Critiques of psychoanalysis

[Padraig]

And that really is the pot calling the kettle black.

No, its the pot pointing out the kettle's lack of an element.

However, clearly you cannot take this approach with all psychoanalytic writings: It would be preposterous to try it with Zizek, for example.

Given Zizek's insistence on theory [even at the expense of "empiricism"], you might need to come up with a more credible, alternative example.

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

Is someone paying you to write this patronising, self-congratulatory shite? You alienated yourself with your first response to one of my posts last January .. and you're still doing it [and take Luka with you, while you're at it ...]

 

[Padraig]

Corporate Capitalism and Medical Science: A Homely Relationship

Very scientific ...

 

[johneffay]

Given Zizek's insistence on theory [even at the expense of "empiricism"], you might need to come up with a more credible, alternative example.

This discussion would go a lot easier if you read what people actually said rather than simply supplying knee-jerk reactions to what you think they might have said if they were being as confrontational as yourself. My point was that it would be preposterous to expect to gain anything from an empirical approach to Zizek for exactly the reason you have just given.

I repeat the question I asked you: Do you think that all branches of psychoanalysis are equally worthwhile and, if not, why not? I'll just add that this isn't some sort of snide attempt to set you up so that I can knock you down; I am genuinely interested in your answer.

 

[droid]

Is someone paying you to write this patronising, self-congratulatory shite? You alienated yourself with your first response to one of my posts last January .. and you're still doing it [and take Luka with you, while you're at it ...]

 

[borderpolice]

Neurasthenia [via Wikipedia]

A wikipedia article is an example of a contemporary medical textbook that lists neurastenia or hysteria as an indicated medical condition?

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.

Oh really, Freud acknowledges that humans interact and are "history-sensitive", to use the technical term? Exactly who has ever denied this? Aristotle called humans "zoon politikon". What I was criticising in PA was the lack of a position on interaction that goes beyond the common-sensical. To see that Freud has a problem there, just try and find, in his collected works, a serious investigation of what interaction is, how it works. relatedly, and not surprisingly, one of the central developments in post-freudian PA has been a (somewhat half-hearted if you ask me) turn towards interaction.

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.

[He was hardly the first. Anyway:] My charge has been that Freud's PA does not have a meaningful, i.a.w. non-trivial, theory of the social. saying that "hysteria was a product of upbringing, education, of one's interaction as a child with the world of adults or of other children." is a trivial statement, because humans are blatantly social animals. That much has never been denied by anyone ever. What i was asking for is a structured theory of the social. this is very different from the common-sensical "product of upbringing, education, of one's interaction as a child with the world of adults or of other children".

The thing is though, that Freud did indeed make a step towards a more non-trivial, more structured theory of the social, by way of the oedipus complex. the oedipal triangle is indeed properly social. But:

• Alas the OC doesn't work, because (apart from the fact that it doesn't account for child socialisation that doesn't happen in the classical oedipal triangle), amounts to "oedipal determination" where essentially all key human traits are fixed through the resolution of the OC at the age of around 4.
  
  My criticism here is that PA has completely failed to establish the correctness of this oedipa determinism, both using its own criteria (therapeutic effectiveness) or those of other social sciences.

• There is no structured investigation into the social mechanisms that make the oedipal triangle even possible. For a start one needs to communicate to instill fear of castration. Of course Freud can plausable claim that communication is not his interest, and that he therefore takes a naive view on this subject. Alternativly he could say that an understanding of communication is beyond the current scientific possibilities (which his stance vis-a-vis the neural hardware of the brain).
  
  Here i would answer that Freud is wrong. His naivety in matters of interaction/communication shows up in many places, one of which is the issue of therpeutic suggestion.

So, where in Freud's collected works do you see a serious investigation into (what has emerged as the central issue o)f sociality the trias "observation, communication and expectation")?

 

[borderpolice]

And that really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I agree with borderpolice that, given Freud's insistence on PA as a strictly scientific medical methodology,

this is early to middle period Freud. He later, and i think because his scientific hopes didn't fulfill, softened his stance on this.

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.

