Psychoanalysis C or D

He also will freely acknowledge, though, that a bad shrink can completely fuck you up. So trust your instincts, to some extent -- although the process of psychoanalysis will also inevitably cause anxiety which will make you want to run away, among other things, and I suspect it can be tough to tell the difference between anxiety provoked by being forced to confront major issues, and anxiety provoked by having a crazy shrink.

But then again, the best shrink I ever had shot himself in the head a few months after I saw him last, so go figure.

How does one get past the feeling that they're just after your money?

I mean isn't it in the analyst's best interest to keep you there, encourage you to keep coming and to come more often?

How does one get past the feeling that they're just after your money?

Get a gym membership instead. They're still only after your money, but it's much better at fighting depression.

Try a brief solutions-focused therapist. If you get a good one, they're super helpful & get the job done quick.

analysts >>>>>>>> being on drugs you don't need

similarly, try someone focused on cognitive behavioural therapy. Really helped me out.

Me: I don't understand why you keep suggesting I come twice a week if I say I can't afford it.
Analyst: Are you sure that's the only reason you don't want to do it?
Me: No, I know I have other issues around it, but if I could afford it I would still do it, just like I'm coming once a week now even though I have issues around it.
Analyst: Why does it bother you that I asked?
Me: It makes me trust you less, trust the whole process less, like it's just about the money.
Analyst: But if I already agreed to see you for a reduced fee, why would you assume I was only asking you to come twice a week because of the money?
Me: (thought bubble: "because two times my reduced fee is more than one times your regular fee") Yeah, that's a good point.

fuck you, pay me

of course that becomes a good opportunity to discuss anger and deflect the subject at hand.

Twice a week is a lot!

I know!

I'm not on any meds, I'm not an addict or alcoholic, have never attempted suicide, was not molested as a child as far as I know, etc.

My therapy experience was brief. I decided that I was not learning anything about myself, and changing my habits was something I would (will) have to do all by my lonesome anyway, and I was throwing a LOT of money at someone who did little more than state the obvious. ("You need to change. That will be $120, plz.") Of course, if you ask my therapist, I just didn't give it a chance. Everyone knows that if you spend anything less than $5000 on your mental health, you can't get results.

MEANWHILE, HELLO, BEING BROKE IS DEPRESSING.

So did you change your habits?

Not all of them, no. Some of my bad habits I'm actually rather fond of.

Habits largely broken, though, include chronic self-pity and constant whining.

Those are good ones to kiss goodbye.

I mean, I don't mean to sound too grumpy about it, because I'm far from being a big emotional hard-ass, but honestly HONESTLY using that money for other things made me FAR happier than giving it to a therapist.

I see a therapist for free and half of what we talk about is how I don't have any money.

I have no idea how to find a good therapist. I've tried a couple and was basically aghast at their methods and seeming incompetence. Sure, what do I know, but the clock is fucking ticking, my wallet is floating away and I just have to trust my gut: this guy is a fucking moron, and what is up with his shirt...

So I gave up? I really don't have anyone I can trust to recommend me a therapist, so what to do?

I saw one for about a year or so. It was okay but I don't think I found closure (for certain aspects, such as my panic attacks). I quit for various reasons. I didn't feel completely at ease with the guy - something I did get a handle on more or less - and I didn't feel he addressed some quite important issues (like my panic attacks). Also, at times, I felt like I was babbling about petty things, that my problems were so trivial. But I quit a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really tell him I did, just cancelled a meeting adding that I wouldn't be coming because I had morning sickness most of the time. Quite a crappy excuse, but partially right. I am sure he sensed (in my last few sessions) that my heart wasn't in it anymore. ;-)

His method wasn't so much psychoanalysis but system psychology. Sometimes I was always dubious of (until I saw him and felt less negative about it).

