Subj : PSYCHOANALYSIS
To   : Bob Eyer
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Sat Oct 21 2000 12:56 pm

 BE> FM: -Today, a large body of mental illness that once was
 BE> treated with -psychoanalysis is now treated only with
 BE> medicine.  The record of

 BE> > And correctly so.  Freud's insight was not the cure-all that
 BE> > he though it was.

 BE> What gave you the impression that Freud thought his approach
 BE> was a "cure-all"?

 BE> FM: -"cures" with any medical science and eternal life remains
 BE> beyond -its grasp but psychoanalysis today is largely classed
 BE> as spurious -religion although much prized by the wealthy.

 BE> > The Church probably had this better covered with confession
 BE> > and absolution....

 BE> I would take issue with this, mainly on the ground that the
 BE> parishioner already knows what kinds of sins his confessor
 BE> wants to hear about.  The Church preaches a certain doctrine
 BE> of sin and thus telegraphs to the parishioner what kinds of
 BE> stories to tell about himself.

 BE> This type of distraction does not occur in the treatment of
 BE> the genuine Freudian psychoanalyst.  The genuine Freudian does
 BE> not let on what he thinks is good or bad.  Nor does he attempt
 BE> to indicate to the patient what the mechanism of therapy is
 BE> all about.  The patient simply goes to the psychiatrist and
 BE> speaks his mind.  The psychiatrist does absolutely nothing but
 BE> listen.  Because we all have a tendency to concoct stories for
 BE> the consumption of others, it generally takes months of
 BE> therapy, and may take years, before the patient really does
 BE> begin to show his mind to the psychiatrist.  Only when the
 BE> patient stops concocting stories and really does say whatever
 BE> comes to his mind regardless how silly it may seem to him,
 BE> will the beneficial effects of therapy begin to show
 BE> themselves.

 BE> There is a method in this madness.  The method is directed at
 BE> releasing the psychic potential energy of the Unconscious.
 BE> This cannot be done unless the patient really does speak his
 BE> mind, instead of concocting stories which he thinks the
 BE> listener wants to hear.

 BE> Therefore it is essential to genuine psychoanalytic therapy
 BE> that the patient knows absolutely nothing about the analyst's
 BE> beliefs, attitudes or feelings.

 BE> The problem with religious confessionals is that the "patient"
 BE> DOES know what the priest wants to hear.  And that is what he
 BE> tells him.  The task of releasing pent-up psychic energy
 BE> causing mental blocks, neuroses, etc, is thus short-circuited
 BE> and defeated.

 BE> This may be a way of achieving some kind of salvation; but it
 BE> is not a way of mending diseases of the mind.

        Having never experienced the religious confessional OR the
expensive process of psychiatric sessions, I must assume that you
have made an extensive comparative study of both and, therefore,
read your conclusions of the study with great interest.  Did you
REALLY just make up stuff and tell the priest what you thought he
should hear?  Surely this is not just drawn from the stories and
jokes priests tell each other for amusement and out of a sense of
boredom?  I DO suspect that in the evangelistic denominations there
are "professional confessors."  I know for a fact that there are
people who, like Martin Luther, are so concerned with whether or not
they're really "saved" that they go down for "re-confession" over
and over again.

Frank
  

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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