Critiques of psychoanalysis

[Padraig]

I was not saying that there are other critiques of D & L. I was
speaking about criticisms of psychoanalysis that are easier to read
than L & D for someone who may not be familiar with the latters
literary style.

No, you said very clearly above that the critiques of D & L were not easy to read, but that there were <i>other</i> critiques that were easier, critiques that stated things more clearly than those critiques. Where are these critiques? And what's behind this obsession with "easyness"?

And what has literary style got to do with it, dismissing a psychoanalytical approach because its aesthetic strategy doesn't meet your "literary" criteria? That's like dismissing Einstein because you don't like his mathematical "style."

The problem with Freud critiques is that the are scattered around
1000s of articles, often written by practising psychoanalysts. There
is little in the way of systematic accounts. The aforementioned
Macmillan book is very good because it systematises a large chunk of
such critiques in a coherent and easy to read framework. To be fair, there
are problem areas that Macmillan does not touch, but it is an excellent starting
point and full with pointers to additional reading.

Easyness again. What you are actually trying to say here, as elsewhere, is that what you really want is a "comprehensive" easy-to-digest critique of Freud which smugly rejects all of his theories ... ??

Something which you then proceed to do, rejecting without the benefit of any real analysis Freud's Oedipus theory as simply "pathetic on many levels", resorting to bland acognitive behaviourist rhetoric ("observation, communication and expectation") to justify such a dismissal.

Psychoanalysis is primarily therapeutic, and describes itself
thus. By its own standards, then, it has failed. There fairly stable
mental illnesses and unhappinesses, that are likely to be with us for
the foreseeable future, although they might whither away with
different forms of social organisation. Or they might not.
But because they cause concrete suffering now, there is a need to
help sufferers now. It may be true that some such therapies treat
only symptoms and may even help to perpetuate causes, but so
what? There still is concrete suffering now.

Psychoanalysis is first and foremost a Theory. How can you flippantly conclude that its therapeutic application has "failed" when it is rarely even properly practiced, anywhere, by anyone? Perhaps you are confusing it with the cod-psychology quackery we witness being practiced everywhere, the list of such being endless.

Your destructive nihilism here ("but so what?") is unfortunate, implying an irrational, hysterical "so what if our approach makes matters worse, at least we are doing something concrete, not just sitting around."

Incidentally, the fact that psychoanalysis has not sufficiently
reflected on the genesis of the diseases it seeked to cure and
understand theoretically, is part of the serious shortcomings of this
approach to psychology. One only needs to consider that the illnesses
it spent most energy on (neurastenia, hysteria) no longer seem to
exist.

Not sufficiently reflected? Who told you that piece of nonsense?

Are you claiming that hysteria and neurosis don't exist? But of course you are, as all complient neurotic behaviourists maintain, denying the existence of the cognitive domain altogether ... BTW, they are pathologies, not illnesses/diseases, a commonplace error made by those who cannot distinguish between psychology and psychiatry, or even psychology and standard medicine. Flu or food poisoning are diseases (viral infection and bacterial infection, respectively, with a medical cure), hysteria [eg panic attacks] and paranoia [eg agrophobia] are [psycho] pathologies - with social causes and social remedies - oh shure, take a tablet to alleviate the [neurological] symtoms, but the underlying blockages still remain ...

This is arrogant posturing.

Let me ask you this: if a friend came to you (as happended to me
recently), telling you that he had just tried to commit suicide, but
was pulled back from the edge of death and has now been put on a
prozac variant, would you tell him: "that's all pseudo-psychiatric
bullshit originating in the marketing departments of corporate
pharmaceutical multinationals? Do 5 years of lacanian analysis
instead, and change the social fabric of the world so that the causes
of your problems disappear?"
.

Its a very serious response to such posturing.

Why does it have to be a "friend"? You mean if it was someone else (a "client" for instance, or "just" someone who approaches you accidentally in some public domain) you might respond less "empathetically"? First off, and simplyfing matters, you claim he "tried" to commit suicide. How do you know this for sure? If he was "really" intent on doing this don't you think that he would 1. have actually, successfully committed it? or 2. made a pathetic, half-hearted effort suggesting that he was not actually trying to commit suicide at all but desperately seeking urgent social acknowledgement of some kind, for which drugs are simply a fast-food consumerist displacement of the underlying problem, whatever their ostensible short-term benefit ("Me meds, dude, gimme me meds!")?

