[HN Gopher] Self Unhelped: On psychoanalysis and therapeutic cul...
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Self Unhelped: On psychoanalysis and therapeutic culture
Author : lermontov
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-01-02 23:42 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sydneyreviewofbooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sydneyreviewofbooks.com)
| motohagiography wrote:
| imo depression is a physical circumstance that selects its own
| downstream psychology. I don't think you can talk or reason out
| of depression without a radical reframing that causes your
| physical behavior and circumstances to change. your body and its
| habits create preferences for psychological intensity, which gets
| it hits of feelings it would get normally if the being that
| inhabited it were free and self accepting.
|
| the self or ego speaks language, and the therapist's demeanour is
| intended to create a physical peace where the self can run and
| exhaust itself before becoming receptive to a (hopefully
| constructive) reframing. where I diverge from my psychologist
| friends is I think using language to relieve the suffering of the
| being only works accidentally, or when some language can overflow
| the self and unseat it from its dominion of the being. there's a
| state of enlightened duality where you can see your thoughts
| without feeling them or being directed by them, much like what
| meditation recommends, and from that state the being literally
| just chooses experiencies that bring it peace or joy. sustaining
| that is an effort and skill that can developed with practice and
| exercise.
|
| trying to reconcile the symbols and artifacts of language with
| other symbols and artifacts of language is a treadmill to me.
| how's that working out? couldn't say precisely, but wisdom is
| shown to be right by its results.
| flat-like-paper wrote:
| Framing the practice of therapy as a space for the "self to run
| and exhaust itself" before becoming receptive to reframing is
| one of the more concise and clear explanations of what therapy
| can be.
|
| What complicates the process is that language based thought and
| emotion run as a two way feedback loop, repetitive thoughts can
| create neurochemical repeating patterns which can change what
| someone is able to experience. In this way artifacts of
| language alone can have an immense amount of power no?
| dbtc wrote:
| Though subtle, speech and writing are physical acts. Perhaps
| thought is not.
|
| I don't know any practicing therapists, but the self and the
| ego are very different things in the freudian/jungian
| framework. Having a precise language - regardless of the
| framework - can be very helpful for gaining productive
| detachment.
|
| But in fiction language transcends itself and enters the realm
| of image and dreams, where we might encounter the psyche as
| soul again, without the -ology.
| rlupi wrote:
| Yes, the self alone is shouting in the void and appalled and
| confused at what it hears back. Expand the boundary to
| encompass enough, loose momentum and be still, and healing
| happens.
|
| Mindfulness is a tool and a habit that should be embodied in
| everything.
|
| I recently wrote in a document (filled with too much ego, since
| it's called "starting points toward a cybernetic theory of
| karma"):
|
| > I suspect, subjectively we each get the world we need - but
| you only see when reaching the point of total stillness, so
| that your energy points outwards from the ordinary. Then your
| world view shifts, and making sense of how it works with the
| conceptual tools you have... Truth is a pathless land.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Sex and the City saved me from a lifetime wasted with self-help
| books by one wonderful scene of some pathetic lady crying in the
| self-help section on the floor. It made me realize that is pretty
| much every self-help reader ever. They are never helped, they are
| just on a hamster wheel to the next self-help book, a little of
| their wallet moved from their pocket to the author.
| Frummy wrote:
| You know I think a lot of the problems is we are looking for
| magic when it is dull and boring around us. If all else fails,
| just stay at the surface and say everything is as it seems and
| nothing is deep or dramatic, and do nothing else but your
| eisenhower matrix (what's important and urgent first, four
| squares on a two axis box). Because when we say nothing is
| magical we stop looping internally trying to find a touch of
| divinity when what we need is to interact with the world in a
| structured way to build momentum to change our environment.
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