A friend had to see a psychoanalist (for his own psychoanalysis training). He was waiting in his car, but when he stepped out, he had left the key inside, so he called his dad to help him out. When he told his psychoanalist,the latter immediately jumped on the fact he had called his dad. hahahahahaha

classic cause everyone hates their mother

No, I just hate both my grandmothers. Both are hideous bitches. Nothing freudian about that, they are just bitches. ;-)

Do people really think Jung/Jungian analysis is irrelevant?

total CLASSIC for saving my life in high school, more or less literally. i was on prozac and generic lorazepam, but w/out the talk therapy id probably still be on them--i wouldnt have gotten the tools to get my shit together w/out drugs.

hurting, if you dont trust your shrink, fire him/her and find one who you dont think is trying to rob you.

xpost Fuck if I know, I know I did a couple of years ago. Actually I've come around: I think both are relevant up to a degree.

ALSO, VICODIN >>> SSRIs

Also, if you really feel uncomfortable with him, it's time to move on (to someone else). This is about feeling good, so why bother being with a bloke in a room you don't feel at ease with?

Atavan, clonpin, valium>>>>SSRIs...for fun. SSRIs aren't fun. They're helpful. They've always worked best for me in conjunction w/other meds and riding my bike like crazy whenever I get super pissed.

My grandma is a total bitch, too. My great-grandma was awesome, she lived until 94 and she wanted to die very badly before that. She claimed she hadn't died yet because "there are people in heaven who don't want me to be there." Heaven conspiracy!

yeah ssris aren't good party drugs, but theyre great at making you feel like a better person after youve taken them for a couple weeks

Clonazepam is a total dud.

It's fun with alcohol.

That combo does not exactly help my mental health tho.

I've tried Lexapro, Wellbutrin and Zoloft and derived no discernible benefit.

I've heard good things about Klonipin/clonazepam, well, that it's basically like all the other benzos.

My boyfriend's tried a lotty lot of benzos for his anxiety & klonopin works the best for him.

my fave benzodiazepines, in order:

1) diazepam
2) alprazolam
3) lorazepam
4) flunitrazepam
5) clonazepam

I absolutely loathe SSRIs because of that whole sex drive thing. No sexy times is almost as depressing as being broke.

I would like a prescription of valium, tho. Where on earth do you get one of those? Mexico is too far away.

Haha being 30 miles away from Mexico is about the best thing ever.

psychoanalysis more liek load of fucking rubbish.

I absolutely loathe SSRIs because of that whole sex drive thing. No sexy times is almost as depressing as being broke.

You know, I took Paxil for a while and found it wasn't about the loss of sex drive so much as...

[little voice in head]: Wait. You don't have to type every story that pops into your head.

Jacques Lacan let me tell you what I wanna do
Do you feel for me, the way I feel for you
Jacques Lacan let me tell you what I wanna do
I wanna love you, wanna hug you, wanna squeeze you too

Has anyone seen a Lacanian psychoanalyst? Now THAT sounds like it'd be a fucking trip.

-- Gavin, Tuesday, February 12, 2008 3:50 AM

i did once. def was a trip.

Question: Is a shrink better than a really good friend?

a psychoanalyst is nothing like a friend

btw this doc is great - I'm already almost done w/part 2

In theory, I think psychoanalysis would be a good thing for anyone who is generally confused and unhappy and unable to form a plan for improving this situation. Talking about your problems is a good way to sort them out.

In reality, it is WAY too expensive for anyone to indulge themselves in, unless they are too freaking wealthy for words.

Finally, for any sort of non-neurotic mental illness, it seems at best marginal and at worst useless.

sometimes there are options - low-cost clinics, student health services, therapists with sliding scales, and occasionally even health plans that cover mental health besides drugs

my parents both did analysis while virtually broke and insist to this day it was the best money they ever spent

Finally, for any sort of non-neurotic mental illness, it seems at best marginal and at worst useless.

Which ones are these, would you say?

conservatism

manic depression, schizophrenia, etc. are not very easily treated by talk therapy

not therapy alone anyway

just finished part 3. I'm off work tomorrow.

