Conscious Psychotherapy: CBT or Psychodynamic

[Bestyle2209]

Hello!
How to do conscious therapy?
What type of therapy approach most effectively makes people more conscious?
I would like to become a psychotherapist. In Germany, due to the system of our health insurances, one has to choose for a specialisation in either CBT or psychodynamic therapy. I like both approaches and am unsure about what will help individuals and our collective more out of a highly elevated conscious perspective.

Why I'm conflicted:

My pro for CBT:

there are third-wave therapy forms (e.g. ACT or MBCT) oriented at buddhist wisdom which deliberately try to make people aware of their subjective experience of reality and of the impermanence of their experience and the illusion of self. What is specifically exciting about this new wave that they do not try to  retrain your negative thought and emotion patterns into positive ones, but rather teach you to observe it from the standpoint of all-encompassing awareness, and thus not further contributing to more clinging to experience. Instead, you help the person to become nobody, how ram dass would say.

ACT is also more open to integrating psychedelics into their therapy - it is often used as the therapeutic framework when patients are given psychedelics.

In my eyes, this is not the case with psychodynamic theory, where the therapist interprets current and past events to uncover unconscious motives to create a story why the person is and acts the way it does, thereby helping the patient to self-realization. By that you add more explanation for why the self (or the essence) is the way it is, not nessecarily helping to expand or transcend your sense of identity. I imagine it more like: this is the reason why you are the way you are (thereby releasing old emotional traumas) while some modern CBT-techniques identify certain chains of thoughts and emotion that are not nessecarily part of your identity and are impermanent so why cling to them.

Further CBT, acknowledges multicausality for your behavior and your essence (e.g. taking genetic influence into account) and always adapts it's therapy style to the current state of research. (by contrast, psychodynamic theory, originally by Freud, was built on a lot of fantasy, independent of scientific scrutiny).


My Pros for Psychodynamic therapy:

Why would a therapy need to be concerned about deconstructing the self? Aren't theories like Maslow's pyramid of needs imply that it is first needed to strengthen the sense of self (and maybe heal it), and only later to deconstruct it? Isn't it better to reach "deeper" into the unconscious to make longer-lasting change then just trying to change behavior and thought patterns on the surface, only later to discover that there are very strong unconscious impulses. 

E.g. you train someone to be less affected by their mood swings and destructive thought patterns due to mindfulness training (ACT, MBCT), or to retrain your thoughts to think that you are loved, that you are efficacious, etc. , but avoid a deeper emotional feeling about yourself being unloved that might be resolved by digging into past childhood events.

Although there is not much scientific evidence for the theory of Freud and more modern psychoanalysts, studies show that the therapy itself (which is founded on the theories) is as efficient as CBT in reliving patients of symptoms.

Psychodynamic theory also does not only try to resolve the symptoms (like CBT primarily does), but it tries to make the individual understand itself which in turn might lead to symptom releave as a side effect. Often, CBT is critized as a product of the fast, post-capitalistic world, trying to put a bandage over a wound which reaches much deeper, only to get employees ready for work again ASAP. 



Of course, I will try to integrate the good sides of both in the end, but I have to choose a foundation in one of those to start my program.

What do you think, wise folks?

Are there any therapists here who integrated these two ways of doing therapy or you know of any besides Beck?
And for the CBT-psychotherapists out here - have you found more modern ways, besides psychedelic-assisted therapy, to reach the depths of one's psyche/tackle deeper-lying trauma, within the CBT framework?

I'm also happy to receive corrections of my perceptions of how these two frameworks try to operate.

Kind regards and enjoy your day.

 

[Alex_R]

Have you ever tried a high dose of lsd at least once?

 

[Alex_R]

3 minutes ago, Alex_R said:

Have you ever tried a high dose of lsd at least once?

 

 

11 hours ago, Bestyle2209 said:

Hello!
How to do conscious therapy?
What type of therapy approach most effectively makes people more conscious?
I would like to become a psychotherapist. In Germany, due to the system of our health insurances, one has to choose for a specialisation in either CBT or psychodynamic therapy. I like both approaches and am unsure about what will help individuals and our collective more out of a highly elevated conscious perspective.

