of study will let them essentially read people’s minds.
That is accurate. Thanks for the link.

>>7040

A defense of esoteric hipsterdom. Become repulsive. Listen to Bladee.

>>7037
In some way, I find that most interesting about psychoanalysis. It seamlessly entered mainstream lexicon and mythos. Or at least, that's how it is now. Like, it just is.

>>7072
it's funny how so much of it got subsumed into folk knowledge while at the same time being nominally discredited. how many people will snort at the mention of Freud - "what, that guy who said everyone wanted to fuck their moms?" - and yet happily talk about egos and repressed emotions as if those are just ideas that were handed down from Plato.

>>7075
I feel like the "mainstream" answer might be something like those concepts answered to an explanation power which we were missing, even if Freud's other theories were left to wither. But it seems like too easy of an explanation.

It's funny that certain vocabularies about the family have very long lives. Augustan art was full of the language of family and familial piety. The Hebrew Bible's language of family was epoch-giving to the west. The Holy Family was a huge development in Christendom, and is probably more dearly worshipped than the Trinity. Freud is probably the first familial myth-maker who we know as an individual

I found anti-psychiatry people are usually stupid and like to conflate psychiatry with psychoanalysis.What the worse is they're always arts & humanities graduates. Just taking states like"psychoanalysis ruling us" or "They're structuralisms which's out of date".Only a few of them could make a good argument from writings of Foucault or Deleuze.
But...I totally understand why some people accuse Foucault and Deleuze of "being neolib handmaidens". their vitalism points can be read as"If u be chad u chad".And that has no help for who are heavily nervous or depressed.
So is there any pro psychoanalysis counterargument? Every time I have to admit to others I have some mystic beliefs beside my physicalism and that's why I am into psychoanalysis. Seems I just go back to "science and humanities are separate" idea

>>7433

I hate you

Which antipsychiatry people are there who are medically trained and don't have usual leftist blank-slate beliefs? Joanna Moncrieff is one--though she criticises SSRIs specifically, she is basically anti-psychiatry through and through, viewing it as just social control, even though she's a highly biologically-minded psychiatrist, and believes in things everybody believed pre-1960s like genetic inheritance of intelligence etc. Thomas Szasz was also medical, though his anti-psychiatry stands were more philosophical. Who else? Arieti I guess too.

>>7450

Psychiatry is the central exculpatory argument for blank slateism. Rather than normal deviations from various means, "conditions" are invented which, like diseases, you could catch or inherit. ADHD becomes a syndrome you're born with

>>7457
Would you explain more what you mean? The notion of genetic inheritance seems at odds with blank-slatist beliefs. Most people adopt whichever beliefs suit them at the time: e.g., if I'm an alcoholic it must be because I have the genes for it, blame dad and mom--if I succeed, though, it's all my own effort and hard work, etc. Cynical, but that's what people are like.

In any event, talk of heritability of intelligence (or other mental traits like neuroticism) is extremely taboo in today's world, even though most people recognise heritability if only subconsciously. It is openly discussed among doctors but not with the general public. And Moncrieff stands out for embracing heritability while being on the left and broadly anti-psychiatry--this is a perfectly coherent position, but like I said, most anti-psychiatry people have inane blank slate beliefs too.

>>7471

The disease model is all about SUBLIMATION.

We accept, of course, that if the parents have some rare genetic disorder the child will have it as well. A short person just has dwarfism, a tall person just has acromegaly.

>>7473
>The disease model is all about SUBLIMATION.
Explain what this means.
>We accept, of course, that if the parents have some rare genetic disorder the child will have it as well. A short person just has dwarfism, a tall person just has acromegaly.
Do you accept that traits like intelligence, being normally distributed and polygenic, are passed down such that a child's IQ (barring environmental influence) is ({mother IQ + father IQ} / 2)?

>>7433
Have you explored the William James / Richard Rorty alignment of pragmatic psychology? Basically, there's no "final vocabulary" or no structuralism that we can use with metaphysical certainty to understand the mind. IIRC Rorty said something like "what we find down there is what we put there." Contingency Irony and Solidarity has a really oddball version of Freud that is essentially remade in Rorty's image of a left-Nietzschean autopoet. The only question is about what aesthetic results we get from certain vocabularies -- what do you feel when you deal with yourself as X or Y or Z? What kinds of experiences do you get from interacting with your environment when you treat your own mind as X or Y or Z?

If you buy into all of that James / Rorty angle, I think they lead really directly to REBT/CBT/etc. thought.