Regarding my comment above, I still think the series is kind of using psychoanalysis as a shorthand for the whole field of psychology, which I guess branches out from psychoanalysis but becomes a lot of different things. Also psychoanalysis in the therapeutic world today is usually used to describe a specific kind of talk therapy and not all talk therapy, although sometimes I guess it gets used as a shorthand

In reality, it is WAY too expensive for anyone to indulge themselves in, unless they are too freaking wealthy for words.

most therapists have a sliding scale for their fees based on their patients' incomes

the series is kind of using psychoanalysis as a shorthand for the whole field of psychology, which I guess branches out from psychoanalysis but becomes a lot of different things.

-- Hurting 2

That was my point, above. Psychoanalysis (by which I mean Freud and his thinking) is the root of a great deal of what we now call identity. And we 21st century types are obsessed with individual identity and our own self-awareness. Without Freud and his intellectual offspring, we'd all think/feel very differently - though I suppose it's arguable that, in his absence, someone else would have done similar work.

The first volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality actually turns into a critique/historicization of psychoanalysis by the end, though people tend to focus on the other stuff in it... Anyway, worth checking out.

The series also has an overarching theme of capitalism-eats-everything -- no matter what turn psychology took, capitalism could find a way to co-opt/accommodate it. To a certain extent I think this has more to do with capitalism than psychoanalysis -- the version of psychoanalysis marketers applied seems to have been kind of rudimentary anyway. I was wondering if some of these techniques weren't already intuitively understood by good salesmen, although otoh maybe salesmen learned them from popularized and passed-down versions of psychoanalysis.

I'm was thinking about we now monitor behavior and communication (our own and that of others) for things that might seem sexually/psychologically odd, amusing, "not right", etc. We've become extraordinarily paranoid and vigilant in our approach to thinking itself.

"I'm was thinking..." Yeesh.

was that new with psychoanalysis though? That kind of thought-policing sounds religious to me.

I'm was thinking about we now monitor behavior and communication (our own and that of others) for things that might seem sexually/psychologically odd, amusing, "not right", etc. We've become extraordinarily paranoid and vigilant in our approach to thinking itself.

this is foucault, right? from history of sexuality. "techniques of the body." foucault argues pretty convincing that it comes out of psychoanalysis--not specifically freud or jung or lacan, but the institutionalization and co-opting of concepts of "normality" in things like the DSM.

i dotn really remember history of sexuality that well tho.

fuk this is like the third time in a month someone is telling me to read foucault. time to read foucault.

Yr right, of course. It was present in lots of ways prior to psychoanalysis, but its broad application, esp WRT to superficially innocent thought/behavior (think Charles Dodgson), was new. At least it seems so to me. Maybe psychoanalysis allowed thought policing to survive the death of god?

That last, re: Hurting. I've never read (much) Focault, either. If that's his idea, I picked it up secondhand, maybe by osmosis.

Seems to me today many individual psychoanalysts would probably be somewhere in between Freud and Reich - not overly concerned with the enforcement of norms but also not for 100% free self expression. At the same time, psychiatry, fueled by the pharma industry, seems more norm-obsessed than ever. Every behavioral twitch, every maladjustment to regimented, sedentary work or school life is a disorder to be treated, preferably by medication. Capitalism wins again.

If you look at the history of advertising, you do see a big shift during the 1920s when psychs start aiding the marketing departments. Less rational appeal, more emotional appeals, appeal to desire. As for the link between capitalism and psychoanalysis, Foucault helps us here, as he suggests that psychoanalysis was a way for the bourgeoisie to regulate and control their sexuality, and maintain class power, using science ("biopower").