More generally, there is no doubt that psychiatric-medical drug treatments or behavioural therapies (from NLP to standard psycho-social treatments) help alleviate immediate short-term symtoms [which also account for their addictive risk], but it is precisely this, their concentration on symtoms [consequences, effects] which testifies to their ultimate poverty, turning causality on its head, locating problems/pathologies in the neurological [brain biochemistry etc] or the purely personal-subjective, so distracting from the wider social original causes, and conveniently depoliticising social reality. The notion, for instance, that simply manipulating serotonin levels in the brain can CURE depression is tantamount to arguing that chemically manipulating appetite can CURE peoples' need for food, mistaking the consequential for the causal!! And its indeed ironic that pharmaceutical companies and researchers know all about placebo effects in their drug testings but completely ignore the psychological and social implications of such a crucial social-perceptual phenomenon.

[And you don't need five years studying the finer points of Freud, Lacan and Deleuze to know this, BTW].

So keep consuming those smarties rather than knowing why ...

 

[Padraig]

I realise that "disorder" is a loaded term, and that classifying one or the other involves some ideological stance. But surely psychoanalysis takes place within such an ideology: to think that someone can be successfully "treated" by psychoanalytic therapy surely implies that there's something wrong to be treated in the first place?

It is that, the dominant ideology, its questioning, that is the first move of psychoanalysis.

There's something wrong, all right, something that needs "curing" , all right ...

"I was cured all right."

 

[luka]

woah, he posted a picture from The Matrix. Thats deep, like,we're all just trapped in the matrix, exploited by brain sucking aliens. i think we should all listen to padrag, he's a bit like a prophet, trying to wake us from our mental sleep.

 

[minikomi]

you all seem to need some happiness auditing

 

[Padraig]

woah, he posted a picture from The Matrix. Thats deep, like,we're all just trapped in the matrix, exploited by brain sucking aliens. i think we should all listen to padrag, he's a bit like a prophet, trying to wake us from our mental sleep.

Luka, you're conveniently ignoring the other image, of psychoanalysts, permitting you to bypass the conjunctural satire inherent in justaposing the two images: the Matrix "choice" is a false one ("choose the blue tablet or choose the red tablet" ie reality versus fantasy), as reality itself cannot exist without phantasmatic support, and vice versa ie such a "choice" is as misleading as that offered by mainstream psychiatry ...

 

[luka]

oh, i thought i was being facetious and antagonistic.

 

[nunc]

oh, i thought i was being facetious and antagonistic.

ha!
(i tend to sympathise with padraig re psychoanalysis)

tangentially, has anyone actually undergone 'orthodox' psychoanalysis (as opposed to some derivative thereof)

 

[borderpolice]

No, you said very clearly above that the critiques of D & L were not
easy to read, but that there were other critiques that were easier,
critiques that stated things more clearly than those critiques. Where
are these critiques? And what's behind this obsession with "easyness"?

We are moving in uninteresting circles: what i said was this: what are
valid critiques of PA by D & L is said elsewhere, in more easily
digestable form. Alas, those critiques are shattered throughout the
literature. I emphasise easiness because of a concern with
pedagogy. life is short. The original poster clearly wants to
understand the status of psychoanalysis. I'm was trying to be helpful
to a beginner, trying to get into a subject. What's wrong with that?

And what has literary style got to do with it,
dismissing a psychoanalytical approach because its aesthetic strategy
doesn't meet your "literary" criteria? That's like dismissing Einstein
because you don't like his mathematical "style."

Literary style is important because it partly determines how easily a
text can be grasped and understood. For example I would never
recommend to somebody whishing to understand Relativity Theory to
start with Einstein's original papers. There has been tremendous
progress since the invention of the theory, both technically and in
terms of teaching technology. Incidentally, Einstein's maths is
bad. His original papers contain some howlers that had to be corrected
by others.

Easyness again. What you are actually trying to say
here, as elsewhere, is that what you really want is a "comprehensive"
easy-to-digest critique of Freud which smugly rejects all of his
theories ... ??

I do want a comphrehensive critique of Freud's project, yes, that's
true. What's wrong with an easily accesible account of a scientific
theory? It helps teaching and focusses further research, by letting
readers know what the good and weak spots of a theory are. Isn't that
obvious? Exactly what is the problem with this? What are the benefits
of being arcane and hard to access? Easier immunity from criticism?
Fewer challenges to the orthodoxy? I don't particularly want Freud to
be wrong. I just happen to think that he was, on most issues. There's
no shame with that. Most scientific theories fall over eventually.

