/pt/ – Petrarchan

Okay I have another minute to expand on this answer >>3550 I just want to point out that all modern German thought in Feud's tradition is some form of a response to the idealism/materialism dichotomy. Schelling's idea is that there are such things as self-evident meanings, things that are what they say and say what they are. Freud focuses that approach to trauma. I think the way that you characterize its incompatibility with either of the "two cultures" is arguably the point. For philosophers it's supposed to show where and how objectivity and determinacy become undeniable strategies for the subject. For scientists, it's supposed to show how self-determination and freedom enter the objective world. So on the grounds I don't really know how one can fairly treat it as "bogus." It seems more bogus to believe either in hardcore materialism or idealism.

>>3554 I see what you mean. I meant by bogus, people like >>3556. I don't really hold a strong persuasion one way or the other on psychoanalysis, though I am skeptical of modern day psychiatry. One of the lingering questions for me regarding psychoanalysis, which is potentially its reason for being pivotal in the 20th century, is its treatment of truth. Both philosophy and "scientism" (for lack of better phrase, I don't think the two are truly opposed) make objective claims, most of the time at least. Psychoanalysis toes the line between an objective, hidden truth, and a subjective, impossible to conceptualize, truth. Maybe I'm just not able to picture its claims as well.

>>3554 I see what you mean. I meant by bogus, people like >>3556. I don't really hold a strong persuasion one way or the other on psychoanalysis, though I am skeptical of modern day psychiatry. One of the lingering questions for me regarding psychoanalysis, which is potentially its reason for being pivotal in the 20th century, is its treatment of truth. Both philosophy and "scientism" (for lack of better phrase, I don't think the two are truly opposed) make objective claims, most of the time at least. Psychoanalysis toes the line between an objective, hidden truth, and a subjective, impossible to conceptualize, truth. Maybe I'm just not able to picture its claims as well.

>>3556 I see a lot of psychiatry as fraudulent, too. Reminds me of Bacon saying that the aim of science is to master and control completely all, so if the subject of science becomes man, then psychiatry is the science of controlling man. At the same time, I can see why people were desperate for answers, in the cases of insanity.

>>3556 What of the benefits in quality of life many people gain from psychiatry?

Read Kristeva, then Zizek, then Lacan. >3568 Psychiatry is a medical discipline that classifies and attempts to treat the symptoms or mode of action of non-neurological defects in thought. Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head. >3564 You'll want to read Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend on the history and philosophy of science. Bacon is so "seminal" now that people wipe him off their face when they're finished with him. >3562 Philosophy after Wittgenstein in Anal and after "french theory" in Continental doesn't make objective claims, because Wittgenstein proved it impossible, and because The Absolute ablates its own contemplation in history as a process where meaning is impossible. Thus Lacanian psychoanalysis in a circumstance where truth claims aren't possible. Freud seems to have made truth claims. Lacan makes "useful conjectures," which never truly engage the real, the image, or the symbolic, but the symbol eats images up trying to feel real. >>3556 All Epics are Frauds. At least Sophistry is interesting, I found the greatest of Sophists most interesting, you might know him, he was an ugly short cunt of a man who trolled the entire marketplace and begged for free gym memberships.

>>3562 WRT truth in psychoanalysis: read Paul Ricœur's writings on Freud 'De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud'. Fun fact: Emmanuel Macron worked as Ricœur's editoral assistant for a time. >>3568 Many people who could do well if someone gave them the harsh talk and told them to get real are encouraged to see themselves as weak and helpless by psychology/psychiatry. Though some illnesses, like post-partum depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, seem to be real and they are genuinely helped.

>>3562 WRT truth in psychoanalysis: read Paul Ricœur's writings on Freud 'De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud'. Fun fact: Emmanuel Macron worked as Ricœur's editoral assistant for a time. >>3568 Many people who could do well if someone gave them the harsh talk and told them to get real are encouraged to see themselves as weak and helpless by psychology/psychiatry. Though some illnesses, like post-partum depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, seem to be real and they are genuinely helped.

>>3586 Thanks for the helpful names. >>Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head. So you think ill of the idea? >> Lacan makes "useful conjectures," which never truly engage the real, the image, or the symbolic, but the symbol eats images up trying to feel real. Contemporary psychoanalysis is mainly a discipline trying to make symbolic interpretations then? I probably need to just read Lacan as I feel a little short of understanding what you mean.

>>3748 >>>Psychoanalysis is a pseudo-scientific method of talking to people about shit in their head. >So you think ill of the idea? No, I think so little of "science." Psychoanalysis can be useful, but associating with "science" is like the company of fools. >Contemporary psychoanalysis is mainly a discipline trying to make symbolic interpretations then? All the terms I mentioned are specific terms in Lacan. Psychoanalysis has always involved the manipulation of symbols: language. It isn't so much a matter of interpreting symbols, as using the interpretation of symbols as a way to uncover "the lack" that drives a personality, so that someone can understand why or how they try to temporarily fill rather than to resolve their lack. If you read Zizek on the uses of perversion as an alternative to neurosis and psychosis it is interesting. Whether one can become perverted is another question.