"The chronology of the techniques relating to sex (i.e., in the fields of medicine, pedagogy, and demography) do not coincide with the hypothesis of a great repressive phase of sexuality in the 17th century. Rather there was a perpetual inventiveness, a steady growth of methods and procedures. In addition, it seems that the deployment of sexuality was not established as a principle of limitation of the pleasures of others by the ruling classes. Rather the first deployment of sexuality occurred within these upper classes. This is because the primary concern was not repression of the sexuality of the classes to be exploited, but rather the vigor, longevity, progeniture, and descent of the classes that ruled. It was a question of techniques for maximizing life. What was formed was a political ordering of life, not through the enslavement of others, but through an affirmation of self. Sexuality then is originally, historically bourgeois, and in its successive shifts and transpositions, it induces specific class effects. "

http://ssr1.uchicago.edu//PRELIMS/Culture/cumisc1.html#FOUCAULT

xxp: its not nec. "thought policing" tho--its the difference in the way certain behaviors are maintained and regulated, i.e., explicit rules that involve punishment vs. "norms" that dont (necessarily) involve a specific material punishment but will invoke societal ostracization, institutionalization/hospitalization etc.

but i dont really know a lot about this

That long quotation is interesting but also bullshit on so many levels that it boggles the mind. It's hard to know where to start.

Anyway, I think the subtle forms of policing we employ, esp with regard to our own thoughs, are just as important as the formalized mechanisms (jails, hospitals, etc).

foucault would say that the "subtle" forms of policing we employ are inseparable from the "formalized mechanisms" in their modern forms

im talking a lot of crap here tho you guys should read the original text

Probably a good idea.

ILX: Talking a Lot of Crap about Foucault

In terms of numbers of threads started, January 2008 was ILx's busiest month since late 2004

I realized today that I sort of hate the psychoanalytic use of the "freudian slip" -- it's like the ultimate mental judo move, where you think you have control of the conversation and the therapist suddenly flips you on your back.

I'm sure someone like Lacan or Foucault or somebody has probably already pointed out this sort of power dynamic in a smarter way, but it just struck me today.

Carl Sagan had some major/weird issues with p.a., if his "Demon Haunted World" book is any indication

My therapist yesterday told me I was "playing the old tapes again," when I was carrying on about something that I should have already gotten over. I thought that was a great way to think of it.

Really? I think that's a pretty unkind thing to say to someone who's paying you a ton of cash to listen to their old tapes.

Depends whether you think they're being paid simply to listen to you, or to actually improve your condition, I spose. I don't know anything about different schools of therapy/psychoanalysis, though.

Well yeah the context was more that I was saying to him, "Hey wtf, I've already been over this and I know the answer but I keep getting myself worked up about it," and he said "You're playing the old tapes again." Which is a good phrase to think of when I do that.

tony robbins also says that

but generally "kindness" isn't what I'm looking for, especially since one of the main things lacking in my family was blunt honesty and confrontation

I'm glad the phrase works for you, Hurting2, but I think the analogy is surprisingly poor, cos if you still have yr old tapes (if we're talking about music tapes) you probably like them / enjoy hearing what's on them, if you can be bothered with them at all - they're probably not a source of trauma, etc.

In any case, shrinks still like being paid tons of cash.

xpost haha, really? I want my money back!

xpost, uh, I don't think it means music tapes

it does make sense in some ways if you think of them as like personal film loops or audio tracks of boring stories you've been told a million times

ya pinefox its not like your fave old u2 album its like youre listening to the shitty song ur ex girlfriend used to love over and over 5 years after ur broken up

can anyone point me at a text where 'facing off' is contrasted with, or linked to, 'acting out' (possibly in connection with transferrence)? i would like to read a bit about 'facing off' but i don't even know what to look for. in context i gather it has something to do with the analysand confronting (aspects of) herself, or perhaps analyst and analysand. but who knows.

I don't suppose there's a huge appetite for this but there's a new podcast from the team behind Parapraxis magazine: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/

Neither of the people involved are practising analysts but they have a solid theoretical grounding and are actively reading and using Freud in their writing and teaching. The stuff I've listened to so far is both learned and clear, and clear-eyed about the controversies and limitations of psychoanalysis.