as everyone knows, freud decided the meaning of classes of symbols. so anything long = a penis. round or receptive things=vagina. any powerful thing=father. any VENGEFUL figure = mother. And he did this by himself. no checks. i can't remember a single text where he ever asks the bloody pt what that symbol might indicate.
right. so obviously thats wrong for a start. 1. you do not ascribe single meanings to entire classes of ideas. 2. you always ask the pt. if the pt doesn't know and reverts to evasion or similar fantasy THEN you help out by directed attention to the resemblance admitted by the pt! surely all this is obvious? well you find me a single practitioner in the world who anywhere states this, never mind does it! 3. look at the admittedly shorthanded list i've given above. you see at once those are 'wishes' whose? well what about freuds? a powerful father? freuds father was a very strong character, backed up by both german and jewish tradition. freud was always very controlling and quite limited in some ways...because its really important to him to BE the powerful father. agreed? so the oedipal boy wants to be his father, both to enjoy power and to seduce or rape the mother? so here is freuds own subcs wish for all to see. now you see why freuds idea of the VENGEFUL mother? the castration idea is implicit...but then freud denies its the mother who may castrate; in all his writings he goes on about the fathers retaliation? yes? but in most pts deeper memories its the females in the nursery, carers etc who 'jokingly' or otherwise say such frightening things to the little boy. why? because of their penis envy, of course. in fact that fear is builtin to the boys psyche by himself! if you have a precious thing, and you notice subcs that girls don't...you will fear they might take it away. and in fact at a tender age its boys who find girls scary because that fear occurs to them even if attended by deeply loved and loving carers. its a package deal, so to speak. in fact freuds own mother was absolutely revolting in her favouritism and consequent pressure on freud to 'succeed'...that in itself may be the bedrock of half freuds fixed opinions of female talion; which he may describe as castration but in practise we find is always withdrawal/deprivation. so something is skewed right here. freuds mother in fact is a blueprint of maternal smothering of the worst kind; its mothers withdrawal of this 'love' which is so scary...and that is why you get freuds repeated 'vengeful' mother. so now you see why we simply got to start over. YES lots of men have these wishes/fears/experiences....but i ask you which ones go with whom? these glib assertions that this means that and so and so on have never actually been even tested! and no you can't trust the analyses of the bloody psychoanalysts whether selfadministered or attended by other psychoanalysts because they all are highly pressured to 'discover' the exact same things that freud tells them. its that or never get the job! never be accepted as a 'real' psychoanalyst! be known forever more as an unresolved oedipal.....aaargh! so the science is just as constipated now as it was a century ago.
so lets start over. in general you ask the pt what they feel or know a symbol means. you ask the to connect symbols/meanings to their distressing condition. if they evade you press the issue. if a pt knows what something means TO HIM; then that IS what it means.
eg female, aged 79, widow, dreams of snakes under her bed? standard diagnosis, she's afraid of being raped by whoever; which is a 'wish'....can you not pity her and these idiots? she's 79. on probing we find she goes on to worms. her bed is cold. 1 question later, we find she's afraid of death which at her age is quite likely very frightening and not exactly her hearts desire at all! see the difference? connect the bloody dots ONLY if the pt repeatedly goes off into anxiety, evasion, denial...and even then you listen. all i'm saying is stop neglecting today in cowardly obedience to a man who's been dead a century.
if you really want to classify symbols then do it generically. classes of ideas that are FOUND consistently with this or that syndrome, this or that condition. and start from where we are at; which is basically we know fuck all. we have to begin again. where we find reasonable correlations then we know that much. but even then we should always allow for individual differences. eg little boys aren't clones. some are afraid of castration. others afraid of their future position as 'leaders' or fathers or something. we absolutely have to get away from the old dictating what these things are or mean and bloody well find out; as if freud had never been. this is not contempt; i think he was brilliant, brave...but he was a man of his age and because of understandable limitations psychoanalysis is also limited and indeed nearly useless. and it needn't be.
