Great piece in the LA Times about the death of Freudian analysis, and the increasing lack of faith in his theories. Major debunking going on, and it is about time.
The year 2000 — the centenary of "The Interpretation of Dreams" — should have been a triumph for Freudians. Instead, amid the celebrations was a funereal whiff of defeat: The psychoanalytic century was over before the 21st century had begun. Everyone knew the answer to Time's rhetorical question. Psychoanalysis was indeed dead.Well, almost everyone knew. You can always count on intellectuals to keep a candle burning for whatever idea they've invested long years, enormous sums of money and, perhaps above all, limitless ego promoting.
I'm a fan of the cognitive therapy school, having read every word Martin Seligman has said on the topic - especially in his ground-breaking book Learned Optimism. He veers off, spectacularly, from Freud - and creates an entirely different paradigm.
The article in the LA Times details the myriad issues with Freud, issues that have been "whitewashed" by his followers:
We also know that Freud never seriously dealt with the problem of "suggestion," which totally compromised his clinical findings and, by extension, his theories. Already, by the 1890s, few believed in Freud's convenient claim that suggestion — the undue influence of the psychoanalyst over the patient — was possible only in the biologically predisposed and was thus of no consequence to his findings. Amazingly, these critical insights were buried under Freud's rhetoric of denial and by his growing fame. Now we've come full circle. Today we know better than to trust in memories, or in free associations, that supposedly issue from the "therapeutic alliance" between analyst and patient.
This is not an anti-psychiatry screed - not at all. But there is no need for orthodoxy in a field as muddy and difficult to understand as the human mind. Freud has dominated for far too long. Freudian analysis, in the end, is meant to perpetuate itself. Patients are not meant to stop therapy, they MUST continue - because the analyst has the key to the patient's unconscious.
This is nonsense.
Seligman very simply, in Learned Optimism lays out a course of recovery for people troubled by depression. (Clinical depression, I mean.) There are, obviously, those people who need to be medicated. Medication should not be shunned. William Styron, in his great and tormented book Darkness Visible, where he describes his own clinical depression, continues to say over and over again, like a mantra, "If I had been put on some kind of anti-depressant or anti-psychotic years before - instead of struggling my way through therapy - I would have been able to recover." Depression is not a feeling of sadness. Depression is a feeling of lethargy, a grey fog laid over the entire world. Depression is exacerbated by its own symptoms: One cannot sleep, one cannot eat. If you attack the SYMPTOMS (give a person a sleeping pill, as opposed to trying to delve into WHY that person can't sleep), then the crisis period may pass. And with much more velocity than if you spend hours and hours in therapy, trying to figure out why you are depressed.
Clinical depression is just that - it is clinical. Freudian analysis cannot, and should not, touch it.
Seligman believes that if you transform the way you actually think about things, if you transform the "story" you tell yourself about yourself when bad things happen - you can conquer depression, without being in analysis for years.
By 'story' I mean: If something bad happens to you (let's say, someone breaks up with you...) what do you tell yourself about the event?
Some people face life's hard knocks with: "This always happens to me. I am cursed by God. Nothing good will EVER happen."
These people, with their sense of pervasiveness and permanence, are more prone to long bouts of clinical depression.
And then some people, when faced with life's hard knocks, say, "Ah well, better luck next time." Or someone breaks up with them, and they say to themselves, "Man, that person doesn't know how much they're missing out!"
Seligman has found a way to help those with a pessimistic outlook change their way of thinking. He calls this "Learned Optimism".
This is completely anti-Freud. Seligman is not interested so much in the WHYs, except in how it might explain a person's pessimism. He is not interested in the workings of the subconscious. He is interested in helping people become more consciously competent in how they negotiate their way through the shoals of life.
