Posted by badhaircut on December 22, 2003, at 22:31:00
In reply to Re: 'success' in psychoanalysis » badhaircut, posted by lookdownfish on December 22, 2003, at 15:31:43
>> it's burdened with tons of dogma and rituals that are irrelevant to self-acceptance and can even obstruct it
> Can you elaborate?I'll try. This assumes my theory that accepting spontaneously-arising emotions is the ultimate benefit of psychoanalysis. I'm saying that many of the central tenets of the practice of psychoanalysis are irrelevant to the patient becoming more comfortable with what comes up from inside.
==Psychoanalytic dogma that's irrelevant to SELF-ACCEPTANCE==
"Understanding inner motivations is important."
This is, I think, the key axiomatic assumption in psychoanalytic therapy. I can accept myself more fully only if I learn -- and then accept -- hidden thoughts that psychoanalysis brings to light. But I would argue that I can start accepting the parts of myself I already know about. They are the parts that I *know* give me problems."Childhood experiences control current emotions."
Suppose I'm wrong (or Melanie Klein is) regarding insights into my childhood experiences or suppose I change my mind about them later. Would my adult feelings then be somehow illegitimate? Of course not. Even if (hypothetically) someone did not even have a childhood, she could still accept herself and her feelings. Even if our feelings are caused by tumors or space-rays or those popular "chemical imbalances", we can still accept them, tolerate them, work with them. Theories about childhood are more likely to distract from acceptance of current, adult self-disappointments."Dreams (i.e., REM-type imagery) are important."
"Transference is important."
The doctrine of transference also assumes the primacy of childhood experience in current emotional responses -- as well as pre-eminently heightening the importance of emotional responses to the analyst. The analyst's calm reaction to disclosures of feelings about him can help a lot toward self-acceptance of similar feelings in general. Certainly some emotions toward the analyst will parallel relationships that occur outside. But feelings about the analyst won't be more important than feelings about, for example, one's family. Intensely focusing on feelings about the analyst may distract from the patient accepting his (pre-existing) feelings about his loved ones or coworkers."Slips of the tongue are important."
"The taboo is important."
Taboo issues, I honestly believe, just don't come up very often in real life. Because of their actual rarity, I suspect that dealing with taboo issues is more likely to be a mental exercise void of strong emotion than something from which to model self-acceptance. I could be wrong.==Psychoanalytic RITUAL that's irrelevant to self-acceptance==
Lying on the couch.
Long silences.
Frequent sessions. Repeating the same procedure, same time, same place, every day isn't necessarily going to evoke the kinds of feelings that come up from other experiences. There isn't a scrap of evidence that 5-times-a-week analysis is more effective at anything even analysts say they're trying to do than once-a-week analysis.
poster:badhaircut
thread:291847
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/292591.html