Psychotherapy - scattered thoughts on

Psychotherapy, however it chooses to describe itself - psychoanalytic, existential,

humanistic - is essentially about a relationship between two people.

And however one tries to theorize it, what is beneficial in psychotherapy -

or at least may be - is precisely that it is a relationship.

 However adherents claim a quasi-religious orthodoxy that seems to pervade every

corner of the profession

What we want from our 'teachers'  is not answers, but questions; not dogmas,

but doubts, a position that seeks to reinstate uncertainty.  

Freudian apologists welcome objections as the Undead welcome nightfall.

Objections to verities should not be regarded as though the protester is interrupting the

sanctity of Midnight Mass. 

Either psycho-analysis is interpreted as aspiring to the status of hard science and

denied cognitive value, or it is alleged to be answerable to some non-scientific,

hermeneutical standard of acceptability and on that ground accorded a 

         degree of legitimacy. Psychoanalysis appeals to “thematic affinities” - that is, 

         connections of meaning or content, as distinct from law-
governed causal relations - but these fail because of the “feebleness and tendentiousness”

of the thematic links hypothesized in psychoanalytic. Now there are a number of

non-scientific

theorists who regard psychoanalysis as extending modes of explanation and forms of

reasoning which have their natural home outside

science, in the life world of our everyday psychological dealings with one another.

These will regard    as having at least correctly identified the theoretical nature of

psychoanalysis and chosen the proper territory on which to conduct his campaign,

and may consequently

welcome the challenge which he sets them. They will, however, I think, find it enough to

say two things. (It should be said that Cioffi (the writer) is well aware of 

         these opponents, and

the book contains discussion of them.

          First, they will press the objection that Cioffi’s

          failure to moot any alternative to Freud leaves him without an

overall theory of

mind that will make intelligible at a global level the range of distinctive and

puzzling 

         phenomena subsumed by psychoanalytic theory.

Wittgenstein, repudiates the very idea of a theory of mind; his decision not to

play this

very strong card seems strategically wise. 

In this light, it will seem that his examinations of Freudian reasoning

succeed in making it appear tendentious only by refusing them the

theoretical context which it needs in order to make its narratives

commpelling, Under Cioffi’s restrictive rules, no hermeneutical venture

          beyond the bounds of common sense could get started; humanistic disciplines would tumble left, right and centre. Under Cioffi’s restrictive rules, no hermeneutical venture beyond

the bounds of common sense could get started; humanistic disciplines would

tumble left, right and centre. Since psychoanalysis is not, however, in the f

ront line of history, debate about Freud will not be closed by a verdict of

history; and in any case, historical closures are poor substitutes for

philosophical conclusions. It seems conceivable that the Freud controversy

will stand out to the intellectual historians of the future as a

singular dispute in the human sciences, a case where no rational 

         resolution was ever achieved, and the deep causes of which we

 have no ad-equate insight into; though Cioffi would no doubt regard this

as a further unjustified inflation of the significance of what is, in his eyes,

at bottom merely a large-scale hoax.

Marxist theory, with which in the past psychoanalysis frequently 

         found itself twinned, has for obvious reasons ceased to occasion

the sort of intellectual passion which psychoanalysis is still able to arouse.

Freud’s theories are unfalsifiable - they do not allow themselves to be

onfronted by the facts of experience, to meet with possible

counter-instances, because they can without difficulty be rendered compatible with any conceivable set of clinical or other observational data.

constant anticipation of the crack of the whip.

ordinariness is an achievement. And it is often a failure to achieve it that drives an individual to compensate by seeking specialness of one kind or another, and it is only through such believed specialness that they can have any self-esteem. How often do we hear a suggestion of psychotherapy or counselling as the response to almost any traumatic or even difficult life event? We have, it seems, lost faith in our capacities to help ourselves and one another. many psychotherapists treat their patients as self-deceivers, liars to themselves. (The therapists, of course, have been cured of such deception.). A fine ear for self-deception is undoubtedly one necessary attribute Committed Uncertainty, John Heaton gives the example of a woman who began an affair and was told by her analyst that she was acting out transference fantasies; a second analyst sees her behaviour in terms of a freeing of her sexuality. The profession of psychotherapy, Heaton remarks, seems to attract people for whom a singlebrilliance and audacity of Freud’s intellectual conjuring tricks, the “pathos” of psychoanalytic ideas and their appeal to our self-excusing dispositions, and the culpable credulity of those who
succumb to Freudianism.

“tyranny of convention But Freud was adept at disguising their non rationality:            practice of sophistry has furthermore been successfully transmitted to later psychoanalytic generations: “the practice of ‘plausible deniability’ is endemic to psychoanalytic apologetic”.                 perspective is authoritative; they do not see that they are actors in a drama, much of whose script has already been written in the theories of the particular school to which they adhere.reason and emotion. Against this, Peter Lomas urges the Aristotelian view that reason in itself is an insufficient means of achieving wisdom

reason and emotion. Against this, Peter Lomas urges the Aristotelian view that reason in itself is an insufficient means of achieving wisdom analysis itself calls “scotomization”; a form of denial of something that is too painful to contemplate

right to show that absolute free speech is an impossibility, that a sinister uniformity lurks within multiculturalist tolerance, that the law is profoundly fungible despite assertionsIs pscyotherapy the  circuitous version of that spiritual disease of which it considers itself to be the cure

 

           

 

 

 

        

                   

         

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