The LA Times article ends, with a kind of elegy for Freudian psychoanalysis:
Of course, as with exorcism, the psychoanalytic "cure" hinges upon belief in mysterious entities such as the unconscious. For with belief we are back in the realm of suggestion and, at its best, the placebo effect. True, that's not nothing. But the cult-like exigencies of psychoanalysis dictate that normal human suggestibility be exploited for the cause of conversion. As Karl Kraus put it many years ago, psychoanalysis itself became the poison it purports to cure. Another way to put it is that it is psychoanalysis itself that has infected the Western soul with penis envy, Oedipal conflicts, death drives and so on. For these ideas are not given to, and cannot be found in, the world. They must be created. Consequently, the death of psychoanalysis is itself the only cathartic event psychoanalysis was ever designed to deliver.
Yes!!
(Full disclosure - sort of: I was in therapy for years. And - for all practical purposes - my depression got worse, as my therapy continued. I'm not saying this would be true for everyone, but it was true for me. The "episodes" of depression got longer, and more intense as time went on. I wasn't depressed all the time - there were just 3 or 4 month bouts when I was out of commission. Therapy could not touch whatever it was that was ailing me. It took me a while to put it all together, it took me a while to realize that I had come to rely on therapy - as opposed to relying on myself. I don't mean to paint this with too broad a brush - because I know people whose lives were saved by therapists. But this was not the case for me. Reading Seligman's book did for me in one month what my therapist was unable to do for me in 6 years.)
Posted by sheilaA chorus of angels is singing, "Hallelujah!" And so am I. He has done more damage to our culture than we might realize. If you can get hold of a book called "Makers of the Modern Mind" I recommend a quick read. Or I can just send you the chapter by chapter reviews I did in college.
Posted by: Patrick at February 19, 2004 11:46 AMI wonder if kids who are brought up with superheated self-esteem (continuous praise, whether they have done anyting to be praised about or not) might be more susceptible to depression in later life--as a commenter at joannejabobs.com recently suggested, if you're continuously protected from criticism and frustration, you may not be able to cope with any form of rejection or failure in later life.
And the flips side of this is: people who are *always* criticized by their parents also tend to develop a brittle self-concept, easily vulnerable to shattering.
Posted by: david foster at February 19, 2004 12:09 PMDavid -
Hm. Interesting to think about. Seligman's thesis (and I believe there is much truth to it) is that children who experience a very early event of disappointment, loss, or lack of control (divorce of parents, being moved around all the time) are more prone to what he calls "learned pessimism." They learn, very early, that no matter WHAT they do, they cannot change the circumstances of their lives. This may be relatively benign in a 5 year old, but translate that attitude to an adult, and you can see the deep hole some people get themselves into. They have learned a pessimistic outlook.
Some people skate through their entire lives, buoyed up by their essential "right"-ness, even if it means lying to themselves. They have a bloated sense of self-esteem, definitely - and that self-esteem can only survive by shutting out uncooperative realities. Some people never ever ever question their own motives, or their own assumptions.
My problems came from my rigid perfectionism. Maybe this came from me being the first-born. I don't know. I was absolutely unforgiving towards my own failures, and had a sense of doom and pessimism at a very young age. I took criticism and failure so to heart - I felt I would never amount to anything good.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 12:16 PMWe are all of us thankful that you found something that worked. Well done!
And more thankful, perhaps, that Frood has been (is being?) debunked.
Posted by: Ken Hall at February 19, 2004 1:07 PMSheila,
I always thought of Freud’s work as the equivalent of magic. There is an interesting thesis that belief in magic was a prerequisite for science. Through magic the concept of invisible forces and action-at-a-distance became acceptable, which paved the way for scientific explanations of germs, electricity and other forces that can not be directly seen.
I’m not sure I totally buy this argument. However, the part of the argument that I do buy is that magic, by weakening the link in human minds between directly observable cause and effect, sped up the journey from ancient empiricism to modern science. I see Freud in that light. Humans would eventually have come round to studying the mind, but Freud sped up the process. He also dominated Psychiatry far more than is healthy for any branch of science to be dominated by the thinking of one man. Freud was a great propagandist, and it is no wonder his nephew went on to be one of the founders of the modern PR industry.
