Saturday 11 April 2009

Psychotherapists in turmoil over plans to start regulation

When I saw this, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself, in that blackly cynical way, which I've perfected, over the years. "Go and find your own solutions," I say, because no fucker else has got any!

Psychotherapists in turmoil over plans to start regulation

Remember this, if you remember nothing else: psychotherapists are trying to repair themselves, first and foremost, just like everybody else on the planet.

Matt

6 comments:

soulful sepulcher said...

The phrase "neurotic misery" LOL I guess real life has a definition!

Radagast said...

Stephany: It's an utterly meaningless term, I think... How can one's nerves be miserable? Quite apart from which, I've never met a single person, during the course of my life, who was miserable *all* the time, which seems to suggest to me that they "choose" their state of mind, to some degree, and dependent upon what they're thinking about.

The experts, at the end of the day, are those experiencing this stuff, and not those looking on from the sidelines, getting paid huge sums of money for their highly innaccurate (as perceived by me), speculation! But the acknowledged experts, including people such as Blindleburg, are looking at it from the wrong perspective: they want something to be wrong, in order to justify their own worldview. They'll never get anywhere, like that, because who's going to open themselves up to that sort of invalidation?

Matt

Ana said...

(Freud famously said he wanted to transform "neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness")
Matthew,
I've been on psychoanalysis and had the chance to find a good psychoanalyst - I don't use "therapist" -.
There are to many bad psychiatrists.
Psychoanalysis does not = Freud any longer.
There are huge problems in psychoanalytic society but psychiatry has banned the term "neurosis" because you cannot prescribe any pill if you deal with this concept.
I'm neurotic - it was a psychiatrist who first diagnosed me and has used the term but he has already died - and would love to be seen by new psychiatrists as so.
I've just posted an article I've found.
Love,
Ana

Radagast said...

Ana: Hmmm... I'm constantly confused by others' use of language - they never seem to mean the same things that I would mean, were I to use the same words; they leave important (to my understanding), things unsaid, and refuse to clarify, when asked. And then, of course, they lie a great deal. And everybody, but everybody, asks questions predicated upon their objective, whether that objective be stated, or not. The intention, throughout, is to prove themselves right, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, what do you mean, when you refer to yourself as "neurotic"? That is, what sort of behaviour evidences this neuroses that you mention?

Matt

Ana said...

Tough question.
There are many kinds of neurosis.
In the seventies and eighties neurosis was a current word. Everybody said something like: "Being neurotic as I'm, of course, who can not be neurotic in a world like this?"
People really understood "war neurotics" - those men who had suffered the hell in the battlefield and of course had suffered severe emotional problems.
When I was a teenager we had a teacher that was a little strange and even we, adolescents, understood he was a "war neurotic".
What has happened? PTSD took over.
People don't understand what is so clear!
Related to me: I suffered some events that affected me in a way that led me to have some emotional problems.
Don't ask for "symptoms". Freud himself had some paralysis that he attributed to some neurotic origins but not everybody has a neurotic symptom.
Origins: other big problem!
People think that the psychoanalytical process is like going to a point where the problem has happened and it's like taking a sting from wound.
Nope.
What I want to convey when I say I rather be called a "neurotic" is: "No dear psychiatrist. I'm not depressed or bipolar II. I'm neurotic."
he concept of bipolarity has turned many neurotics, that only needed therapy, into psychiatric patients and the only treatment is prescription.

Radagast said...

Ana: So, in essence, the word that best sums up your understanding of your experience of yourself (ie, your behaviour/symptoms, call it what you will), is "neurotic"? I think I'm inclined to agree that it is not necessary to find the cause of these symptoms, etc, which can be quite a daunting prospect, in any case - like looking for a needle in a haystack.

However, does knowing that you are "neurotic," rather than "bipolar," or whatever, help you to not exhibit the behaviour that one might summarize with either of those words? I've a suggestion for you - don't state it is as a fact, because there is no arguing with facts... "I *believe/think* that I'm neurotic" leaves you with the option of adjusting your position, in order to accommodate a countermanding message (I'm presuming that you don't actually wish to be neurotic, or even thought of as neurotic?).

And if you don't want to be neurotic, then it's always a good idea to think of what the opposite state might look like. My default tends to be "tranquil," which provides that I don't have to think too hard about it! Binary logic, you see? It now becomes a choice between tranquility and neuroses, and why would anybody choose the latter? Familiarity? Possibly, but all things being equal, there's only one realistic choice.

Matt