A personal account is forwarded from the Forteana list - TWC:
>Proponents, including many patients, say it can offer great and lasting
>help. Critics such as Shorter say the field has been responsible for the
>suicides of many severely mentally ill patients who required medication and
>hospitalization more than sessions on the couch.
Do I ever have to second that!!! The basis of psychoanalysis is that there
is something wrong with the patient that the patient is capable of
changing, and if (s)he doesn't, it is his or her fault. It is unfortunate
that this very faulty viewpoint is held by most people today, and
medication is looked down upon as a weakness and laziness on the part of
the patient. It just isn't so. The thing that most troubles me after having
been taken on a long ride through the system, is that the psychoanalysts
seemed to me to be the most messed up of all of us. I won't even hazard a
guess as to why, but I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the times
I have ended up discussing my psychologists' problems with them instead of
discussing what they perceived as my own. I will say this also, it is
pathetic how each one of them follows fashion in the psychology world,
recommending the current best-seller and cramming their patients into holes
that they do not fit in. Because by being there in the first place the
patient is admitting to a correctable fault, (s)he is very suggestible.
When the course of treatment predictably fails, the patient feels even
worse about his or herself, and is more likely to feel suicide is the only
answer. I would not go so far as to say that support groups are bad,
although I think they could be much helped if they were not lead by a
psychologist whose presence and comments are likely to put an additional
load on the patient in the form of guilt. I am glad to see the tide
changing, even if it is ever so slightly. HMOs are recognizing that
treatment by psychiatrists with medication being the primary mode of
treatment is valid and no longer requires going through a psychologist
referral first. Freud set us back a long long way and the only comfort we
can take from his existence is that he is the root of a lot of good jokes.
>Some of those findings are disturbing, particularly the idea that our inner
>selves can be boiled down to a chemical recipe that can be tweaked and
>improved with pinches of lithium salts and dashes of serotonin blockers.
>Today's reductionist, biological, Prozac-laden approach to the mind offers
>limited understanding, Hansell said.
And who the hell cares if it helps those of us who used to live day to day
planning the ends to our lives? What is wrong with the solution being as
simplistic as chemical? Is there not enough money to be made manipulating
people? Is it more worthy to be a complicatist instead of a reductionist?
>Nevertheless, even Freud's broad cultural reach may be shrinking. In World
>War II-era films such as Hitchcock's "Spellbound," psychoanalysts were often
>portrayed as imposing, scholarly figures. Since then, portrayals of analysts
>in film and television have become more comic, and sometimes mocking.
As well they could be. And I suspect that is so because a closer look has
been taken at the people who are attempting to "mold" our psyches. One
psychologist I had was a marriage counselor. A scandal broke when it was
found out he was beating his wife. Another psychologist I had for
supposedly being addictive (to what I never found out....I neither drank,
did drugs or anything) was a once recovered, then lapsed alcoholic. One I
saw for my weight blamed it all on my mother. She had me half convinced
until she started using our sessions to rant about how much she hated her
mom so much all she wanted to do was eat to make herself feel good and then
she lost her husband because of it, blah, blah, blah. Another was a
relations counselor......he was my neighbor for awhile. Then he found a
woman half his age, divorced his wife and turned his back 100% on his own
kids. I know this because his ex-wife was my mother's best friend. Another
one I suffered through blamed my problems on not knowing how to parent.
Found out his wife and he were in counseling because they could not have
kids and it was creating problems. The psychologist I was at first required
to see by my HMO in order to see my (out of plan) psychiatrist used to fall
asleep during every visit. He never heard one word of what I didn't say. I
just sat there and waited for his little alarm to buzz that the appointment
was over. There were two others...one was a very (too) close personal
friend, and one that we had Zachary see before we decided to put him on
medication for his ADD. I cannot comment on my friend except to say that he
was the worst one of the bunch, and I have to give credit to Zachary's for
finally admitting to us that medication, not psychology was the only thing
that was going to work. It did. I cannot believe my experiences were
isolated and that I just happened to get the most useless psychologists
around. The whole field now disgusts me. That includes the animal
psychologists most of all.
Fel
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@frontiernet.net > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org > Southeast Asia (SEA) service: Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade (Jan 71 - Aug 72) Thailand/Laos - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73) - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site (Aug 73 - Jan 74)
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