Why I'm conflicted:

My Pros for Psychodynamic therapy:

Why would a therapy need to be concerned about deconstructing the self? Aren't theories like Maslow's pyramid of needs imply that it is first needed to strengthen the sense of self (and maybe heal it), and only later to deconstruct it? Isn't it better to reach "deeper" into the unconscious to make longer-lasting change then just trying to change behavior and thought patterns on the surface, only later to discover that there are very strong unconscious impulses. 

 

In my experience, deconstructing the self using psycodelics is necessary in order to understand that all of your fears and traumas are just a "thought on your head" (and so is your all life)

Starting from there you can again build your Ego in any shape you want because you recognize the fluidity of conciousness and you now feel more in control of your own reality.

[tsuki]

As someone who went through 6 years of psychodynamic psychotherapy, I can say that it was invaluable and that I highly recommend it.

[flowboy]

Primal therapy, Emotional release therapy, IFS and Psychedelic-Assisted psychotherapy are lightyears more effective than any form of therapy that only involves talking and analysing. Institutions are hopelessly behind, and if you let them control your destiny, you may be missing the boat on helping people the best you can.

21 hours ago, Bestyle2209 said:

due to the system of our health insurances, one has to choose for a specialisation in either CBT or psychodynamic therapy.

No, you don't have to let "the system" tell you how to help people.

Don't worry about what health insurance will cover. That will change soon anyway.

Or move to the Netherlands, where any form of therapy is coverable.

And if you serve people powerfully enough, and they need only 10 sessions with you instead of 10 years in therapy, they will happily pay you out of their own pocket. (I'm not exaggerating. I could introduce you to people who literally get these kinds of results )

I'm not saying CBT or other PDP are not helpful and great, they are.

I'm saying don't let institutions have that power over you, decide independently from their constraints what you want to do.

Help people in the way you believe is most effective.

Finish your education, but also look beyond what is taught there.

Find and experience what you believe works best. Learn that.

I can give you some references of therapists who carved their own path like this, and are wildly successful.

Edited December 21, 2021 by flowboy

[Guest EmptyVase]

@Bestyle2209 

Super interesting. Further down my path, I also plan on becoming a psychotherapist (also in Germany).

Personally, I'd go with Psychodynamic Therapy. And later on, I'd add schoolings on becoming a Psychological Naturopath.

I can imagine that the stuff which is being taught in CBT is easily "learnable" by yourself. More importantly, I wouldn't "learn" spirituality, but actually embody what spiritual teachings are about. Spirituality ain't about a recipe which you give to your patients. It's one on one guidance, not between you and your patient, but between the patient and the patient's source (source, as in, consciousness, inner being, and so on). You act more like a bridge - bridging your patient from the guidance with you, to the guidance with their inner being.

The way I'll be working with my patients will not be entirely dependent on the stuff that the institutions teach me. I think, especially as a psychotherapist, you have a lot of leeway on how to treat your patients, how to talk to them, what to recommend, etc. 

[kieranperez]

I need to make a t-shirt company where our logo is "MAKE PSYCHOANALYSIS GREAT AGAIN!"

[kieranperez]

In all seriousness, this is a really great thread. 

16 hours ago, Alex_R said:

In my experience, deconstructing the self using psycodelics is necessary in order to understand that all of your fears and traumas are just a "thought on your head" (and so is your all life)

Therapy is not about deconstructing the self.

7 hours ago, flowboy said:

 

Primal therapy, Emotional release therapy, IFS and Psychedelic-Assisted psychotherapy are lightyears more effective than any form of therapy that only involves talking and analysing. Institutions are hopelessly behind, and if you let them control your destiny, you may be missing the boat on helping people the best you can.

 

This is just flat out not true. In practice things like psychoanalysis can go profoundly deep and this can be answered well enough if you read about Freud and his work with patients alone. Things like emotional release and even primal release therapy no doubt can be useful but only to a point and in practice people are often dependent on these techniques. That said, things like primal therapy, emotional release therapy, and so forth are doing different things and have different goals than say something like analysis (even though analysis could get you there). Those forms of therapy are aiming and trauma which have to do with the actual nervous system and freeing certain responses and so forth. Things like analysis could actually get you there and I speak from experience. Then again, our narratives can also be a habitual form by which we actually continually we actually re-traumatize ourselves. There is no hard and fast rule and the truth is that this varies from person to person. It's important to make 3 different distinctions between what we might call Shadow vs. Trauma vs. Attachment issues. They practices or forms of therapy may interact with any of the other different issues but they're not all the same. Dealing with shadow stuff may help with the trauma but don't confuse or conflate those two with being the same because they aren't. It's like confusing spiritual development and deepening one's insight and confusing that for moral development. This is not the same thing at all even though it might interact at time. 