Something which you then proceed to do, rejecting
without the benefit of any real analysis Freud's Oedipus theory as
simply "pathetic on many levels", resorting to bland acognitive
behaviourist rhetoric ("observation, communication and expectation")
to justify such a dismissal.

Exactly what makes you think "I am rejecting without the benefit of
any real analysis Freud's Oedipus theory"? For a start most
contemporary psychoanalyst, too, work with -- to put it charitably --
significantly latered conceptions of the oedipal and the pre-oedipal.
Would this be the case, if Freud's original accounts was flawless?

What positive arguments for the existence of an oedipus complex as
conceptualised by freud have you put forward, that also deals with the
numerous criticisms of this concept, some of which can be found in
Macmillan's book, especially the empirically rich studies of early
child development, that are hard to square with Freud's description
thereof?

And, what's wrong with "observation, communication and expectation"?
Is your dismissal here deep and well argued? Exactly in which text
does Freud give a meaningful account of the key social operations
communication, or observation or expectation? Please refer to the
collected works for citations.

Psychoanalysis is first and foremost a Theory.

Care to support this statement with a quote from Freud, Collected Works?

How can you flippantly conclude that its therapeutic
application has "failed" when it is rarely even properly practiced,
anywhere, by anyone?

Well if it "is rarely even properly practiced, anywhere, by anyone",
(it may be useful to remember that being analysed is part and parcel
of a pychoanalysts' education) exactly on which empirical evidence do
you base your supposition that it doesn't fail?

In any case, presumably at least Freud himself practised
psychoanalysis, even by your standards? If so, which of his cases
would you consider successfully healed, and on what grounds? Anna O?
Emmy von N? Furthermore, at some point in the second part of the 20th
century, at least in the US, psychoanalysis was quite established as a
therapeutic practise. And I base my dismissal of the PA as a therapy
among others on (1) my own analysis (admittedly aborted after about
half a year) and, more importantly, (2) on various empirical
investigations, like the famous Columbia Study, see

Weber, Bachrach, Solomon: Characteristics of psychoanalytic
patients.

Weber, Bachrach, Solomon: Factors associated with the outcome of
psychoanalysis (I)

Weber, Bachrach, Solomon: Factors associated with the outcome of
psychoanalysis (II)

all of which were published in Volume 12 of the International Review
of Psycho-Analysis. Exactly what is your criticism of this study?
Exactly what evidence to the contrary do you have to offer? I grant
you that this study (and the others i am familiar with), suffers from
various methodological problems, but for the time being, and in the
patients interest, that's better than nothing.

Your destructive nihilism here ("but so what?") is
unfortunate, implying an irrational, hysterical "so what if our
approach makes matters worse, at least we are doing something
concrete, not just sitting around."

Where have i said "so what if our approach makes matters worse"? If
you are interested in having a meaningful discussion, please stick to
what I write, and don't make things up.

And that existing therapies make matters worse is easier stated than
verified. Care to support your claims with evidence?

Not sufficiently reflected? Who told you that piece of nonsense?

My own reading of PA texts maybe?

Are you claiming that hysteria and neurosis don't
exist?

It would really really help if you in fact read what i wrote
("neurastenia" not "neurosis"). So: which contemporary medical
textbooks list "hysteria" or "neurastenia" as indicated mental
illnesses or pathologies?

with social causes and social remedies - oh shure, take
a tablet to alleviate the [neurological] symtoms, but the underlying
blockages still remain ...

Where have i doubted -- indeed where has any well-known pychologist or
psychatrist doubted -- that a lot of mental problems have social
co-causes?

But exactly what they are isn't as clear as your statement implies,
and neither are the cures. If you know something the medical
community doesn't about the social causes of mental problems
and have working cures, why not write your insights up and publish
a paper in the established medical journals to communicate your
insights. in the interest of patient well-being i think you have the
oblication to do so.

Why does it have to be a "friend"? You mean if it was
someone else (a "client" for instance, or "just" someone who
approaches you accidentally in some public domain) you might respond
less "empathetically"?

You have not answered my question. Let me answer yours though: I chose
friend for rhethorical effect, as i suspect that you would react more
sympathetically to those you feel close to.

First off, and simplyfing matters, you claim he "tried"
to commit suicide. How do you know this for
sure?