Indeed. And the proponents of psychoanalytic therapy of my acquaintance are also happy to admit that the insistence on empirical (aka intersubjecte) validation coming from the outside forced PA to tighten up their theory and clinical practise. It also lead to a bifurcation: those on one hand, who see PA more as a hermeneutic excercise, with no truth claims (except maybe weak ones in non-trivially raised theorapeutic success), and those who think of it as a proper, hard-nosed empirical science.

To this end, I have a lot of sympathy with Guattari when he says

I have in fact a lot of sympathise with Freud and reading him non-scientifically. I have learned a lot from this, partly also by seeing where he went awry. but psychology has moved on a lot since, and the empirical material is pretty overwhelming, too.

 

[borderpolice]

And that really is the pot calling the kettle black.
I agree with borderpolice that, given Freud's insistence on PA as a strictly scientific medical methodology,

this is early to middle period Freud. He later, and i think because his scientific hopes didn't fulfill, softened his stance on this.

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.

Indeed. And the proponents of psychoanalytic therapy of my acquaintance are also happy to admit that the insistence on empirical (aka intersubjecte) validation coming from the outside forced PA to tighten up their theory and clinical practise. It also lead to a bifurcation: those on one hand, who see PA more as a hermeneutic excercise, with no truth claims (except maybe weak ones in non-trivially raised theorapeutic success), and those who think of it as a proper, hard-nosed empirical science.

To this end, I have a lot of sympathy with Guattari when he says

I have in fact a lot of sympathise with Freud and reading him non-scientifically. I have learned a lot from this, partly also by seeing where he went awry. but psychology has moved on a lot since, and the empirical material is pretty overwhelming, too.

 

[borderpolice]

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.

Since the Adorno quote talks about "voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanatorium-director and the highly-strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment-industry" what makes you think he's critisising PA? A's anthropology was highly psycho-analytical, though Adorno never sketched it out in public, alas. Not surprisingly, Adorno too, didn't have a meaningful theory of the social.

 

[borderpolice]

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

That's also true of astrology.

In any case, the psychoanalytical estabishment has itself become reality, and an organisational structure, with its own normative demands and expectations of common-sense.

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?

I don't know about "more", but surely there's a lot of bullshit in other schools of psychology.
My favourite bugbear here is ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), which to me looks and sounds like good old boredom!

But i don't like your/padraig's underlying logic: a lot of the pharma stuff is BS, HENCE PA is ok?

the truth of the matter is this: humans are complicated. PA doesn't adequatly deal with mental problems, and where chemicals seem to better things (and that is hardly always), this is more due to a chance find than serious understanding.

 

[luka]

borderpolice is funny. i like howhe keeps asking for citations from freuds collected works knowing full well that padrag has never read freud in his life. ha! and padrag comes back with an extract from a wikipedia article! gnah! wonderful stuff gentlemen, keep it up.

 

[Padraig]

... but psychology has moved on a lot since

Who is suggesting otherwise? Of course it has developed since Freud [incidentally, I'm a Lacanian, not a Freudian, but the former is of course fundamentally indebted to Freud's theories, just as, say, feminist theory is], just as particle physics and astro physics have "moved on" since Einstein. Interestingly, you don't give any indication in your posts as to how it has moved on ... instead making a lot of vague but ideologically-loaded announcements about "pretty overwhelming empirical material."

But to recap, given the level of amnesia and ideological displacement on display in this thread:

Borderpolice made a series of unwarranted, dismissive and opinionated announcements concerning Freud's work, viz

"Psychoanalysis ... a lot less efficient than chemical based therapies"

"... the almost complete lack of a social dimension in Freud's work"

" ... later attempts in this direction [the ur-horde killing the father], remain embarrassing even when granting that he was more producing literature than formulating scientific hypotheses"

"The Oedipus Complex ... is pathetic on many levels"

"Yes. Psychoanalysis is primarily therapeutic, and describes itself
thus. "
​

No effort was made by Boderpolice to argue or demonstrate or prove any of these ridiculously dismissive, anti-intellectual opinions [nor to back up in any way his bias for establishment psychiatry and bio-chemical pharmacology, presumably because he finds the ideologies underlying these industries as "self-evident."]. Instead, hilariously, in a parody of the scientific method, , he demanded that I prove otherwise [complete with relevant citations from Freud's work!!] in order, of course, to distract attention away from his "self-evident" dogma, away from the onus, by definition, being on him to back up his spurious, subjectivist opinions.