As far addressing OP...

I have a bit of a bias towards psychoanalysis and doing deeper trauma work like say through something like somatic experiencing as that's the only thing that's ever actually worked for me in practice and I've been through the ringer since I was like 12. I've been through intense CBT and DBT and none of it at all worked for me. That said, I can also acknowledge I have a lot of trauma and other stuff going on and can imagine something like CBT can work great for people who might not have a lot of trauma, attachment issues, and deeper stuff going on and can really capitalize on some potentially more minor things. Hell, I can even imagine it's great for people who may struggle with deeper neuroses and disorders that just need some sort of thing to help them get some sense of control and stability in their life. 

That said, things like psychoanalysis is so incredibly under appreciated here in the US and it really is a pity because it has so much potential. I don't agree that psychoanalysts aren't interested at all when it comes to the outcomes of psychedelics assisted therapy. The problem that they present is manifold. First off, there is no predicability with psychedelics (though that holds true for practices like analysis so I think that might be an element that might be able to integrated quite well into the practice). You also have to deal with the duration of trips which I imagine will make these trips and forms of therapy less accessible because you will have a limited number of therapists assisting with trips that can take anywhere between 4-12 hours. There are only so many therapists and they can only help you for so long. Not to mention the extent of help they can reasonably offer a person. What is created that is fair and reasonable to assist with integration? These sorts of issues bleed into a larger contextual issue which is not having this stuff integrated, understood, and respected by the culture at large. 

As far as integrating psychedelics with therapy, that's another hornets nest. It's difficult because you have to address the problem of transference. There's a reason a therapist's office is organized in a particular way and that's to control the many of ways of which a client may perceive about the room that effects the quality of their session. This may sound small but it is a big deal. You have to understand, appreciate, and most importantly (especially for people on this forum) notice that your mind interprets everything you think you experience on psychedelics. The conceptual and philosophical indoctrination you received matters when it comes to these things as well as therapy at large. When you've read all this stuff about spirituality or whatever it may be for that matter and then you take a psychedelic, your mind is very likely to go off an interpret all that you experienced and fill in the blanks for everything and make a bunch of nonsense. This happens all the time and I see it on here all the time. All this is transference and there would need to be an effective way to create a container that deals with these issues.

This gentlemen whose an experienced psychonaut and a Lacanian analyst goes into this quite well. 

To understand the deeper differences between Shadows vs. Traumas vs. Attachment Issues check out 

 

[flowboy]

7 hours ago, EmptyVase said:

@Bestyle2209 

Super interesting. Further down my path, I also plan on becoming a psychotherapist (also in Germany).

Personally, I'd go with Psychodynamic Therapy. And later on, I'd add schoolings on becoming a Psychological Naturopath.

I can imagine that the stuff which is being taught in CBT is easily "learnable" by yourself. More importantly, I wouldn't "learn" spirituality, but actually embody what spiritual teachings are about. Spirituality ain't about a recipe which you give to your patients. It's one on one guidance, not between you and your patient, but between the patient and the patient's source (source, as in, consciousness, inner being, and so on). You act more like a bridge - bridging your patient from the guidance with you, to the guidance with their inner being.

The way I'll be working with my patients will not be entirely dependent on the stuff that the institutions teach me. I think, especially as a psychotherapist, you have a lot of leeway on how to treat your patients, how to talk to them, what to recommend, etc. 

Spot on, thank you.

[Matt23]

AEDP

Also, consider that depending on a person's developmental level, certain therapies could be more helpful and appropriate than others.  Rather than one therapy being the "best".  So, maybe if someone is at a Self-Authoring stage, psychotherapy might be better and looking and their life story.  But, if someone is at a Rule-Role mind level, something like Internal Family Systems therapy might be more beneficial.  