I don't know this for sure. I was passing on his self-description.

More generally, there is no doubt that
psychiatric-medical drug treatments or behavioural therapies (from NLP
to standard psycho-social treatments) help alleviate immediate
short-term symtoms [which also account for their addictive risk], but
it is precisely this, their concentration on symtoms [consequences,
effects] which testifies to their ultimate poverty, turning causality
on its head, locating problems/pathologies in the neurological [brain
biochemistry etc] or the purely personal-subjective, so distracting
from the wider social original causes, and conveniently depoliticising
social reality.

You are attacking straw men. As i said before, i also believe that
many mental illnesses have social co-causes, often dominant. This is
also acknowledged by any mental health practicioner and theoretician i
have ever encountered.

The problem is that it is just not clear what precisely these social
co-causes are. In addition, some of the obvious social causes,
lonelyness, lack of uncomplicated access to sex, and pleasure,
boredom, are not easy to alleviate by the medical community. Hence it
is difficult to devise social cures.

Incidentally, as i had pointed out, my main point of criticism of
Freudian psychoanalyis is precisely its lack of social dimension.

 

[tryptych]

I hope Padraig is going to reply to Borderpolice's above points. Especially those about "easyness" - what exactly is wrong with wanting an easy introduction that I can proceed from? Pretty much anything difficult I've read before, I've started out with simple commentary and criticism and before moving towards the more detailed analysis.

 

[Padraig]

I hope Padraig is going to reply to Borderpolice's above points. Especially those about "easyness" - what exactly is wrong with wanting an easy introduction that I can proceed from?

Well, your hopes have been dashed, in this instance. I don't intend responding to a post [borderpolice's] that has already condemned itself, but perhaps you need here yet another "easy" introduction to a different topic: elementary rhetoric and sophistry, and those who utilise it in the guise of insight ...

 

[luka]

that's whats called 'an admission of defeat.'

 

[Padraig]

On Social Causes of Contemporary Pathologies,
From Carl Eliot's, "A New Way to Be Mad," in the Atlantic in 2000 [Via I Cite]

Anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with the history of psychiatry cannot help but be struck by the way that mental disorders come and go. Conditions like social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, gender identity disorder, multiple personality disorder, anorexia, and chronic fatigue syndrome were once seen as rare or nonexistent, then suddenly they ballooned in popularity. This is not simply because people decided to "come out" rather than suffer alone. It is because all mental disorders, even those with biological roots, have a social component. While these new conditions are very different from one another, they share several important features.

First, the conditions are usually backed by a group of medical or psychological defenders whose careers or reputations depend on the existence of the disorder and who insist that the condition is real. Second, there is usually no hard data about the causes or the mechanism of the condition. Third, no independent lab tests or imaging devices are available to provide objective confirmation of the diagnosis, which is usually made solely on the basis of the narratives and behavior of their patients. Finally, there is often (but not always) a treatment for the condition even in the absence of knowledge about its causes and mechanism. The diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, for example, was driven by the development of profitable medications to treat it, such as antidepressant drugs.

Soon the new conditions are discussed in journals and at conferences; clinicians start to diagnose the disorder more and more commonly; the conditions themselves become part of popular discourse and are discussed in support groups, therapy sessions, Internet venues, and in articles like mine and films like Whole. Patients begin to reinterpret their own psychological histories in light of what they hear, and their behavior changes to match what is expected of people with the condition they believe they have. Often they diagnose themselves and decide on the proper treatment. "I want you to accept that this condition exists," Baz says emphatically in the film, "and that the only way it can be sorted out is surgery."

Perhaps, but this can only be determined through careful study. What needs particular attention are the reasons why some people come to be sexually attracted to amputees or to the image of themselves as amputees. The form paraphilias take differs not merely among individuals, but from one culture and historical period to another. When Richard von Krafft-Ebing was writing about paraphilias in 19th-century Vienna, he described men who were sexually obsessed with handkerchiefs. That paraphilia has largely disappeared. Yet many others have emerged. What is it about our own time and place that has helped create an obsession with amputees?

By all indications, the number of people identifying themselves as wannabes is growing. Robert Smith, the Scottish surgeon, has six more acceptable candidates for amputation. A popular wannabe listserv, whose membership was 1,400 two and a half years ago, has 3,670 subscribers today. A group of clinicians at Columbia University has set up a Web site to provide information about the condition. They are redefining it as "Body Integrity Identity Disorder." In the meantime, psychiatrists are no closer to understanding the condition, and they are proposing no therapy other than amputation.

