tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post3179068108982317339..comments2024-03-29T16:07:28.942-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: The Weekly Standard Gets SuckeredStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-65880192521799462412017-01-17T06:34:37.436-08:002017-01-17T06:34:37.436-08:00TW, a good quote. I see Albert Ellis was a founder...TW, a good quote. I see Albert Ellis was a founder of REBT (rational emotive behavior therapy), and wikipedia offers a story of his overcoming a fear through willful exposure.<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis<br />---<br />Ellis had exaggerated fears of speaking in public and during his adolescence he was extremely shy around women. At age 19, already showing signs of thinking like a cognitive-behavioral therapist, he forced himself to talk to 100 women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens over a period of a month. Even though he did not get a date, he reported that he desensitized himself to his fear of rejection by women.<br />---<br /><br />And apparently this approach is described as a "shame attack", a way of not letting shame hold us back.<br />http://albertellis.org/shame-eye-beholder/<br />---<br />A shame attack is a very creative intervention used within REBT that is often conducted when the client is self-conscious in social situations. It is conducted by doing something completely ridiculous or outside of “normal” social protocol, without offering any explanation to neutralize the situation. A famous shame attack created by Dr. Ellis is walking a banana on a string in a public space. This exposure and countless others can be performed with the client to demonstrate that we are free to be ourselves. In other words, we can accept who we are without becoming disturbed, attempting to tolerate the discomfort of judgment. One of two things is often discovered after a shame attack: 1) Others either do not notice or do not care about the behavior you are exhibiting; 2) If others do care, nothing terrible happens based on their judgments and you survive.<br />---<br /><br />It says "One of two things is often discovered", but it doesn't say what else can happen. I do like the condition "without offering any explanation" because if you explain yourself, like "I'm doing a social experiment", then people won't just think you're a fool.<br /><br />Of course in a world of 7 billion people, you have a lot of room to experiment, and if we shame ourselves too badly in front of any given social circle, we can "move on" to another circle and "reset" our self image as a dignified person who cares what people think of us.<br /><br />So the lesson here would seem to be to do all your "experimenting" with stranger you don't care about, and then once you've refined your techniques, you can erase your experiments by only interacting with people whom didn't see your shameful behavior.<br /><br />I can see both the anonymity of a large city, or being online is the ideal place for social experiments, while a harder experiment is to ask what sort of behavior you're willing to experiment on with family, friends, or coworkers whom you can't say "This never happened" and expect them to forget and never mention it again.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-74676411484583912532017-01-16T13:45:13.915-08:002017-01-16T13:45:13.915-08:00I'm pretty sure I read that Freud once predict...I'm pretty sure I read that Freud once predicted that medications would replace psychotherapy.<br /><br />Did he? <br /><br />And if so, did he later dismiss it as a transient thought, best forgotten? Or just ignore it? -- Rich LaraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-13213946351845689262017-01-16T11:01:35.591-08:002017-01-16T11:01:35.591-08:00"Freud blew it..."
He certainly did. As..."Freud blew it..."<br /><br />He certainly did. As far as I'm aware of the history, Freud was the first in a long line of followers, some now in the field of fMRI neuropsychology (rapidly becoming a modern version of phrenology), attempting to achieve the Materialist goal of rescinding personal sovereignity over thought.<br /><br />Thank the lucky stars for Albert Ellis:<br /><br />"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."Trigger Warningnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-3252507709087454462017-01-16T09:23:09.627-08:002017-01-16T09:23:09.627-08:00Stuart: As I have said, Freudian psychoanalysis i...Stuart: As I have said, Freudian psychoanalysis is overpriced storytelling. People who are thrilled by narratives believe that narratives allow us to understand ourselves. Hornstein happily embraces the notion. The more time you are spinning our stories that pretend to help you to understand yourself the less time you are in the game. Whatever false sense of understanding Freud’s tragic stories provoked, the truth is that the more you get lost in your mind and the more you spend your time in proposing potential stories for medical conditions—whether auditory hallucinations or autism—the more you are going to prevent people from receiving the best available treatment. <br /><br />I certainly would agree, storytelling is what psychoanalysis is, and if it wasn't overpriced, it might be more useful to society.<br /><br />I've heard that "ideology" is also about storytelling, but the key difference is ideology demands only one story be true, and calls all other stories heretical, and of course the biggest and best ideologies are religious based, and once you have god on your side, why question anything that doesn't fit?<br /><br />So for me, while I'd say storytelling is useful, it is NOT useful for identifying objective truth rather it gives us hints our our subjective beliefs, and allows us to go deep enough down the rabbit hole, like to see something of our own hypocrisy, and it gives a mirror to help us when we laugh at the crazy stories other people tell.<br /><br />My reading task for the week is a book on Narcissism and Donald Trump, a set of old and new essays, and by largely Jungian psychologists rather than Freud.<br />https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1630513954/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 <br />A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump Paperback – July 26, 2016<br /><br />Myself, I've always been more attracted to Jungian way of seeing the unconscious, and his "discovery" of archetypes, which I've best heard described as "instincts for humans", patterns of thoughts that enable certain aspects of the psyche to be expressed in the world, and when they are expressed THROUGH the ego, when the ego associates itself AS archetypal though, big problems come out of that.<br /><br />And the coolest thing about Jungian archetypes is they are NOT "monotheistic", but rather a pantheon of contradictory instincts, all of which enabled our ancestors to survive and pass on their genes.<br /><br />I didn't pick the name "Ares Olympus" as a self-identification, actually more from astronomy and the planet Mars, but perhaps also the Warrior archetype is most dangerous to me, so its one I try to understand, and find ways to disarm the warrior archetype in others, or at least side-step it, like a matador and his red cape. Many frightened people may want to say "All bulls should be killed" because they are too dangerous, while ritualized violence in killing the bull proves we are the masters.<br /><br />Its hard to find morality in Jung since his work was more observational than judgmental, but once we acknowledge primal forces like archetypes are both boons and curses, we use our own conscience to rule over them more wisely.<br /><br />And although Trump is not a bull, his making a virtue of bulling means we've got 4 years ahead of us where people on all sides with bullish impulses who are going to see where that takes them, and if they don't see the archetype behind their new gained power over others, surely the red they see will someone else manipulating them for their own gain, and the fake bulls on all sides can become pawns and fools.<br /><br />Reason alone simply is not enough here, and stories open the right questions, even if we need many contradictory stories to find out way through the chaos.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com