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Psychoanalysis: The Problems with Solutions
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"A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:"--Proverbs 1:5
"Don't ask why the patient is the way he is, ask for what he would change."--Milton Erickson
PROBLEM: Assumes the organism will magically overcome problems on its own.
SOLUTION: Provide cognitive, emotional, and behavioral skill training.
PROBLEM: Believes they are the authority on who the client is.
SOLUTION: Believe the client is the authority on who they are.
PROBLEM: Client cognitive insight is insufficient.
SOLUTION: Facilitate cognitive, emotive, and behavioral insight.
PROBLEM: Coddle clients.
SOLUTION: Challenge clients.
PROBLEM: Commits all 101 errors listed in "Learning from Errors in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy" by Michael Neenan and Windy Dryden.
SOLUTION: Learn from the errors and incorporate their lessons in psychodynamic practice.
PROBLEM: Concerned with ego adjustment.
SOLUTION: Work on ego reduction.
PROBLEM: Confuses case history with case treatment: history as therapy.
SOLUTION: History is history and treatment is treatment, i.e., the history is NOT in the room so deal with the present that is.
PROBLEM: Confuses theoretical understanding with therapeutic intervention: theory as therapy.
SOLUTION: Use theory to guide intervention NOT as intervention.
PROBLEM: Depowering as teaches environmental control of emotions.
SOLUTION: Empowering by teaching cognitive control of emotions.
PROBLEM: Determinism.
SOLUTION: Existential freedom of choice.
PROBLEM: Falsely promote the idea that Freud discovered the unconscious mind.
SOLUTION: Recognize the fact that all deep spiritual and mystical traditions have been dealing with the unconscious mind for centuries. Some have many more levels than Freud ever dreamed of. Often, the unconscious mind is referred to as darkness or levels of darkness.
PROBLEM: Falsely promote the idea that Freud invented a tripartite system for the self.
SOLUTION: Give credit to Plato and admit that Freud only renamed Plato's tripartite system: spirited (superego), rational (ego), appetitive (id).
PROBLEM: Falsely promote the idea that Freud invented the concept sublimation.
SOLUTION: Give credit to Nietzsche and admit that Freud borrowed from Nietzsche.
PROBLEM: Falsely promote the idea that Freud invented the concept primitive drives.
SOLUTION: Give credit to Nietzsche and admit that Freud borrowed from Nietzsche.
PROBLEM: The idea of ego is just a fantasy but it is taken as a reality.
SOLUTION: Recognize ego as a construction rather than a reality.
PROBLEM: Inefficient and ineffective.
SOLUTION: Focus more on outcomes and less on fantasy.
PROBLEM: Kill experience with naming, terming, labeling, a.k.a. the symbolic.
SOLUTION: Learn how to stand experiences rather than have to ward them off with knowledge.
PROBLEM: Lost in endless genealogies.
SOLUTION: Focus on solutions and interventions.
PROBLEM: Lost in theory fantasy.
SOLUTION: Reality test hypotheses with clients.
PROBLEM: Lost in thought of case history and analytical theory so neither present in the room as self nor with the actual client.
SOLUTION: Be here now and engage the client in learning how to problem-solve and cope for themselves.
PROBLEM: Lost is history fantasy.
SOLUTION: Focus on the problem in the room.
PROBLEM: Medical model.
SOLUTION: Wellness model.
PROBLEM: Not genuine, open, honest, or real as hide clinical insight, clinical observation, and clinical theory that occurs during the session.
SOLUTION: Test your hypotheses and observations with the client.
PROBLEM: One-up role of guru with secret and undisclosed truths too complicated for poor weak worshipers/followers/sycophants.
SOLUTION: Form a collaborative relationship.
PROBLEM: Poorly explained principles that are not easily learned or taught perhaps due to a desire to maintain a psychiatric priesthood.
SOLUTION: If the principles are real and are understood, then they can be explained simply and clearly.
PROBLEM: Practitioners promote conflict and violence as can be seen at any convention of same when they gather to fight for the right to be right.
SOLUTION: Promote humility instead of pride. Promote tolerance instead of rigid following and true believers.
PROBLEM: Practitioners prone to hysteria.
SOLUTION: Practice stoicism: tolerance and coping.
PROBLEM: Private meanings for common words such as "ego" that promote confusion.
SOLUTION: Recognize the prior use of the term "ego" by the general populace, mysticism, spirituality, and religion.
PROBLEM: Promote pride.
SOLUTION: Promote humility, acceptance, tolerance.
PROBLEM: Promote the belief that trauma must cause negative changes.
SOLUTION: Promote resilience and the ability to process trauma in a helpful way.
PROBLEM: Promote ventilation that magnifies, justifies, and reinforces problems.
SOLUTION: Promote ventilation that facilitates the letting go of problems.
PROBLEM: Promote victim mentality.
SOLUTION: Promote empowerment by teaching coping, problem-solving, and emotional responsibility.
PROBLEM: Promote wandering, tedium, and interminable client disclosure.