In looking at the emerging medical discourse on BIID one discovers that

The triggering event for this "disorder" appears to be the sight of an amputee at an early age. Many individuals can clearly recall the first amputee they saw resulting in a strong desire to have their own bodies modified in this way, and a sense of "recognition" of their unconscious desires. This may be as early in life as age 4 or 5.

Most individuals with BIID present a combination of the following symptoms:

1. A feeling of “incompleteness" as a four limbed individual but a strong certainty that having an amputation would lead to feelings of "wholeness".

2. A strong concept regarding the limb involved and the level of amputation desired.

3. Feelings of intense jealousy at the sight of an amputee.

Is it possible that wannabees retroactively construct a narrative of origins in order to convince doctors to cut off the offending limb? Is it possible that they install a false certainty into their image of their stump in order to assure doctors that they won't sue them for malpractice?

And, outside these factors intrinsic to medicine/psychiatry, what might be larger cultural factors contributing to the visibility of wannabees now? BIID has appeared on television shows--Nip/Tuck and last night's Prime Time Live (I think that's the name). And, as Eliot mentions, there is the movie, Whole.
Is it possible that BIID has legs, as it were, because it clicks on the way that consumer culture is excessive but not whole? Is it a way of experiencing the body as non-All, as not everything because incomplete?

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Neurasthenia [via Wikipedia]

Neurasthenia was a term first coined by George Miller Beard in 1869. Beard's definition of "neurasthenia" described a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depression. It was explained as being a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system's energy reserves, which Beard attributed to civilisation. Physicians of the Beard way of thinking associated neurasthenia with the stresses of urbanization and the pressures placed on the intellectual class by the increasingly competitive business environment. Typically, it was associated with upper class individuals in sedentary employment.

Beard, with his partner A.D. Rockwell, advocated first electrotherapy and then increasingly experimental treatments for people with neurasthenia, a position that was controversial. An 1868 review posited that Beard's and Rockwell's grasp of the scientific method was suspect and did not believe their claims to be warranted.

In the late 1800s, it became a popular diagnosis that began to include such symptoms as weakness, dizziness and fainting, and led to rest cures, especially for women, who were the gender primarily diagnosed with this condition at that time. Virginia Woolf was known to have been forced to undergo rest cures, which she describes in her book On Being Ill. In literature, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper also rebels against her rest cure.

In 1895, Sigmund Freud reviewed electrotherapy and declared it a "pretense treatment." He highlighted the example of Elizabeth von R's note that "the stronger these were the more they seemed to push her own pains into the background," perhaps a precursor to modern-day biofeedback.

Nevertheless, neuasthenia was a common diagnosis in World War I - every one of the c.1700 officers processed through the Craiglockhart War Hospital was diagnosed with neurasthenia, for example — but its use declined a decade later.

The modern view holds that the main problem of neurasthenia was that it attempted to group together a wide variety of cases. In recent years, Richard M. Fogoros has posited that perhaps neurasthenia was a word that could include some psychiatric conditions, but more importantly, many physiological conditions marginally more understood by the medical community, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and various forms of dysautonomia, among others. He emphasizes that the majority of patients who would have once been diagnosed with neurasthenia have conditions that are "real, honest-to-goodness physiologic (as opposed to psychologic) disorders... and while they can make anybody crazy, they are not caused by craziness."

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Incidentally, as i had pointed out, my main point of criticism of
Freudian psychoanalyis is precisely its lack of social dimension.

This is ridiculous.

Let's just consider, for instance, hysteria:

For Freud, hysteria was a product of upbringing, education, of one's interaction as a child with the world of adults or of other children. In other words, Freud was the first psychologist to take the step toward broaching the possibility that hysteria is a social disease, rather than a physiological one.

[ Of course, by 1897 Freud had modified his theory: he then argues that the traumatic sexual event does not have to be real to have a lasting pathological effect: it can be merely imagined, it can be the product of fantasy. In the psychic economy, Freud argues, imagined incidents have the same causational value as real events: the psyche does not distinguish between real and imagined in any evaluative sense. ]

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[Padraig]

that's whats called 'an admission of defeat.'

It's what's called 'Reason' ... [do you even have a clue what's being discussed here, cynical smartalec?].

