Well, some might say so. A New York Times op-ed piece today essentially about the clash between science and religion, titled: “The Neural Buddhists”. In parts of the article, you could substitute ideas relating to “psychotherapy” or “psychotherapists” — particularly for those operating from an psychoanalytic psychotherapy perspective — where you find ideas pertaining to [...]
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A tragic disconnect. A friend of a friend of mine had a tragic thing happen to her. It had to do with what I’m calling the mind-body disconnect. She had had an extensive battery of tests (CAT scans? MRIs?) done. She had had cancer, but it looked like she was in remission. Unfortunately, the doctors [...]
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Just a few points from a very nice review of Anthony Storr’s book on Freud, at Mind Hacks.
Freud had a huge number of ideas that he developed over 40 years. The idea that his ideas have been ‘discredited’ displays ignorance of the sheer body of his work.
Many of his ideas have not stood the test [...]
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Not a blame game.
Psychotherapy is not about complaining endlessly about past injuries. It is not about painting family members as cause of all our problems. It can be about understanding one’s perceptions of past and present events and how those perceptions color our views of our daily life. Some misunderstand psychotherapy as playing a blame [...]
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Making meaning.
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Faced with confusion, we will attempt to find meaning, even where there is none. Psychotherapy is about uncovering and addressing those meanings. Meanings that may even be obscure to ourselves. A good therapist will gently challenge us to examine inconsistencies in our perceptions and beliefs about ourselves and our [...]
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This is a difficult question to answer. Here’s a bare bones answer:
Psychotherapy is a conversation between two people — where one person predominantly talks and the other predominantly listens. The goal of the conversation that develops is to foster insight into the nature of the person doing most of the talking, as well as insight [...]
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The Yale Daily News ran a February 29 story on Elyn Saks whose recent memoir The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. Time magazine voted it one of the top ten best non-fiction books of 2007. One of the interesting aspects of the story is Saks’ crediting of her psychoanalysis as being critical to [...]
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They call it termination.
In the field of mental health, some do. So, when should your psychotherapy end? An important question, and some recent research has some pointers to keep in mind. It’s particularly important when you’re in a more “psychoanalytic” or “psychodynamic” psychotherapy. When working this way therapy tends to be less structured. Someone might [...]
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