Posted by badhaircut on December 22, 2003, at 22:04:26
In reply to Re: 'success' in psychoanalysis » badhaircut, posted by lookdownfish on December 22, 2003, at 15:31:43
lookdownfish, Pfinstegg, others-- Thanks for this dialogue. I'm sorry this post is so long, but it would take another day for me to make it shorter, ha ha!
> If you were into psychoanalysis at one point...
For a couple of years, my life was mostly going to analysis and reading & thinking about analysis. My day centered on my time on the couch. I loved psychoanalytic theory and its creative, offbeat writers. I read & read.
> ...what brought you to this [skeptical] point of view?
While I was in psychoanalysis, Frederick Crews brought war on it to the New York Review of Books and I read him.
http://www.nybooks.com/authors/6671 [pay access; libraries may have back-issues; also "The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute" and "Unauthorized Freud" ]
I had no response to his criticisms except contempt for him. I dedicated my life on the spot to finding the defense of analysis that could withstand his disrespectful assaults. I couldn't think of anything but I was sure that somewhere there was something! Then many prominent analysts sent in ripostes, printed a few weeks later. But that made it even worse. They had nothing. They were fools for Freud. They had only their faith.
Sigh.
I stuck it out another year or so while reading other skeptics and getting more hostile with my poor shrink all the time. "What about this criticism! What about that one!" I'd shout. He'd nod and very kindly say, "Yeah, what about them?" He was like the little old priest in the hut: he had peace in his heart because he believed. Logic, facts, critics weren't troubling to him.
But they were troubling to me, highlighting as they did the 4 years, 1,600 man-hours, increased emotional problems, and $48,000 that I had traded for those few real but discrete and relatively small benefits.
I sound bitter. I'm not, or not anymore. I'm glad I know what it's like to willingly undergo psychoanalysis.YOUR FAITH
I don't want to be doctrinaire myself. I don't have contempt for analysts or look down on their patients as poor deluded fools. I'm generally skeptical of *everything* in the mental health world: SSRIs, CBT, AA, EMDR. Psychoanalysis has just had longer to prove itself and instead it's just gotten cleverer at moving the goal line.I can't cite any of the fact-based criticisms as well as the people in Crews' articles and books. Or write as well! But I will do what I think Crews has never done, and list what benefits I think I got out of analysis and say why I stayed in it as long as I did.
REAL BENEFITS TO ME
After a year of talking to this reasonable, kind man about my worst shames and guilts and so on, crying on the couch so much my ears filled with tears, I became (and still am) a little less rigid.I posted earlier that I relaxed around children, I believe, due to analysis. I also found at the time that I could appreciate art in museums more. I don't think either of these results were magic. I was remembering -- and imagining -- for hours every day what I had felt like as a little kid. Naturally, I think, I was able to empathize with current little kids more and enjoy their company. Also, I was getting daily experience in noticing, even milking, any feelings that came up inside me. In the museums I started noticing that feelings were evoked in me by the art. They were there before, I think, I just didn't know to check for them.
My analyst pointed out that I'd been assuming responsibility for most that went wrong in my childhood relationships and that others were involved and shared responsibility. This was a relief to me -- but it's not psychoanalytic. It's family systems and cognitive theory. I'm glad I see it now, but those other disciplines tackle such matters systematically, not just as one side-comment outside the role of psychoanalyst. And he never followed up any such helpful insight with a guideline like, "If you feel guilty, see if there are any other people or things that may also share responsibility." (No helpful guidelines -- now that's psychoanalytic! <wink> )
I also began to assume that other people are often more complicated, conflicted and afraid, etc, no matter what kind of front they present. That may be the most valuable thing I got from analysis. (I wish my last drug-pdoc had been psychoanalyzed! Or something.) I'm also more alert to tell-tale signs of inner conflict in others like overly strong assertions and spontaneous negations. These insights are not unique to psychoanalysis and might not be found there by every analysand, but that's where I picked them up.
> I guess it's not really right to think about Success vs Failure, but to consider any small incremental improvements that one can make.
These were discrete improvements worth making. But they're hardly unique to analysis.
MY HOPES
I didn't, while in analysis, even get a reduction in my depression. I didn't much reduce social anxieties (except, on those occasions, around little kids). I didn't stop obsessing 24/7 about what other people think of me. That's what I was in analysis "for". My analyst said, and I quote, "Those things may happen or they may not," and, "We don't know what you're in analysis for." Nevertheless, I stuck it out for years, believing that "by summer," or "next year" I'd access my core demons and then get to have a happier life.I didn't, while in analysis, make any external life-improvements like moving, getting a new job, making new friends -- although we talked about those things. When, long after analysis, I did move, get a whole new line of work, get involved in the community, regain lost friends, it improved my life more than therapy did. And the analysis did not, so far as I can see, help those things come about.
poster:badhaircut
thread:291847
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/292577.html