 

[Lyubov]

All therapy modalities, even basic talk therapy, can be healing in a way as long as the practitioner has integrity and there is a sense of trust, connection and safety. From there you can build on this or take away. I like that there are lots of different modalities. I think a mix of cognitive/thought based, body based and spirituality is for me. Holistic sort of approach. Sometimes I benefit from something more in one area than another. Right now I greatly benefit from practical relationship advice. 

[Bestyle2209]

@Alex_R Hey Alex! No, to be honest, I have not tried a high dose of LSD once. I tried Mushrooms a few times, as well as long-time Meditations retreats which sometimes even resulted in experiences that were the opposite of healing or deconstructing. Funnily enough, both retreats and psychedelic experiences made me feel more neurotic for quite a while. It felt like my psyche was not stable enough to interpret what I experienced or emotionally prepared to surrender. This resistance did not lead to a deconstruction of my sense of self nor to a dissolution of emotional trauma because I metaphorically flead from it. 
Maybe it is my own experience but also the research of Willoughby Britton and Jared Lindahl that made me think of: "what if these radical, transformative, new therapy types such as psychedelic-assisted therapy which are often framed as light-years ahead of more conventional therapy types are not always light years ahead for all people of all developmental lines and stages, when it comes to safely and sustainably heal people." For instance, like @Matt23 and @kieranperez said in their posts, or Ken Wilber says that conventional cognitive talk therapy especially helps with pathologies that emered at the time of self-development when the rule/role mind emerged (the time where we learn to take the role of others and the rules of society) but it can not help with traumas originating from preverbal stages of development, nor with transmental or transrational traumas. Similarly, psychodynamic therapies have their place (for pathologies emerging in early stages of self-development), as well as more existential, humanistic or even transpersonal therapy types (e.g. such as psychedelic-assisted therapy) have their place, potentially especially in the re-alm of higher developmental stages of development. 
What I want to say, I imagine for some people, hyper effective therapy might not be that effective in the end, because this type of therapy either does not target the pathology at the level of self-development they need it or it might allow consciousness to encounter facets of experience (which was previously alienated, distorted or ignored) too quickly into the present experience for them to cope with. A more conventional, slower,talk therapy might then be more effective. 

@flowboy Hey Flowboy! Thank you for your long answer and motivational talk to go my own way. I would love if you could give me some references of therapists going their own way. I'm actually studying in the netherlands :-) 
Still, as you might have read from the post above, I disagree with your conception of effective therapy. How come you believe these therapy types are light years ahead? is it your own experience or is there also scientific evidence? After your post, I made some literature review and only found pilot, or maximum small studies, that indicated a higher effect size than conventional therapy forms. I found no large-scale studies for any of the therapies you mentioned. Like you probably know, statistically it is much easier to get a higher effect size with a smaller sample size. How can you then be so confident about your assessment of the efficacy of various treatment forms? Maybe I overlooked research or misunderstood you, let me know.

[Bestyle2209]

Hey @EmptyVase thank you for your perspective of spirituality. I loved how you wrote it and learned from it. It's sort of how Harald Piron criticizes the thirdwave mindfulness movement in CBT. He created an institute for transpersonal CBT - where the therapist is not making the patient learn spirituality but rather embodies it. If you are interested I would highly recommend reading up on him, he is also german ( I n s t i t u t f ü r Transpersonal Integrierte Psychologie & Psychotherapie). 

Hey @kieranperez thank you for your long post and thoughts, you seem to understand a lot about psychodynamic theory. I feel I underappreciate your post, because I could take enough time so far to watch your videos but will do it soon.
I find it astonishing, most people who have experienced therapy or are therapists themselves speak in high tones of psychodynamic therapy approaches. I find this always confusing to read because my university and most universities are favoring CBT, with less and less programs for people to become psychodynamic practicioners (by now only 33% in Germany) and even less professors and universities teaching from a psychodynamic background (13%!!!!!!). This stands in contrast to the ratio of current practicioners which is quiet balanced between CBT and psychodynamic therapy. This shows the recent trend towards CBT and it's newer waves of development.

With having learned so much about CBT and so little about psychodynamic therapy there is this mystery for me why people like you or @tsuki have benefited so much from it. Not disbelief but I simply lack information or imagination. If someone of you would be willing to report more about how the therapy was, why you believe it was so helpful and also if you believe this way of healing (e.g. for tsuki it was 6 years) could be done with more modern approaches in a more effective fashion, I would love to hear it.

