Psychoanalysis versus behavioral therapy - what is better? Any people with experiences on both

[noname223]

What is better probably depends on the person and his or her problems.

I did 3 behavioral therapies. I think behavioral therapy should make you function/work? It has more of an emphasis on controlling yourself, adapting yourself, understanding how you work, how to make you work.

I never did depth psychoanalysis but I would be interested in it. I know that my therapist has the licence to do both. Tbh she does not seem to have "the sauce". I don't know whether that idiom fits. Probably not but it sounds funny. She is not smart enough. Tbh she sounds pretty stupid. I think she gets a lot of information from the newspaper. (on psychology) Just as me who pretends to be a smartass.

I once met a quantum physics professor who was the smartest person I ever talked with. I think he understood how I work/function better than any therapist I ever worked with. He understood that I cling to suicide. That suicide fulfils a certain function in my mind. I was 100% convinced my life gonna end with suicide. This was a pathologcial thought caused by psychosis/ low ambiguity tolerance. I also have the habit to make predictions all the time. When I have a conversation I analyze my opponent and try to predict what he will say. Probably caused by my conditions and trauma. I drove that physics professor almost nuts with this habit. To be honest he was (almost) spot on everything. When I told my therapist about the prediction thing she questioned the sanity of the physics professor. Which is totally bogus.

If I did psychoanalysis I needed someone really savvy. I think psychoanalysis is more about exploring your mind. How you work without the need to make you function. I imagine it pretty interesting.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I've only heard about psychoanalysis from my neighbour, who was super rich but also, super troubled. I think my bias against it may be wrapped up in my bias against him. He was so full of himself. But he also thought these people were even smarter. Maybe they are.

Maybe I have the wrong impression of it. I think it is about examining our past in great detail and, why we feel the way we do. I think that can be valuable to an extent. To kind of 'un-pack' our current reactions and patterns of thought.

The part that didn't sound so helpful to me was continuing to dwell on all those things. A favourite phrase of his annalyst was: 'Stay with the pain'.

I think the brain sometimes gets us to forget things so we can move on. I'm not convinced of the value of continually revisiting the most painful moments of our lives in great detail. I may have that wrong though. I haven't experienced it myself.

I guess we all like the idea of someone being that invested and perceptive of us to be able to look at us and tell us what's going on with us. I agree- it's a huge skill to have and it must take a lot out of them I imagine. The closest I got was one of my Mum's friends who, in the course of dinner managed to 'get' what was going on with me- more than anyone had before at least.

I haven't actually tried behavioural therapy but, it has always intrigued me. It seems more practically useful if it works. I suppose I just see certain things like deep seated trauma as hard to 'fix', no matter how many times you go over it. So, focussing on how it mannifests in current life and how best to modify that seems useful.

I suppose being aware of a certain thought process as having come out of a traumatic past experience can be useful to distance ourselves from it. Me becoming aware of limerence and the likelihood I suffer from it has absolutely loosened its grip on me. Plus, even though it can be crazy/ borderline creepy- I don't let it dictate my behaviour. But, I can also forgive myself for it. I'm pretty sure it is a response to shit that happened in my childhood.

I suppose I see both practices as potentially helpful though. Analysis to figure out where our messed up thought patterns originated. Behavioural to try and manage our responses to those thought patterns in everyday life.

 

[Apathy79]

I'd love to do psychoanalysis. I try to do it on myself all the time, and now use AI to do it on myself, but it's not the same. I would do it in a heartbeat if it was free or even affordable. But you're right, the right analyst would be key.

 

[Holu]

What is better probably depends on the person and his or her problems.

I did 3 behavioral therapies. I think behavioral therapy should make you function/work? It has more of an emphasis on controlling yourself, adapting yourself, understanding how you work, how to make you work.

I never did depth psychoanalysis but I would be interested in it. I know that my therapist has the licence to do both. Tbh she does not seem to have "the sauce". I don't know whether that idiom fits. Probably not but it sounds funny. She is not smart enough. Tbh she sounds pretty stupid. I think she gets a lot of information from the newspaper. (on psychology) Just as me who pretends to be a smartass.

I once met a quantum physics professor who was the smartest person I ever talked with. I think he understood how I work/function better than any therapist I ever worked with. He understood that I cling to suicide. That suicide fulfils a certain function in my mind. I was 100% convinced my life gonna end with suicide. This was a pathologcial thought caused by psychosis/ low ambiguity tolerance. I also have the habit to make predictions all the time. When I have a conversation I analyze my opponent and try to predict what he will say. Probably caused by my conditions and trauma. I drove that physics professor almost nuts with this habit. To be honest he was (almost) spot on everything. When I told my therapist about the prediction thing she questioned the sanity of the physics professor. Which is totally bogus.

If I did psychoanalysis I needed someone really savvy. I think psychoanalysis is more about exploring your mind. How you work without the need to make you function. I imagine it pretty interesting.