What interests me is that you did not choose the route of medication. Brain chemistry not only determines behavior, it is influenced by behavior in a feed-back loop. But interrupting that loop is not easy. Why did you opt for the harder road of interrupting the feedback, rather than throwing a spanner in the works with a drug?
The worst part is knowing intellectually how foolish it all is, but being completely incapable of stopping it and lifting the weight.
Posted by: marc at February 19, 2004 1:13 PMJohn -
yes, I see what you are saying, and I agree. I think Freud was necessary - He got the dialogue going, and he lessened, somewhat, the stigma of mental illness.
And about medication - I was also put on a mild anti-depressant. (That's why I said: Full disclosure, sort of) I'm not one of those people who trumpet my drug cocktails to the hills. :)
The drugs tackled the symptoms of depression which were really the issue - insomnia, lack of appetite. For 5 months, my day ended at around 3 pm. I was no good after that. I could get nothing done. Being on drugs gave me another 5 or 6 productive hours - I was able to go to the movies again, go out to dinner with friends, stuff like that.
Quality of life goes way up. And you start to experience positivity again.
But without the cognitive therapeutic re-aligning - the drugs wouldn't have helped me, long-term. At least I don't think so.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 1:18 PMSheila,
You're probably right about drugs not helping long term. I conduct a lot of first person interviews with docs and patients, and sadly many Pyschs today just write a scrip and forget the patient. The economics of healthcare plays a part, but so does the desire for a quick fix (on the part of both parties).
Freud did get the dialog going, but overstayed his welcome. Don't get me started on publication bias, it's one of the reasons I'm no longer an academic scientist. But, then again, magic has also overstayed its welcome in our society. I find it absolutely incredible that educated people in this society continue to believe in astrology and other guff. They probaly feel the same about my religious beliefs, but I take a rigorously scientific and materialist view when explaining the natural world.
Oops - didn't mean to just post that question ... my Comments are behaving weirdly again...
The movie tackles the forces of science and the forces of magic - giving equal time to both ... People on this planet are searching for meaning, searching for answers to essential questions: "why are we here" "is there a God" - "what is the meaning of life"...You know, shit like that.
I think astrology and magic, etc., answer a very deep call in some people.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 1:43 PMSheila,
I am / was a geek, er I mean Physical Chemist. I cut my scientific teeth on Cosmos in 4th grade. Imagine my disappointment when I dug into the intellectual misdeeds of Sagan the Physicist as I became a mature scientist. But yes, I still saw Contact. The best memories I have of my Dad are fiddling with something electrical or mechanical, just like the protagonist.
.
Sheila,
Yes, magic does answer a deep call. But to accept that answer uncritically is to turn in your membership card to 21st century society.
Posted by: John at February 19, 2004 1:51 PMBut a lot of people don't just accept it uncritically. It's just one element in their search for meaning, understanding.
I don't know. It doesn't bug me all that much, the astrology thing.
And I loved Cosmos. I never read the book, but I saw the whole series on PBS. i still remember his description and demonstration of what it would be like to live in a one-dimensional world, and a two-dimensional world.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 1:53 PMMaybe my beef is visceral. Part of it is my perceived failure of the educational system in inculcating the scientific view of the world: the constant return to Nature and asking "Does this theory make sense?". This process is what both magical explanations of the Natural world and demagogues such as Freud deny their followers. Many people think that science consists of memorizing facts and doing hours of mathematical masturbation on word problems that have no relevance to their day-to-day world. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Posted by: John at February 19, 2004 2:01 PMI love science. I'm not a science-geek, but I love it anyway.
I also am open to the possibility that science does not have all the answers and that "Does it make sense" or "Is this logical" are not always the best questions to ask.
But again - this goes back to the whole Contact conundrum. We must not sacrifice one side for the other. It can't be ALL reason, and it can't be ALL magic. There must be room for both.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 2:19 PMMaybe we are crossing vocabulary here. I agree that most humans (myself included) need to have something in their lives beyond this plane. I point to my own religious beliefs. But when it comes to flinging rockets at the moon or curing disease, there is no substitute for the scientific method, magic does not cut it. Did you ever see "The Day the Universe Changed"? Burke totally ruined himself in my eyes with the final chapter / episode.