>>3763 The workbooks and homework-like nature of contemporary clinical psychology is indeed what puts me off (and the heavy emphasis on medication). I would guess that psychoanalysis doesn't see a completion of therapy because the tensions and neuroses do not really resolve. The goal appears to be the remove the negative symptoms however, like anxiety, fear, hostility, etc. And pattern recognition does seem like a crucial aspect of that. It's what also sets it apart from confession, for me at least, in wondering why one would want to engage in psychoanalysis. That is, the shrink can be descriptive about the patient's problems in a way that the priest can only be prescriptive. I guess there is a question of how the patient, much like the sinner, can ever not be the patient. When I tried therapy, that's about all I did with it (regarding your last sentence). Never went back, after talking about an event in my life with the therapist. It was helpful for releasing energy, but largely felt silly.

>>3778 One thing about the emphasis on medication: I try to frequently raise the point that there are a lot of potentially therapeutic (or IDK adaptogenic) experiences that medical professionals have sworn off. And in the case of psychological health, we know that there are somatic / physical influences on your experience. By the time a serious medical professional graduates from school, it has been drilled into his/her head that s/he can cause iatrogenic harm and so s/he needs to be super super conservative about anything that has any sort of side effects. I think that's reasonable from the provider's perspective but if the patient takes those limits seriously it limits the options available for personal transformation. My point here is that there are a lot of moves that you, as a free person who actually pays attention to your life, might take that are verboten for a medically licensed therapist. And I think that these are most interesting / revealing when it comes to the somatic drivers of psychological phenomena. Here's my example: I had a really traumatic event and (long story short) I stopped drinking coffee as part of my response. I was going unhinged in the aftermath of the event. I was way more anxious than usual and my shrink wanted to do talk therapy for anxiety and maybe depression. I know from my own life experience that those are not really characteristic of me and that I needed to do something to undercut the anxious aspects of my daily experience. I ended up cutting out all caffeine for a couple months on the theory that my "anxiety" was just the intersection of slight chemical over-stimulation (the caffeine) and a bunch of negative shit that had happened to me. And sure enough, when I was off caffeine for a couple months and once I got back to lifting after the event, I wasn't anxious. Ta-da! But think about how much it would take for my shrink to get to the point of demanding I go cold-turkey on caffeine. We'd have to have a bunch of repetitive conversations about other factors of anxiety before settling on this one, and then my therapist would have to very politely ask that I cut it down to one cup, and then after a while a half-cup, and so on. And in all likelihood these conversations would never happen because my shrink would first favor additive approaches (adding medication) before ever ever moving to a restrictive approach (cutting caffeine). And we'd have to spend months and months discussing whether my anxiety was due to the way that my dad was a dick to me when I was a kid (he was) and how my mom facilitated it (she did). That would have wasted my time in a period when I was sincerely suffering. Because I knew my own lifestyle (coffee was a hobby) and I knew the barest essentials of mental health, I was able to cut to the quick. Consider weight loss for a metaphor that's a bit further afield. We know that fasting causes people to lose weight. Cavemen knew it. Furthermore, in today's obesogenic world we know that fasting is pretty sustainable and that no one is seriously at risk of accidentally starving to death. But MDs will not prescribe fasting and will throw up lots of roadblocks to a patient who wants to discuss it in all but a few rare cases. It's good that they're worried about reinforcing potentially-harmful eating disorders. However for an adult male of 270 pounds in middle America I think his chances of developing an ED are small and his chances of a preventable death due to heart disease are high. And if that 270-pound man has his shit together, he should just start fasting and let the doctors deal with it. So overall my advice to you is that at the end of the day you're actually in charge of your own life, and that includes what you do in response to a person with a credential who wants to medicalize your mental health.

>>3781 Yeah, true, in my life medical professionals have always been more of a hindrance than not. I wasted a lot of time and money trying to figure out a GI disorder, which I still don't know much about, because the mid levels and MDs told me to kick rocks as they considered anything too risky for a young male who didn't have a debilitating illness. So, I basically just had to DIY it. Easy to see why people fall victim to snake oil and crystal healing. Maybe that is why I consider older forms of psychoanalysis more interesting or beneficial than what is around today. Freudian psychoanalysis, for what its worth, feels like an uncovering of the limitations and strengths of willpower.

>>3791 I see, so psychoanalysis would be better if it were more removed from the scientific methodology for you? Do you disagree with the intensity of scientific claims (i.e., certainty) or something else? That's a good, simple explanation. Guess I'll have to hit the books to get it more.