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Saturday 12 September 2009
caveat
almost forgot to say that these deep investigations of the psyche freud himself limited only to neurotics. mainly the kind known in those days as 'hysterics'. he loathed the very mad. it was because [no tranquillisers then] they were terribly violent and verbally both aggressive and incoherent. he just couldn't get anywhere with them. 1 reason was his cultured and civilised character. mostly the mad then as now tend to be of lower 'class' and if you think all 'talking therapy' depends on the pt being articulate, the room reasonably quiet, and the therapist not subject to wild behaviours. so those are reasonable qualifications. and to them i add another. if the pt is in the explosive or agonised or manic stage of his illness then probing at that time will do a lot of damage and make the ppt impossibly exposed to his uncs. the whole thing of psychosis is that the defences are destroyed and the pt far from needing to find his unc in fact is finding it blowing out of both his ears. so you only engage deep therapy when the pt is at least able to talk quietly.
On the other hand as i have made clear it is the very ill who need help. to exclude them forever is just nasty. did freud forget he was a physician first?
On the other hand as i have made clear it is the very ill who need help. to exclude them forever is just nasty. did freud forget he was a physician first?
what i know is right
all of freuds uncs mechanisms he discovered in dream analysis. the sole one i think is very dangerous because its so easy to believe its there and if it isn't you just completely sent pt into orbit, quite possibly for years, is REACTION FORMATION. you know when subject uncsly reverses his real feelings/projects them out. if therapist is reflecting his own desires/hostility its going to be very bad for the pt and could be used in a harmful way just by therapist being clumsy. so that one tends to be 'spotted' and not checked and double-checked. yes it happens, its actually the basic mechanism of the entire subcs...but by god its dangerous.
so all these mechanisms, some of which i have observed in action, either in myself or others[usually in groups] are perfectly real and the normal methods of defence in the mind. where they go wrong is if they become fixed or explosive; results in various states.
i also agree and accept that freuds general map as a base of ID, [producing libido and thanatos]. EGO and\ SUPERGO; the various different states producing classifiable symptoms and syndromes are all reasonable and generally observable. I also accept the ubiquity of penis envy in unresolved women. but i add another; easily seen in all little boys/some men; that of womb or 'baby' envy. the desire or belief found in many men that they wish they were able to have babies/breasts. a hostile form of this [denial] is expressed 'women have it easy/run things/always win' etc. i do not agree with the oedipal or the electra set-up. the first is heavily freuds favourite idea, found in his self-analysis. the second in reply to the storms of female protest at freuds obvious ignoring and sly denigration of females. the women were right. he does intend the concept of 'penis envy' to aggravate. and he was quite blind, as most men are, to its opposite just described, as found in men. but the regular storms of female fury on the subject demonstrate clearly that this desire is real, and thats that. but both the oedipal complex and the electra complex are dependent on a child living in a universe consisting entirely of m/f parents, where the m p has al the power, and this is backed up if all the childs experience of society is the same. so it is greatly lessened in other forms of social compact. therefore freuds reliance on the oedipal state is very much his fixation. he more or less decided the electra complex 'must exist' because he had to think of something. so we have a very detailed exposition on the male psyche; taken to be a louder version of the female pysche. remember freud never checked, or kept proper records, and limited his obs to 40 upper class females and himself. so do you see what i see? if you describe the male psyche by inferring from what you think is in the female psyche, and its somewhat hostile;and then its all denied; what you are seeing is..guess what? yes, reaction formation. he should have studied both sexes, compared, been a damn sight more scientific. and somehow both looked for his own hostility AND been a bit more neutral. As indeed he always claimed to have done. but we see fr the skewed list of subjects that he didn't, and thats that.So these are all the things..yes free association, dreams, anything to get to the cause AND the cure of the pts distress; yes i would include abreaction with pentothal if the pt is strong enough, and hypnosis in stubborn cases. With all this i agree. These things are real and it is vital that therapists understand and use them in a controlled fashion. this loathing of one school by another is stupid. everyone of them has something right, something useful. in the progressive development of mankind surely we need it all? anyway its unscientific; as i understand science in its essence to be co-operative. not bloody tribal.
so all these mechanisms, some of which i have observed in action, either in myself or others[usually in groups] are perfectly real and the normal methods of defence in the mind. where they go wrong is if they become fixed or explosive; results in various states.