Posted by: John at February 19, 2004 2:35 PMJohn -
I get what you're saying now. It's like that study done recently showing that "new-age" methods do not help in the fight against cancer.
Maybe I'm superstitious though. I prefer the term "credulous". :)
Surrounding yourself with crystals and incense burners may not stop the spread of cancer, but if those new-age methods make people feel better, psychically and more emotionally at peace - then I say Go for it.
But people should not be deceived - and that the holistic approach is the only way to go. Scientific developments should not be scorned in the least. A holistic approach wouldn't have cured polio.
Maybe I'm making no sense. I haven't really thought about much of this.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 2:40 PMSheila,
You are making perfect sense. You are on a slightly different wavelength from me, but still in the same color (geek analogy!). I have thought a lot about this, being a scientist with religious leanings. One's profession often determines one's outlook.
Holistic approaches can work, but most of the theory underlying them is bunk, in my opinion. One of my in-laws is an unlicensed doctor of Chinese Medicine in Taiwan. We have lots of interesting conversations.
Posted by: John at February 19, 2004 2:54 PMI've had great contempt for Freud going back almost as far as I can remember. Not all his ideas are completely worthless, but taken together as an orthodoxy they are beyond absurd.
On the issue of "hard" science, though, I think that "hard" is a mis-appropriated adjective. I believe in the value of the scientific method, but the simple fact is that we do not yet have a good understanding of the most basic aspects of the universe. New sub-atomic particles are still being discovered, there is no unified field theory at this point to address the fundamental conflicts between relativity and quantum mechanics. All we have for the moment is an approximation of reality that has been very useful to us in the pursuit of various practical endeavors. So yes, to ask someone to believe that what we know of the universe right now is reality - rather than an approximation thereof - does require of that person a non-scientific faith of some sort.
In direct contravention to the hard versus soft dichotomy, we actually do have a pretty good understanding of how human societies function, because they can be directly observed. We have good scientically valid data on components such as families, institutions, cohort groups, etc.
Psychological theory, on the other hand, delves into a realm of the unknown and hardly qualifies as anything more than speculation. Effective psychological practice will focus on alleviation of symptoms and effecting behavior change. Attempting to peer into someone's mind in hopes of deciphering why that specific individual does certain things and not other things is an entirely futile task.
Posted by: MikeR at February 19, 2004 3:47 PMMike,
I don't recall either Sheila or I using the adjective "hard". True, science is evolving and there are contradictions in the two most crucial theories in 20th century physics. I'm not going to argue about "reality" as embodied in physical theory. No serious physicist believes that the physical universe is exactly as described by current theory. However, current theories explain so much that something similar to their theoretical constructs are probably at the heart of the real physical world. New theories might change our view of the non-visible universe, but a new theory either has to encompass the old as a special case (Special vs. General Relativity), or explain all the observations that led to the old theory plus any new or excluded observations (Einstein's paper on the Photoelectric Effect). In either case, the method is the same: you take the new theory back to Nature and check your predictive power.
I do not divide science into hard and soft. I divide it into mathematically predictive and non-mathematically predictive. Physics tends to be more mathematically predictive. But even that generalization falls down in chaotic systems.
I do not agree at all that we have a good, mathematically predictive theory of human society to the level of detail that we can predict events as we can in the physical universe. I went from Chemistry into marketing. Part of my job is to try to come up with mathematical models that predict purchasing behavior (on aggregate), so I'm familiar with mathematical sociology and psychology. The predictive power of the mathematical social sciences is nowhere near as great as the predictive power of the physical sciences, although the mathematical techniques are at least as sophisticated. Descriptive power is altogether another game. Social science can directly observe its subjects, I’ve never seen at atom, just pictures in an electron microscope. As Rutheford (I think) said (rather condescendingly): all science is either physics or stamp-collecting.