Then Borderpolice's contradictory nonsense about Deleuzian and Lacanian critiques

"I suggest to give the deleuzeian and lacanian critiques a miss, not because they lack some insight, but because they are hard to read if you are not familiar with their languages already, and don't really say anything that hasn't been said more clearly elsewhere."

"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."

"what i said was this: what are
valid critiques of PA by D & L is said elsewhere, in more easily
digestable form."
​

But what is even more glaring is Borderpolice's seeming inability to distinguish between psychoanalytic theory, attempts at corroborating such theories, and psychoanalytic practices/therapies, instead gratuitously conflating them. Theories are to be dismissed as "embarrassing" because applied practices are "inefficient" or have simply "failed" [to invoke another Einsteinian analogy: E=mc*2 should be dismissed as a theoretical embarrassment because of the subsequent environmental and human devastation caused by scientific practice, by the development of the atom bomb].

Borderpolice:

"I have in fact a lot of sympathise with Freud and reading him non-scientifically."​

AS you don't tell us the difference or distinguish between a scientific reading and a non-scientific reading, all of this [your whole modus operandi] is inherently problematic: psychoanalytic theory is a social theory, so on what basis, what other social theory are you invoking here that enables you to distinguish between a scientific and a non-scientific approach or reading? Have you developed some new theory that you're keeping to yourself? Or are you - more likely - confusing your unexamined, internalised ideological pronouncements with "a scientific approach"?

Borderpolice:

"What i was asking for is a structured theory of the social."​

Try Lacan and post-Lacan. Then get back to us ...


And I won't even mention the sneering-soundbite "contributions" from this thread's Greek Chorus, Luka and Droid ...

 

[Padraig]

This discussion would go a lot easier if you read what people actually said rather than simply supplying knee-jerk reactions to what you think they might have said if they were being as confrontational as yourself.

It is precisely the failure of many posters here to read either what I have written or what they have previously written themselves, in conjunction with their knee-jerk proclivities, that necessitates a "confrontational" prerogative , John. You, indeed, responded to one of my posts here with a mis-informed, knee-jerk "And that really is the pot calling the kettle black" in response to my drawing attention to borderpolice's dogmatic pronouncements.

My point was that it would be preposterous to expect to gain anything from an empirical approach to Zizek for exactly the reason you have just given.

But I didn't give that reason, John. I stated that Zizek is a theoretician, and for precisely that reason, his work is conducive to empiricist scientific corroboration, which is particularly at variance with saying that such testing would be "preposterous." Your post was implying that Zizek's work is not theoretical: my disagreement with that stance, clearly untrue, was why I suggested you choose instead another example ...

 

[johneffay]

John. You, indeed, responded to one of my posts here with a mis-informed, knee-jerk "And that really is the pot calling the kettle black" in response to my drawing attention to borderpolice's dogmatic pronouncements.

Padraig, I read your posts very carefully and found them to be full of the rhetorical flourishes (oh Roight!) that you claim to find in borderpolice's posts. Hence my pot/kettle comment. Your sophistry is evident by your constant reversal of your position and your inability to properly respond to anything other people write (I clearly linked Zizek to a theoretical/literary approach). You refuse to answer direct questions ('I am a Lacanian' is not an answer to the question I have twice asked you; you fail to resond to borderpolice's 'dogma', simply turning him into a straw man), prefering to hide behind polemic and pictures.

I give up.

 

[Padraig]

Padraig, I read your posts very carefully and found them to be full of the rhetorical flourishes (oh Roight!) that you claim to find in borderpolice's posts. Hence my pot/kettle comment.

Oh roight, you're here confusing a satirical response to inane rhetoric and dogma with rhetoric and dogma, John.