i also agree and accept that freuds general map as a base of ID, [producing libido and thanatos]. EGO and\ SUPERGO; the various different states producing classifiable symptoms and syndromes are all reasonable and generally observable. I also accept the ubiquity of penis envy in unresolved women. but i add another; easily seen in all little boys/some men; that of womb or 'baby' envy. the desire or belief found in many men that they wish they were able to have babies/breasts. a hostile form of this [denial] is expressed 'women have it easy/run things/always win' etc. i do not agree with the oedipal or the electra set-up. the first is heavily freuds favourite idea, found in his self-analysis. the second in reply to the storms of female protest at freuds obvious ignoring and sly denigration of females. the women were right. he does intend the concept of 'penis envy' to aggravate. and he was quite blind, as most men are, to its opposite just described, as found in men. but the regular storms of female fury on the subject demonstrate clearly that this desire is real, and thats that. but both the oedipal complex and the electra complex are dependent on a child living in a universe consisting entirely of m/f parents, where the m p has al the power, and this is backed up if all the childs experience of society is the same. so it is greatly lessened in other forms of social compact. therefore freuds reliance on the oedipal state is very much his fixation. he more or less decided the electra complex 'must exist' because he had to think of something. so we have a very detailed exposition on the male psyche; taken to be a louder version of the female pysche. remember freud never checked, or kept proper records, and limited his obs to 40 upper class females and himself. so do you see what i see? if you describe the male psyche by inferring from what you think is in the female psyche, and its somewhat hostile;and then its all denied; what you are seeing is..guess what? yes, reaction formation. he should have studied both sexes, compared, been a damn sight more scientific. and somehow both looked for his own hostility AND been a bit more neutral. As indeed he always claimed to have done. but we see fr the skewed list of subjects that he didn't, and thats that.So these are all the things..yes free association, dreams, anything to get to the cause AND the cure of the pts distress; yes i would include abreaction with pentothal if the pt is strong enough, and hypnosis in stubborn cases. With all this i agree. These things are real and it is vital that therapists understand and use them in a controlled fashion. this loathing of one school by another is stupid. everyone of them has something right, something useful. in the progressive development of mankind surely we need it all? anyway its unscientific; as i understand science in its essence to be co-operative. not bloody tribal.
Thursday 10 September 2009
so where is psychoanalysis now?
freud having made the maps and given the medics an idea of 'how to' then proceeded to rigidly disqualify from practise or even recognition as 'psychoanalysts' anybody who did not adopt a servile tone in his presence, who had ideas of their own whether successful or not. a 'real' analyst was one who stuck to freuds plan, who adopted him as their 'father' and consented to be treated as rebellious oedipals for the entirety of their working and personal lives. now that is not just sick. it is actually a good way to destroy the thing. cut it off [geddit?] from new or better theory/evidence/practise. and EVERY form of psych. ever since they regard as rubbish. as the later practitioners pretty much regard them.
Now i will tell you a couple of anecdotes. known as obs in the nursing world.
1. i met a girl in cassel, donkeys years ago. tall, beautiful. masses of red hair. a white immobile face. as far as i know all she had was mild depression. she told me her IQ was 154. i wonder what happened to it. because she also told me she'd been seeing our psychoanalyst for FIVE years. she'd be about 25? and she reacted with anger to my suggestion that a. she had more symptoms now than she did when it started and b, maybe she should go to another therapist?
she thought she could not live ithout this therapy, that therapist. and in fact most psychoanalysis goes on for as long as the pts love affair with themselves/their therapist/the money keeps going. anywhere in fact except out bloody door into something called a life? i have heard of cases where the progressive infantilism of the thing winds up with a 56 year old pt having tantrums, unable to work, the baby of his children...still on therapy after 30 years? its not therapy at all then, this is the exact opposite of health. this is addiction. its very bad for you?
nevertheless it IS the methods and dynamics and skills of psychoanalysis which are the right tools for treating the damaged mind. the only stipulation i'd demand is that they get it straight. the whole idea is to get in pt's head, fix it, and get out, leave pt with a better, nicer life. psychoanalysis then should aim firstly at those who really need it. the sick. then it should aim to leave the pt stronger. it should own up both to its addictive effects, its power to do terrible damage if used incorrectly, and that most practitioners to date are money-grubbing little creeps who can't hold down a real job themselves. finally insist on a cut off point. and that should be about three years. and no going back, you done, you finished. that in itself would make the thing focussed.