Average New Yorker activity. Or maybe you are in another state or country, but I've genuinely never heard of a licensed psychoanalyst. It isn't a title anywhere but New York as far as I'm aware lol, and even then you should poke it with a 200 foot pole first.

Psychoanalysis is based around Freud's psychodynamic theory. If you aren't overly familiar with Freud, he's a common name in psychology, but he's also probably the person who has genuinely held the field back the most out of any singular individual. He's also the guy responsible for the Oedipus/Electra Complex theory(utter bs) which basically states you want to fuck your mom or dad as a little kid. If that sounds like bullshit that's because it is, and psychoanalysis, even modern psychoanalysis, is built off of this, the psychosexual stages(also bs), and the id/ego/superego theory(again, also bs).

Modern psychoanalysis isn't necessarily bullshit, but it's about as close to bullshit as you can get for a modern practice. It's simply a belief system that masquerades as therapy and healing.

No empirical, well reputable, and well educated clinician would practice psychoanalysis. This is because it fails in validity and reliability. It's not healing, it's placebo. Religion is unironically a better avenue if you are going the placebo route because at least it comes with a community aspect.

I've only heard about psychoanalysis from my neighbour, who was super rich but also, super troubled. I think my bias against it may be wrapped up in my bias against him. He was so full of himself. But he also thought these people were even smarter. Maybe they are.

Maybe I have the wrong impression of it. I think it is about examining our past in great detail and, why we feel the way we do. I think that can be valuable to an extent. To kind of 'un-pack' our current reactions and patterns of thought.

The part that didn't sound so helpful to me was continuing to dwell on all those things. A favourite phrase of his annalyst was: 'Stay with the pain'.

I think the brain sometimes gets us to forget things so we can move on. I'm not convinced of the value of continually revisiting the most painful moments of our lives in great detail. I may have that wrong though. I haven't experienced it myself.

I guess we all like the idea of someone being that invested and perceptive of us to be able to look at us and tell us what's going on with us. I agree- it's a huge skill to have and it must take a lot out of them I imagine. The closest I got was one of my Mum's friends who, in the course of dinner managed to 'get' what was going on with me- more than anyone had before at least.

I haven't actually tried behavioural therapy but, it has always intrigued me. It seems more practically useful if it works. I suppose I just see certain things like deep seated trauma as hard to 'fix', no matter how many times you go over it. So, focussing on how it mannifests in current life and how best to modify that seems useful.

I suppose being aware of a certain thought process as having come out of a traumatic past experience can be useful to distance ourselves from it. Me becoming aware of limerence and the likelihood I suffer from it has absolutely loosened its grip on me. Plus, even though it can be crazy/ borderline creepy- I don't let it dictate my behaviour. But, I can also forgive myself for it. I'm pretty sure it is a response to shit that happened in my childhood.

I suppose I see both practices as potentially helpful though. Analysis to figure out where our messed up thought patterns originated. Behavioural to try and manage our responses to those thought patterns in everyday life.

This is actually really comprehensive read lmao. Psychoanalysis is supposed to be based on analysis of the unconscious mind. You could argue this is pattern recognition, but it's more just hearing what you want to hear. And for the old dude, him being pompous is hilarious because neither he nor they are probably smarter than you. The psychoanalysts aren't smarter because they aren't practicing real science and he's not smarter because he's being grifted.

If you want a less clinical, more holistic, more self analysis form of therapy, find a humanistic therapist. I'm personally not a fan of them either, but at least it has marginally better data than psychoanalysis, and actually bothers to form a connection with the patient as it focuses on building a therapeutic alliance.

If someone says they are a psychoanalyst run. It's really not worth your money. It requires absurd trust in the person, and works almost entirely off placebo.

I'd love to do psychoanalysis. I try to do it on myself all the time, and now use AI to do it on myself, but it's not the same. I would do it in a heartbeat if it was free or even affordable. But you're right, the right analyst would be key.

This is probably the only worthwhile use of psychoanalysis unironically. You aren't paying for it, and ai has enough pattern recognition to help you self reflect. I do not recommend trusting an actual "professional" over ai on this, as absurd as that sounds. Ai isn't going to manipulate you or charge you money, an "professional" psychoanalyst will. Also just for curiosity, I recommend asking whatever ai you are using if "psychoanalysis is science based". I almost guarantee it says no lmao

 

[Forever Sleep]

Psychoanalysis is supposed to be based on analysis of the unconscious mind. You could argue this is pattern recognition, but it's more just hearing what you want to hear.

It's interesting you should say that because, from what my neighbour described, this guy often seemed to flatter him!

I think it's also the connection to Freud that puts me off. Again, to be fair, I don't know enough. Only bits and pieces I've read for essays. Some of them sounded more reasonable than others but some were bordering perverted!

 

[Apathy79]

The one my cousin did was Jungian rather than Freudian, which would account for most of the issues you mentioned there. He's still extremely well respected in the academic community. As is Freud in many areas, much of his work forms the basis of modern psychology today and is a big part of why you would do something like this, for example to find out what has been deeply repressed and the effects that is having. I suspect the modern Freudian practices would focus more on that side than the debunked stuff like the Oedipus complex, although I'm not sure.