 

[droid]

Careful now Padraig or you'll run out of Dissensians to alienate!

 

[johneffay]

but perhaps you need here yet another "easy" introduction to a different topic: elementary rhetoric and sophistry, and those who utilise it in the guise of insight ...

And that really is the pot calling the kettle black.

I have to say that I'm confused about what exactly is being attacked and defended here. Psychoanalysis has been torn apart by factional disagreements almost since it's birth. Given this fact, I for one would be interested in seeing some sort of objective assessment of the relative factions let alone the worth of PA as a whole. Padrraig, are you defending all of PA? If not, why not?

I agree with borderpolice that, given Freud's insistence on PA as a strictly scientific medical methodology, it is perfectly reasonable to subject his published cases and their theoretical underpinnings to empirical investigation. In fact, I'm surprised that anybody should find this either controversial or not be prepared to admit that he falls down in this area. Most proponents of psychoanalytic therapy that I know are happy to admit this, but then go on to claim that PA has moved on since Freud.

However, clearly you cannot take this approach with all psychoanalytic writings: It would be preposterous to try it with Zizek, for example. This the leads to the question of how to judge the more theoretical/literary pschoanalytic work. To this end, I have a lot of sympathy with Guattari when he says

Are not the best cartographies of the psyche, or if you like, the best psychoanlyses, those of Goethe, Proust, Joyce, Artaud and Beckett, rather than Freud, Jung and Lacan? In fact, it is the literary components in the works of the latter that best survives (The Three Ecologies).
​

 

[fldsfslmn]

Teddy Adorno on psychoanalysis:

"The admonitions to be happy, voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanatorium-director and the highly-strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment-industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from the office" (Minima Moralia, 62–63).

This line made me weep with laughter the first time I read it. Adorno at his best: overblown, hilarious, and painfully accurate.

 

[k-punk]

Teddy Adorno on psychoanalysis:

"The admonitions to be happy, voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanatorium-director and the highly-strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment-industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously downstairs when he comes home irritable from the office" (Minima Moralia, 62–63).

This line made me weep with laughter the first time I read it. Adorno at his best: overblown, hilarious, and painfully accurate.

Don't know what is 'accurate' about this - since Freud famously said that ordinary, as opposed to acute, misery was the best we could hope for.

 

[k-punk]

Drugs and the psycho mafia

One of the many merits of psychoanalysis is its hostility to commonsense and the reality principle. The currently dominant multinational-funded psychiatric pharmacological model of 'good mental health', on the contrary, is pure normativity. Surely there should be far more alarm and concern about the dubious empirical status of the SSRIs-cure-depression hypothesis than about the supposed failings of psychoanlysis to be scientific? Vastly more people have been hooked on zombifying drugs by GPushers in the pay of conglomerates than have ever undergone psychoanalysis. Padraig is right that there is a fashion both in designating mental health conditions and in their putative cures.

 

[johneffay]

Surely there should be far more alarm and concern about the dubious empirical status of the SSRIs-cure-depression hypothesis than about the supposed failings of psychoanlysis to be scientific?

Quite possibly. I'm not alarmed at PA's failure to be scientific; my interest has always been it's impact in the wider sphere. However when some writers and (more importantly) practitioners make specific scientific claims for the discipline, surely the thing to do is take them at their word and test those claims via scientific enquiry? In fact, I think that it would be remiss not to.

 

[fldsfslmn]

the three R's: repetition, repetition, repetition

One of the many merits of psychoanalysis is its hostility to commonsense and the reality principle.

I never thought of it that way, but yeah, I could see how it might remain insulated from/antithetical to the reality principle as it subordinates to the totalizing impulse of capitalism. (If I'm following the discussion right.)

The currently dominant multinational-funded psychiatric pharmacological model of 'good mental health', on the contrary, is pure normativity. Surely there should be far more alarm and concern about the dubious empirical status of the SSRIs-cure-depression hypothesis than about the supposed failings of psychoanlysis to be scientific? Vastly more people have been hooked on zombifying drugs by GPushers in the pay of conglomerates than have ever undergone psychoanalysis. Padraig is right that there is a fashion both in designating mental health conditions and in their putative cures.

But that aside, I just don't think pharmacology is psychoanalytic practice's "other." Psychoanalytic practice (also normative, no?) and the pharmacological industry function more or less in concert; in the end they're just different arms of the scientific apparatus.