2. when i went to university [i majored in freudian psychoanalysis/cognitive physiology], i saw something odd. us freshers were all chattering in the big lecture well theatre? they still had all that even in 1990. anyhow so all our tutors introduced themselves. they were a chatty gaggle. i could see at once they were immensely competent, nice, some eccentrics, all highly intelligent. we warmed to them. and then the lecturer in psychoanalysis walked in. everyone just shutup. a respectful silence. ppl nervous. steve held the floor and no-one was acting. this was like a sheriff or a headmaster? yet steve was only a p/t lecturer. last i heard he was opening up a whole new institute of psychoanalysis. well he's the wrong man to do it! he's rigid, stuck fast in the weird belief you have to copy freud. do as you're told. when what it needs is a grenade up its bum, and thats that. but you see how the students reacted? that is the naive acknowledgement of the very real power hidden, mangled, almost useless; but still there in psychoanalysis. we have to bring it back to life. make it work according to what we find without personal bias in the uncs...and then for gods sake help the sick. stop pandering to the rich?
Now i will tell you a couple of anecdotes. known as obs in the nursing world.
1. i met a girl in cassel, donkeys years ago. tall, beautiful. masses of red hair. a white immobile face. as far as i know all she had was mild depression. she told me her IQ was 154. i wonder what happened to it. because she also told me she'd been seeing our psychoanalyst for FIVE years. she'd be about 25? and she reacted with anger to my suggestion that a. she had more symptoms now than she did when it started and b, maybe she should go to another therapist?
she thought she could not live ithout this therapy, that therapist. and in fact most psychoanalysis goes on for as long as the pts love affair with themselves/their therapist/the money keeps going. anywhere in fact except out bloody door into something called a life? i have heard of cases where the progressive infantilism of the thing winds up with a 56 year old pt having tantrums, unable to work, the baby of his children...still on therapy after 30 years? its not therapy at all then, this is the exact opposite of health. this is addiction. its very bad for you?
nevertheless it IS the methods and dynamics and skills of psychoanalysis which are the right tools for treating the damaged mind. the only stipulation i'd demand is that they get it straight. the whole idea is to get in pt's head, fix it, and get out, leave pt with a better, nicer life. psychoanalysis then should aim firstly at those who really need it. the sick. then it should aim to leave the pt stronger. it should own up both to its addictive effects, its power to do terrible damage if used incorrectly, and that most practitioners to date are money-grubbing little creeps who can't hold down a real job themselves. finally insist on a cut off point. and that should be about three years. and no going back, you done, you finished. that in itself would make the thing focussed.
2. when i went to university [i majored in freudian psychoanalysis/cognitive physiology], i saw something odd. us freshers were all chattering in the big lecture well theatre? they still had all that even in 1990. anyhow so all our tutors introduced themselves. they were a chatty gaggle. i could see at once they were immensely competent, nice, some eccentrics, all highly intelligent. we warmed to them. and then the lecturer in psychoanalysis walked in. everyone just shutup. a respectful silence. ppl nervous. steve held the floor and no-one was acting. this was like a sheriff or a headmaster? yet steve was only a p/t lecturer. last i heard he was opening up a whole new institute of psychoanalysis. well he's the wrong man to do it! he's rigid, stuck fast in the weird belief you have to copy freud. do as you're told. when what it needs is a grenade up its bum, and thats that. but you see how the students reacted? that is the naive acknowledgement of the very real power hidden, mangled, almost useless; but still there in psychoanalysis. we have to bring it back to life. make it work according to what we find without personal bias in the uncs...and then for gods sake help the sick. stop pandering to the rich?
poste-scriptorum
the word i was looking for in connection wiv freud is MOUNTEBANK? yes, he refers in all his writings to the ppl he's been analysing? go and look it up! its ppl on the ferry, in the college., at cricket, friends of friends...all asking him to demonstrate their subcs. which he does by spotting a 'slip' and explaining it. wonder and amazement! just like sherlock holmes..but the tragedy is that its REAL... psychoanalysis must be saved, transformed, connected in every way with what we know really works/is true..and administered where it will do some good and NO HARM,[more later]....