I seem to somehow with to extract this deep healing potential of psychodynamic therapy without adapting parts of the theory and therapy that were clearly identified as fictions of Freuds mind, for instance. Maybe @Matt23 your AEDP seems to try to go this route?

Happy christmas and thank you for all your replies, they really helped me a lot. 

[Windappreciator]

I don't know, I don't think you are doing yourself a favour giving these things all these names.

[flowboy]

52 minutes ago, Bestyle2209 said:

After your post, I made some literature review and only found pilot, or maximum small studies, that indicated a higher effect size than conventional therapy forms. I found no large-scale studies for any of the therapies you mentioned. Like you probably know, statistically it is much easier to get a higher effect size with a smaller sample size. How can you then be so confident about your assessment of the efficacy of various treatment forms? Maybe I overlooked research or misunderstood you, let me know.

Awesome that you did that literary research, it shows you are really serious and I respect it.

 

While it is true that results of a large-scale study count for more than results with a smaller group, in isolation, that does not mean that this is an effective heuristic to evaluate efficacy.

The reason lies in the context.

See, studies only get done when they get funding. Scientists who want to do this research, have to basically beg and plead for money, to institutions and entities with the resources.

These entities who have the resources, also have strong biases.

Large-scale studies are extremely costly.

That means that it's only possible to get funding for large-scale studies, from investors and institutions that are already bought in to the paradigm. Or have something to gain from it.

You can see where the problem lies. If someone has been educated within a system to believe that approaches X and Y work, and the rest are nonsense, then they grow up with this bias. They build a career with this bias. Now why would they give away millions, to prove something that they have lived their entire life not believing in?

They wouldn't.

All scientific breakthroughs have had a long history of being rejected, studies not funded, until the people representing the status quo all died or retired, and their investment into their worldview was no longer able to subvert change.

This is why change is slow. Eventually the system catches up, and new discoveries propagate, but this takes many generations.

If you are the type that likes to be at the forefront, and don't want to be the last to find out about the most effective methods that have been discovered, then it is imperative to take some risk, and also do your own experiential investigation.

As a therapist, you will learn over time that you have to trust your own experience of what you have witnessed to work and not work, anyway.

What you are taught in college only serves as a background. You won't use most of it. And the ones who become really good at what they do, find and develop their own methods and systems. For which there will certainly not be scientific studies to back them up.

As for how I know: I have met many people and personally witnessed their healing.

This to me counts for a lot.

 

You can DM me and I can refer you to several people with stories that might inspire you

[Nahm]

On 12/20/2021 at 8:12 AM, Bestyle2209 said:

What type of therapy approach most effectively makes people more conscious?

Meditation. 

Consciousness is not an output or product of people. People can not be more conscious. This is just conjecture. 

Therapy is for expression, for you to empty of you - not to make you more conscious. 

[Bestyle2209]

Thank you for your replies. I will take some time to contemplate on them.

[Matt23]

On 12/24/2021 at 6:03 AM, Bestyle2209 said:

@Matt23 your AEDP seems to try to go this route?

Perhaps.  I honestly haven't studied it in depth, so I don't know too much about it.  But I hear one of the main distinctions is that, rathe than in regular therapy where the therapist maintains a detached relationship with the client, in AEDP, the therapist engages with the client, showing emotion, reflecting, engaging, and just relating.  I think this is based more on the idea of co-regulation (see Polyvagal theory) and re-establishing a secure attachment figure in order to proceed with moving through traumatic and difficult emotions safely and productively. 

The second distinction, which takes off from the place of moving through difficult or traumatic emotions, is a focus on first obviously identifying and feeling the emotion (even positive ones), but then really investigating how the feeling feels.  Asking questions like "How does it feel to be vulnerable and alone?", or "What's it like to be you right now?", etc..  They said that this process is dynamic with the therapist and that this last piece really helps integrate the positive and cathartic experiences of feeling the emotions in the first place.  I think they found that in regular therapies people would have these cathartic and emotional experiences, but then they'd often revert back to old patterns.  Communicating and really exploring how the feelings feel, they say, is a key piece in integrating those experiences.  