SOLUTION: Limit client disclosure to a focused problem and then work on that problem before accepting another.
PROBLEM: Promotes confusion in terms.
SOLUTION: Clearly and operationally define terms.
PROBLEM: Promotes dependency.
SOLUTION: Teach the client to be their own therapist.
PROBLEM: Promotes narcissism, self-absorption, terminal uniqueness, blaming, and damning.
SOLUTION: Promote responsibility, forgiveness, tolerance, understanding, compassion, empathy, acceptance.
PROBLEM: Promotes obfuscation in writing style.
SOLUTION: Read and practice the points in "The Elements of Style".
PROBLEM: Promotes obfuscation in theories.
SOLUTION: Stop hiding lack of understanding behind lack of clarity.
PROBLEM: Promotes undue complexity.
SOLUTION: Occam's Razor: the scientific principle that the best explanation of anything is the one that uses the fewest assumptions and-or hypothesis and is thereby the simplest.
PROBLEM: Promotes whining.
SOLUTION: Promote problem-solving and coping.
PROBLEM: Psychoanalysis is therapist paralysis through analysis.
SOLUTION: Reality check analysis with the client and modify as appropriate.
PROBLEM: Relies on insight for motivation.
SOLUTION: Use the client's goals for motivation.
PROBLEM: Teaches a theory of the ego and its ways as if it were a theory of the self.
SOLUTION: Face the fact that psychodynamic theory is a theory of the function of the ego and NOT of the real self.
PROBLEM: Theoretical to the end.
SOLUTION: Practice pragmatism.
PROBLEM: Theoretically astute but therapeutically incompetent.
SOLUTION: Differentiate theory from practice.
PROBLEM: Theoretically deep yet therapeutically superficial.
SOLUTION: Guide the session around to the deep issues and away from trivialities.
PROBLEM: Theoretically self-serving: pride from being one-up.
SOLUTION: Seek roles that promote greater equality with clients such as trainer or coach.
PROBLEM: Theoretically loquacious, directionless, meandering, and gluttonous.
SOLUTION: Practice parsimony in theory instead of circumstantiality.
PROBLEM: Proceed from theory to case. That is, force case information to conform to and prove theory.
SOLUTION: Proceed from case to theory. That is, use evidence-based approaches to develop scientific-based theories.
PROBLEM: Therapeutically lazy: lack session focus, structure, goals.
SOLUTION: Structure session with agreed upon goals.
PROBLEM: Unable to experience without mind.
SOLUTION: Learn to allow the free flow of experience using the heart.
PROBLEM: Unethical treatment when other therapies are proven to be more efficient, effective, and lasting.
SOLUTION: Refer cases that are proven to be better handled by others or learn and borrow more effective techniques from other theories.
PROBLEM: Unexamined faulty premises such as the reality of ego.
SOLUTION: Discover the false nature of ego.
PROBLEM: Working on clients rather than with clients.
SOLUTION: Involve clients in goal setting and work to help them achieve their goals.
"Carl Rogers's belief that clients need counselors to provide genuine acceptance and empathy is false as it is only preferable and not a necessity."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
Freud's Ego Defense Mechanisms
QUOTATIONS VARIOUS SOURCES
"A fool is only a fool because he won't see he is a fool."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."--James Joyce
"Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person."--Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 206
"When receiving correction, the wise seeks to learn and the fool seeks to justify with excuses."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction:"--Proverbs 3:11
"Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die."--Proverbs 15:5
"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."--Hebrews 12:6
"If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?"--Hebrews 12:7
"But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."--Hebrews 12:8
"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism."--Norman Vincent Peale
"By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit."--Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 194. Order A Guide to Rational Living
"If we eliminated all errors, we would also eliminate much discovery, art, insight, learning, and creativity that results from facing errors."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart."--Julien Green
QUOTATIONS SCRIPTURE
"A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:"--Proverbs 1:5
"Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety."--Proverbs 11:14
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise."--Proverbs 12:15
"Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counsellors of peace is joy."--Proverbs 12:20
"Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established."--Proverbs 15:22
"Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end."--Proverbs 19:20
"Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war."--Proverbs 20:18
"Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth."--Isaiah 16:3
"Extol not thyself in the counsel of thine own heart; that thy soul be not torn in pieces as a bull [straying alone.]"--Ecclesiasticus 6:2
"As timber girt and bound together in a building cannot be loosed with shaking: so the heart that is stablished by advised counsel shall fear at no time."--Ecclesiasticus 22:16
"Give not over thy mind to heaviness, and afflict not thyself in thine own counsel."--Ecclesiasticus 30:21
"A man of counsel will be considerate; but a strange and proud man is not daunted with fear, even when of himself he hath done without counsel."--Ecclesiasticus 32:18
"And let the counsel of thine own heart stand: for there is no man more faithful unto thee than it."--Ecclesiasticus 37:13
"Let reason go before every enterprize, and counsel before every action."--Ecclesiasticus 38:33
"Gold and silver make the foot stand sure: but counsel is esteemed above them both."--Ecclesiasticus 40:25
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