And from whom do we save it? bloody psychoanalysts; of course!
And from whom do we save it? bloody psychoanalysts; of course!
on freud himself.
right. now in the past ppl never knew anything whatever about the founders/teachers of the various schools. they were also lumbered with this ghastly gushing adulation. so we start wiv a description of freud. just so we can see exactly where there may be weak points in psychoanalytic theory.
1. freud was a genius, no mistake, he was. by himself, with the aid of hypnosis and drugs, he discovered the hinterlands of the mind, and how in general the populations of those unknown 'worlds' affected human behaviour. lots and lots of mechanisms he found are real, they actually do function in those ways.
2. however freud was also a really terrible chauvinist, he was a right tyrant at home, his children were mercilessly exploited and had to keep his 'love' by being exactly like their parent. why i dunno; since freud's best wishes were always directed at his mirror. sometimes its a healthy child who says 'no' to his/her father.
3. he like all victorian gentlemen was dead set on founding, securing and expanding and defending his personal empire. he didn't give a stuff for sick ppl, he didn't give a tinkers cuss about science.
4. so the entire edifice of psychoanalysis is built on freuds OWN subcons; ably assisted as i have said, by drugs dreams and hypnosis.
5. and on exactly 40 female pts, and 1 male. And 1 male child, but that analysis was conducted under his direction by the childs father. A great big no-no-no right there.
6. freud did observe very mad ppl early in his career. and dismissed ALL of them from the purview of psychoanalysis forever, all of them. only rich neurotic females are his prey. oh, and feminine men. they to be trained out of their disgusting illness by what amounts to brainwashing.
7. and now you see exactly whats wrong. because psychoanalysis is all about the male psyche. its all about the 'oedipal' complex. yet he had NO male pts. And frequently denigrated female pts...you can see that from the diagnostics. ALL 40 are 'sickening hysterics/neurotics' understand that wiv their lives in those days they couldn't be anything else. and the various descriptions of the mind developing from infancy? all based on himself and 1 little boy he never actually interviewed himself at all.
so. now you go away and think for yourselves. how could psychoanalysis survive this mangled creatures' lifelong destructive game within a game?
and if you want to know; i don't think it did. he ruined his own therapeutic science. proof that even a genius can be a fool. am going to bed now, but tomorrow we start on the theories of freud, how he kept changing them and also that every one of them is based on an image drawn from the engineering of his day; water, coal and electricity. goodnight, gerry.
1. freud was a genius, no mistake, he was. by himself, with the aid of hypnosis and drugs, he discovered the hinterlands of the mind, and how in general the populations of those unknown 'worlds' affected human behaviour. lots and lots of mechanisms he found are real, they actually do function in those ways.
2. however freud was also a really terrible chauvinist, he was a right tyrant at home, his children were mercilessly exploited and had to keep his 'love' by being exactly like their parent. why i dunno; since freud's best wishes were always directed at his mirror. sometimes its a healthy child who says 'no' to his/her father.
3. he like all victorian gentlemen was dead set on founding, securing and expanding and defending his personal empire. he didn't give a stuff for sick ppl, he didn't give a tinkers cuss about science.
4. so the entire edifice of psychoanalysis is built on freuds OWN subcons; ably assisted as i have said, by drugs dreams and hypnosis.
5. and on exactly 40 female pts, and 1 male. And 1 male child, but that analysis was conducted under his direction by the childs father. A great big no-no-no right there.
6. freud did observe very mad ppl early in his career. and dismissed ALL of them from the purview of psychoanalysis forever, all of them. only rich neurotic females are his prey. oh, and feminine men. they to be trained out of their disgusting illness by what amounts to brainwashing.