Exercise recommendation

I've even tried it out and it seems to really help.  Meaning, whereas before if I felt something (mostly negative), I'd try to investigate it using emotionally laden language, or language with high positive or negative value meanings.  But this time, I tried really using more concrete language to describe the sensations.  For example, if I felt some fear, I'd say "How does this feel?".  Then I'd proceed to say something like "It's sort of a crushing feeling in my chest.  There's some coldness as well, which lies sort of in the middle of the crushing sensation and is about the size of an almond.  It lies right in the middle of my chest where my ribs meet."  I found this to be far more effective at moving through emotions than saying something like "I feel fear.  It's like I'm scared of feeling alone.  I just feel like someone will leave me. etc.", which could just go on forever without any feelings of release or resolution.  I'd recommend trying it out.  

Edited December 27, 2021 by Matt23

[Buba]

On 12/21/2021 at 10:54 PM, kieranperez said:

In all seriousness, this is a really great thread. 

Therapy is not about deconstructing the self.

This is just flat out not true. In practice things like psychoanalysis can go profoundly deep and this can be answered well enough if you read about Freud and his work with patients alone. Things like emotional release and even primal release therapy no doubt can be useful but only to a point and in practice people are often dependent on these techniques. That said, things like primal therapy, emotional release therapy, and so forth are doing different things and have different goals than say something like analysis (even though analysis could get you there). Those forms of therapy are aiming and trauma which have to do with the actual nervous system and freeing certain responses and so forth. Things like analysis could actually get you there and I speak from experience. Then again, our narratives can also be a habitual form by which we actually continually we actually re-traumatize ourselves. There is no hard and fast rule and the truth is that this varies from person to person. It's important to make 3 different distinctions between what we might call Shadow vs. Trauma vs. Attachment issues. They practices or forms of therapy may interact with any of the other different issues but they're not all the same. Dealing with shadow stuff may help with the trauma but don't confuse or conflate those two with being the same because they aren't. It's like confusing spiritual development and deepening one's insight and confusing that for moral development. This is not the same thing at all even though it might interact at time. 

As far addressing OP...

I have a bit of a bias towards psychoanalysis and doing deeper trauma work like say through something like somatic experiencing as that's the only thing that's ever actually worked for me in practice and I've been through the ringer since I was like 12. I've been through intense CBT and DBT and none of it at all worked for me. That said, I can also acknowledge I have a lot of trauma and other stuff going on and can imagine something like CBT can work great for people who might not have a lot of trauma, attachment issues, and deeper stuff going on and can really capitalize on some potentially more minor things. Hell, I can even imagine it's great for people who may struggle with deeper neuroses and disorders that just need some sort of thing to help them get some sense of control and stability in their life. 

That said, things like psychoanalysis is so incredibly under appreciated here in the US and it really is a pity because it has so much potential. I don't agree that psychoanalysts aren't interested at all when it comes to the outcomes of psychedelics assisted therapy. The problem that they present is manifold. First off, there is no predicability with psychedelics (though that holds true for practices like analysis so I think that might be an element that might be able to integrated quite well into the practice). You also have to deal with the duration of trips which I imagine will make these trips and forms of therapy less accessible because you will have a limited number of therapists assisting with trips that can take anywhere between 4-12 hours. There are only so many therapists and they can only help you for so long. Not to mention the extent of help they can reasonably offer a person. What is created that is fair and reasonable to assist with integration? These sorts of issues bleed into a larger contextual issue which is not having this stuff integrated, understood, and respected by the culture at large. 

As far as integrating psychedelics with therapy, that's another hornets nest. It's difficult because you have to address the problem of transference. There's a reason a therapist's office is organized in a particular way and that's to control the many of ways of which a client may perceive about the room that effects the quality of their session. This may sound small but it is a big deal. You have to understand, appreciate, and most importantly (especially for people on this forum) notice that your mind interprets everything you think you experience on psychedelics. The conceptual and philosophical indoctrination you received matters when it comes to these things as well as therapy at large. When you've read all this stuff about spirituality or whatever it may be for that matter and then you take a psychedelic, your mind is very likely to go off an interpret all that you experienced and fill in the blanks for everything and make a bunch of nonsense. This happens all the time and I see it on here all the time. All this is transference and there would need to be an effective way to create a container that deals with these issues.