Your sophistry is evident by your constant reversal of your position and your inability to properly respond to anything other people write (I clearly linked Zizek to a theoretical/literary approach).

Examples, please. Even one, John, and in all seriousness. If anything, as I previously have pointed out above, it is the likes of Borderpolice and others who have constantly reversed their positions here. And that you cannot distinguish between, choose to lump together, the theoretical and the literary here, is unfortunate.

I give up.

Before you've even started? You're very easily frustrated, John [by ordinary discourse]. Maybe Borderpolice can recommend you an appropriate chemical palliative ... or maybe some more "pretty pictures."

"I give up"

 

[johneffay]

Okay, one last go:

Padraig, try answering the perfectly reasonable question I have twice asked you (and alluded to a third time) in a perfectly reasonable manner, and I won't go away from here thinking that you're a vacuous twat with a chip on your shoulder.

 

[droid]

Greek Chorus

And I won't even mention the sneering-soundbite "contributions" from this thread's Greek Chorus, Luka and Droid ...

"The Chorus rejoiced in the triumph of good; it wailed aloud its grief, and sympathised with the woe of the puppets of the gods. It entered deeply into the interest of their fortunes and misfortunes, yet it stood apart, outside of triumph and failure... ...It was the ideal spectator, the soul being purged, as Aristotle expressed it, by Pity and Fear, flinging its song and its cry among the passions and the pain of others..."

 

[Padraig]

Okay, one last go:

Padraig, try answering the perfectly reasonable question I have twice asked you (and alluded to a third time) in a perfectly reasonable manner, and I won't go away from here thinking that you're a vacuous twat with a chip on your shoulder.

Let's, first, clear up this deflected inquisatorial fixation of your's, John. Your twice-asked question, above alluded to for a fourth time:

(1) "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?
"​

And who would undertake such an "objective assessment", John? Is there someone in particular around with such a superior knowledge [a more advanced theory, perhaps?] of psychoanalysis that could therefore be in a credible position to undertake such an elevated, distinguished, and judicious objective assessment? [Or, more likely, would such a pompous assessor be merely creating yet another faction within psychoanalysis?].

John, I'm defending social theory, a rigorous, ruthless (and, yes, "objective") approach to such. Indeed, one of the greatest difficulties psychoanalytic theory [for instance, the Lacanian notion of the split subject] faces is precisely its objectivity , its dispassionate insistence in the face of a hostile ideology ( the Reality Principle, CyberCapitalism, the pomo triumph of subjectivist obscuranticism, ego-based chemical/psychiatric quick-fix "solutions" etc)

(2) "I repeat the question I asked you: Do you think that all branches of psychoanalysis are equally worthwhile and, if not, why not? "​

I'm not sure I follow the basis of your questioning here. Branches. Equally worthwhile. Could you elaborate on what you mean by branches here? Different theories [Freud, Jung etc] or different "therapeutic" practices [self-analysis, group conditioning, drugs, etc] or methodological testing paradigms? Of course they are not "equally worthwhile": a radical pluralist approach is the ultimate in ideological obfuscation, of reactionary conservatism ...

Finally, I don't propose, as you have done above, to engage in the otherwise ineluctable spectacle of disavowed personal abuse here, viz., should we simply, axiomatically ask you to prove that "you're not a vacuous twat with a chip on your shoulder"?

 

[luka]

padrag, you are fucking hilarious, a gem, a real diamond. conneiseirs of comedy are pissing their pants with laughter. that last sentance of yours made me genuflect before my computer screen.

'Finally, I don't propose, as you have done above, to engage in the otherwise ineluctable spectacle of disavowed personal abuse here, viz., should we simply, axiomatically ask you to prove that "you're not a vacuous twat with a chip on your shoulder"?'

ah! the silver tongued irish, gift of the gab and all that...

 

[dHarry]

Then Borderpolice's contradictory nonsense about Deleuzian and Lacanian critiques

"I suggest to give the deleuzeian and lacanian critiques a miss, not because they lack some insight, but because they are hard to read if you are not familiar with their languages already, and don't really say anything that hasn't been said more clearly elsewhere."