Psychology as practiced by Freud delves into the unknown. However, pharmacological psychology is on firmer ground, despite the fact that there is still a lot we don't know about brain chemistry.
Okay, I'm going to throw in a total curve-ball here ...Just kind of an interesting connection:
You write: "you take the new theory back to Nature".
Well, Minnie Fiske - one of the most celebrated stage actresses of the early 20th century - was asked what was her criteria for choosing a role.
Her answer was: "First, I look to nature, and see if the part is reflected there correctly. If I can find the part in nature, then I will consider doing it."
She's obviously not using "nature" in the way we might think of it, like: "let's take a walk in the woods, let's go out into nature." She's talking about the natural world - the laws of the natural world that governs the stars, the tides - and also governs us.
If the part is "in nature" - meaning logical - meaning, in essence - HUMAN - then she would take the role. All of the great artists do that - even the abstract artists. They create from nature.
Posted by: red at February 19, 2004 4:39 PMSheila ... From what I can read, you definitely have amounted to something good.
And thanks for bringing up "Learned Optimism." My therapist a few years ago suggested I buy the book, and I did. But I got bored during the early chapters on the clinical development of the theory (same reason I never made it through the beginning of Burns' "Feeling Good"). I've got a long plane ride coming up, and now I'm going to give the book a second try.
John ... Great alliteration up there — I think you should grab www.mathematicalmasturbation.com right now.
Posted by: sid at February 19, 2004 7:52 PMSheila,
Do you agree with Fiske? By the way, how was the script you were talking about a little while ago?
It’s my view that human beings should be seekers after truth. Truth in art, truth in our models of the physical world, truth in the benefits and costs of the societies we construct. I can’t stand people who put ideology in front of truth; I met too many of them in the USSR, and I saw where that leads. That is why I was so disappointed in Sagan as a scientist – that in at least one instance he put political cause in front of his quest for truth. Have you read Michael Crichton’s essay on this? The title is hilarious: Aliens Cause Global Warming .
Here’s the link: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
Sid – I can’t claim that alliterative phrase. It was my Dad’s, and he used it liberally about his own profession’s (meteorology) obsession with models that don’t model reality very well.
John -
Having struggled before with badly-written scripts - that did not take as their example anything from "nature" - yes, I am inclined to agree with Fiske.
Some playwrights (bad playwrights, I mean) write plays that are basically pamphlets, describing their own personal beliefs.
Now every play is going to be a personal expression of what matters to the playwright - Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill - We recognize these men through the brilliance of their words, but also through what concerns each of them.
A playwright who is not talented, though, will not breathe life into the characters. The characters are merely mouthpieces - It's like dueling op-ed columns, as opposed to life.
In the case of the great playwrights - the Millers, the Williams' ... if you, as an actor, have any gift at all, any modicum of sensitivity - then all you need to do, really, is just SAY THE WORDS THAT THEY WROTE - and the play will lift itself off the page.
That is because these playwrights have created living breathing people - people who live on after the play ends, people who had lives before the play begins.
Blanche Dubois persists in my memory - I cannot help but imagine what the rest of her life must have been like. Because her spirit, her reality - is not confined to the page.
Posted by: red at February 20, 2004 10:17 AMSid -
Actually, for me that book really got me in the beginning - when he talked about the experiments they did with dogs. The dogs who developed "learned pessimism" and basically lay down and whimpered, instead of trying to fight. A metaphor for humans who do that too.
I would definitely suggest skipping over that part - or at least just skimming through it - so you can get to the juice of it. His whole theory around pessimism itself - and there's this incredible quiz where you can test your own pessimism. It's a rigorous quiz - and my pessimism was off the charts. It shocked me - because I had always thought of myself as a relatively positive person.
Then - he gives you tools to help you re-wire your thinking. To help you learn optimism.
It had a huge impact on me.
So I would definitely say check it out again, if you feel like it!
Posted by: red at February 20, 2004 6:04 PM