7. and now you see exactly whats wrong. because psychoanalysis is all about the male psyche. its all about the 'oedipal' complex. yet he had NO male pts. And frequently denigrated female pts...you can see that from the diagnostics. ALL 40 are 'sickening hysterics/neurotics' understand that wiv their lives in those days they couldn't be anything else. and the various descriptions of the mind developing from infancy? all based on himself and 1 little boy he never actually interviewed himself at all.
so. now you go away and think for yourselves. how could psychoanalysis survive this mangled creatures' lifelong destructive game within a game?
and if you want to know; i don't think it did. he ruined his own therapeutic science. proof that even a genius can be a fool. am going to bed now, but tomorrow we start on the theories of freud, how he kept changing them and also that every one of them is based on an image drawn from the engineering of his day; water, coal and electricity. goodnight, gerry.
Wednesday 9 September 2009
here we talk psychology.
hello dear seeker.
on this blog i will think about all things in psychology. and everything counts, as you will discover. doesn't matter what school or group is your forte; and anyone at all who wants to put in their tuppenceworth is very welcome. you should know at once that i got my own take; but i'm not eclectic, i just have my own theories like everyone; but i have practised quite a lot of what WORKS. i'm going to use this blog to explore these ideas, my intention is to whizz through the various theories, experiments and so forth, as the mood hits me. i'm no fan of most of them. my belief is that we take what works, the state of the individual or group in front of us, figure them out and apply the meds! but i know it has to give rise to a theory of some sort for wiser or more accurately, conventional eggheads, to analyse and in their turn work on it. understand right away that a theory is just...a theory. these freudians, existentialists, all of them, have taken a bloody theory and turned it into an orthodoxy. like an ersatz religion? thats as crazy and rigid as the mental pts i deal with every day.
the fact is that freudian psychoanalysis has NEVER cured anyone. of anything. it becomes a kind of addiction; your daily dose of infantilism. however pychoanalysis, for all its 10,000 faults, at least does actually deal with the mind. the one in front of you, screaming in pain?
whereas all the rest, though they may help in a minor way with various bits and pieces of unbearable behaviours, manage never to deal with the mind at all! nope. here's your meds, here's your list of things to do, here's your meaning of life, now fuck off you're listed as an EX-patient..
so we start from the beginning...we save everything we can from the barmy chaos that is psychology today. and we work out for ourselves how to help ourselves, our friends, even the goddamned doctors. i assure you a lot of them are crackers. or didn't you know that in every country on earth the suicides figures are heavily skewed ? yep. doctors. especially psychiatrists. i'm surprised we got any left...
which means the ones we got are the 'left-overs'...
so tomorrow we start with freud and whatever did happen to pschoanalysis?
on this blog i will think about all things in psychology. and everything counts, as you will discover. doesn't matter what school or group is your forte; and anyone at all who wants to put in their tuppenceworth is very welcome. you should know at once that i got my own take; but i'm not eclectic, i just have my own theories like everyone; but i have practised quite a lot of what WORKS. i'm going to use this blog to explore these ideas, my intention is to whizz through the various theories, experiments and so forth, as the mood hits me. i'm no fan of most of them. my belief is that we take what works, the state of the individual or group in front of us, figure them out and apply the meds! but i know it has to give rise to a theory of some sort for wiser or more accurately, conventional eggheads, to analyse and in their turn work on it. understand right away that a theory is just...a theory. these freudians, existentialists, all of them, have taken a bloody theory and turned it into an orthodoxy. like an ersatz religion? thats as crazy and rigid as the mental pts i deal with every day.
the fact is that freudian psychoanalysis has NEVER cured anyone. of anything. it becomes a kind of addiction; your daily dose of infantilism. however pychoanalysis, for all its 10,000 faults, at least does actually deal with the mind. the one in front of you, screaming in pain?
whereas all the rest, though they may help in a minor way with various bits and pieces of unbearable behaviours, manage never to deal with the mind at all! nope. here's your meds, here's your list of things to do, here's your meaning of life, now fuck off you're listed as an EX-patient..
so we start from the beginning...we save everything we can from the barmy chaos that is psychology today. and we work out for ourselves how to help ourselves, our friends, even the goddamned doctors. i assure you a lot of them are crackers. or didn't you know that in every country on earth the suicides figures are heavily skewed ? yep. doctors. especially psychiatrists. i'm surprised we got any left...
which means the ones we got are the 'left-overs'...
so tomorrow we start with freud and whatever did happen to pschoanalysis?
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