"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."

"what i said was this: what are
valid critiques of PA by D & L is said elsewhere, in more easily
digestable form."
​

Padraig, you bring this point up over and over, failing each time to understand it. Borderpolice first says "give the deleuzeian and lacanian critiques a miss" because there are easier critiques of psychoanalysis to read/understand, and then because you misunderstood him, patiently re-states this twice. Each time you bizarrely - and unpleasantly - accuse him of logical errors which are simply not there. Can you really not grasp this simple point? You really owe him an apology for this quasi-trolling.

To get back on-topic, I would say that Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari is a salutary counter-attack to a certain strain of Freudian psychoanalysis, an attempt to take psychoanalytic insight beyond the limitations of the domestic familial Oedipus complex into the socio-political realm and hook it up with Marx, Nietzche and revolutionary politics.

Deleuze here makes a strong case against the split subject of Lacanian theory, in favour of his conception of desire as an asubjective yet politically-charged process (without lack and beyond pleasure):

http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/texte.php?cle=167&groupe=Anti Oedipe et Mille Plateaux&langue=2

"[...]from Descartes to Lacan, this repugnant thought of the cogito is not only a metaphysical thought.

The entire history of desire -- and once again, Reich falls in the same way -- this way of linking desire to a beyond, whether it's that of lack, or pleasure, or jouissance, and of posing the dualism between the subject of enunciation and the subject of the statement. And it isn't by chance that it's the same people who are doing it today, i.e., the Lacanians [...] this rotten theory
[...]
A first welding of desire-lack is brought about; from there, it goes without saying that desire is defined as a function of a field of transcendence; desire is desire for what one does not have; that begins with Plato, it continues with Lacan. This is the first malediction of desire, it's the first way to curse desire"

 

[k-punk]

That's also true of astrology.

Astrology might be opposed to commonsense, but it is not opposed to the reality PRINCIPLE. It presents itself as a straightforwardly realist account of the cosmos; psychoanalysis can't consistently do that, because it has a theory OF the reality principle. Freud's positivism was bound to come to grief, not only because of the supposed 'failings' of the cure, but also because of the internal logic of PA. (btw Astrology seems to me innocuous by comparison with Pyschopharmacology).

In any case, the psychoanalytical estabishment has itself become reality, and an organisational structure, with its own normative demands and expectations of common-sense.

Sure - which was why Lacan/ D and G etc broke from the psychoanalytic establishment. But I would say that what they did was ultra-pyschoanalysis (i.e. they freed the uniqueness and the radicality of psychoanalytic thought from its embedding in a commonsense, institutional framework) rather than anti-psychoanalysis.

I don't know about "more", but surely there's a lot of bullshit in other schools of psychology.
My favourite bugbear here is ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), which to me looks and sounds like good old boredom!

Good point. You might be shocked, actually, at the number of students I teach at college who have some supposed disorder or other. I think much of what is called dyslexia is actually a kind of post-lexia; many kids now have a nervous system which makes it nigh on impossible for them to read - whether that is an individual pathology or a pathology of capitalism itself is an interesting question.

But i don't like your/padraig's underlying logic: a lot of the pharma stuff is BS, HENCE PA is ok?

You're right, that would be a straightforward fallacy. My point wasn't quite that. I think there are three issues:

1. Concepts of clinical effectiveness involve all kinds of value-laden assumptions, and PA is often attacked for its failings in these areas by extremely powerful and wealthy vested interests. Given the current prevalence of multinational-pushed pharma-psychology, and given that its SOLE CRITERIA for success is clinical effectiveness, it strikes me that ITS effectiveness and philosophical framework should be the more pressing priority atm.

2. As John and others have argued, psychoanalysis has other dimensions other than its therapeutic claims.

3. There is a philosophical problem with the notion of assessing PA on empirical grounds alone. PA is a metaphysical theory as well as a clinical cure. For example, it would be manifestly absurd to ask Lacan to empirically prove the validity of his concept of the Real. (As absurd as it would be to ask Kant to give empirical evidence for his concept of the noumenon).