I'd do it to find out what's really driving me. If you sit and talk long enough with the right analyst, I assume they could tell you all sorts of useful things about yourself you wouldn't discover on your own. But it's so insanely expensive you'd have to either be rich or somehow get it subsidised to make it realistic. It feels like it goes so much deeper than what most therapists can achieve.

 

[Holu]

The one my cousin did was Jungian rather than Freudian, which would account for most of the issues you mentioned there. He's still extremely well respected in the academic community. As is Freud in many areas, much of his work forms the basis of modern psychology today and is a big part of why you would do something like this, for example to find out what has been deeply repressed and the effects that is having. I suspect the modern Freudian practices would focus more on that side than the debunked stuff like the Oedipus complex, although I'm not sure.

I'd do it to find out what's really driving me. If you sit and talk long enough with the right analyst, I assume they could tell you all sorts of useful things about yourself you wouldn't discover on your own. But it's so insanely expensive you'd have to either be rich or somehow get it subsidised to make it realistic. It feels like it goes so much deeper than what most therapists can achieve.

If it works for you, just like religion, I won't bash you for it.

But, modern psychology is not built off the teachings of Freud or Jung. Almost none of their work are even part of psychology courses, with the exception of low level courses which seek to teach the 5 models of psychology. Modern psychology and mental healthcare are primarily built on the biological model, the cognitive model, and the behavioral model. The closest thing modern practices have is psychotherapy(talk therapy) and even that isn't anywhere near the psychoanalysis of old. Neither of them practiced actual science, and the entire field of psychology has worked tirelessly to distance itself with their teachings. Their practices were not based in anything but their own subjectivity and anecdotal observations.

And no, modern psychodynamics, even the parts of it who have distanced themselves, are still not empirical. The APA and WHO both heavily caution and discourage professionals from teaching practices and models which lack strong empirical support.

if what you are looking for is self reflection, then by all means continue searching and practicing. But the danger of the psychodynamic and humanistic models are when they try to help people suffering from severe mental illnesses and trauma. The reliability and validity of both these models is far too low to offer any meaningful support that isn't placebo.

But again, practice what you want and what helps you. But at the end of the day, psychoanalysis, psychodynamics, and the teachings of Freud, Jung, Adler, and the likes are pseudoscience, as they posses little to no empirical backing.

It's interesting you should say that because, from what my neighbour described, this guy often seemed to flatter him!

I think it's also the connection to Freud that puts me off. Again, to be fair, I don't know enough. Only bits and pieces I've read for essays. Some of them sounded more reasonable than others but some were bordering perverted!

Freud is famous for his psychosexual theory, particularly penis envy and the Oedipus/Electra complexes. He developed these from his own personal experiences mixed with rampant cocaine usage(yes this is real). He believed that every young boy was competing with their fathers to have sex with their mom, and that every girl had penis envy, wanted to have a penis, and because they couldn't, they wanted to have sex with their father. Mind you, he felt this way about prepubescent children.

It's also worth noting that Freud didn't start as a psychologist. He began his career in neurology and biology, but was ridiculed and mocked out by his peers because his works were entirely reliant on theoretical speculation. Even at the time as a psychologist, where behaviorism was the prevailing theory, he was mocked by scientists like Skinner for being unscientific. He was not considered an academic and part of scientific psychology but instead as continental philosopher.

Hell even Adler and Jung distanced themselves from him after a while. He was so unscientific that the people who based their frameworks off of his couldn't even back him at a certain point.

Where he succeeded and why he is such a big name is he branded himself and focused on appealing to the mainstream Victorian culture at the time. He is quite literally one of the original grifters, where he used his credentials to push unscientific theories for clout and money. Even today, people still are familiar with him, because he ingrained himself into the culture rather than into science.

 

[Apathy79]

I think you've explained the appeal of it in there. Jung's work isn't so much discredited as unverifiable. It resonates with most people on some level, but there's no way to test it's accuracy. Freud's work has been discredited in some areas (mostly through lack of resonance) but the rest mostly fits into the same category. I think when you're looking into those deeper drivers of thought, emotion, behaviour, projection, etc., and trying to help understand them, often what is measurable isn't useful. You want to find out, for example, the archetype you're living out in this area of life, how it tends to manifest and play out, and cross reference it with your own experience, see if the explanation fits. Then you can use that information as a catalyst for understanding and change. I think if you're interested in something like psychoanalysis, the reality is most of what you find isn't neat measurable numeric constructs. It's discovering subconscious drives and patterns. Dreams are a fascinating example to me. When I wake up in an extremely emotional state from a dream and can recall it, I almost inevitably learn something about myself. It'd be great to have someone to talk to about that who knows a lot about it. But it's not measurable, so probably not taught in clinical psychology, thus almost every therapist being useless with it and this avenue being more appealing.