This gentlemen whose an experienced psychonaut and a Lacanian analyst goes into this quite well. 

To understand the deeper differences between Shadows vs. Traumas vs. Attachment Issues check out 

 

Psychoanalysis did not help me and actually harmed me more. It has been more than two years I go to psychoanalysis.

[kieranperez]

1 hour ago, Buba said:

Psychoanalysis did not help me and actually harmed me more. It has been more than two years I go to psychoanalysis.

You're not really saying anything here. Be more specific and clear as to what you experienced, what happened, and so forth as to what lead you to come to this belief/conclusion. 

On 12/24/2021 at 5:32 AM, Bestyle2209 said:

"what if these radical, transformative, new therapy types such as psychedelic-assisted therapy which are often framed as light-years ahead of more conventional therapy types are not always light years ahead for all people of all developmental lines and stages, when it comes to safely and sustainably heal people.

We're going to need so many things in place in our culture that just flat out does not exist for that to really have it's place. Not to mention a 2nd tier anthropological understanding when it comes to our entire healthcare system which I imagine is a minimum 100 years away (assuming we survive as a species). Annnnnd not to mention an ideal scenario where we've gone beyond this materialistic understanding of mind and also have a better understanding of what psychedelics do and don't do (I'm not going to raise my usual critiques with this forum when it comes to what people here believe they do, e.g. "raise your consciousness"). 

As far as meditation goes, yeah it can be healing in some sense but the authentic orientation of contemplative practice is not about healing you. It's about waking up. Yeah, along the way that stuff might get sorted out but often times it doesn't. There's reason Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning up are outlined as different processes because they are. Don't assume that all because you've had (an actual) enlightenment experience or mystical-whatever that that means you're anymore morally developed or more cognitively developed. Yeah, there might be some interaction between those different lines of development but that doesn't mean it's inherently the case. 

On 12/24/2021 at 6:03 AM, Bestyle2209 said:

Hey @kieranperez thank you for your long post and thoughts, you seem to understand a lot about psychodynamic theory. I feel I underappreciate your post, because I could take enough time so far to watch your videos but will do it soon.
I find it astonishing, most people who have experienced therapy or are therapists themselves speak in high tones of psychodynamic therapy approaches. I find this always confusing to read because my university and most universities are favoring CBT, with less and less programs for people to become psychodynamic practicioners (by now only 33% in Germany) and even less professors and universities teaching from a psychodynamic background (13%!!!!!!). This stands in contrast to the ratio of current practicioners which is quiet balanced between CBT and psychodynamic therapy. This shows the recent trend towards CBT and it's newer waves of development.

Interesting. I notice you're from Germany and I would've thought psychoanalysis would've been bigger there. Interesting. I mean fuck, all of this started in Germany with Freud. 

To be anal for a second, psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy aren't the same. Psychodynamic therapy you might say is psychoanalysis's little cousin. It's a lighter touch. Which I'm not saying that's better or worse. The theoretical framework is basically the same as psychodynamic therapy is something that came out of psychoanalysis many decades down the road. 

CBT suits the modern paradigm of scientific materialism where everything is oriented this mechanical like view of behaviors and dealing with this sort micromanagement sort of shit. The problem with all of this is that it neglects the deeper origins of all these conflicts and why the patient/client doesn't want to do any of the things they're failing to do because it's happening at a deeply unconscious level. CBT may work for some people but the majority of people I see doing it it's just dressing over the actual problems and isn't really dealing with any of the deeper rooted shit. It's just coping tools on top of coping tools on top of coping tools and people are kinda getting driven nuts with it all. Then again, if you're someone with say schizophrenia, I imagine it can be pretty useful to have a therapy that doesn't need to keep jabbing at those very powerfully disturbing aspects of one's experience and mind and can have something that helps them establish some stability and control over their lives. 

On 12/24/2021 at 5:32 AM, Bestyle2209 said:

conventional cognitive talk therapy especially helps with pathologies that emered at the time of self-development when the rule/role mind emerged (the time where we learn to take the role of others and the rules of society) but it can not help with traumas originating from preverbal stages of development, nor with transmental or transrational traumas. Similarly, psychodynamic therapies have their place (for pathologies emerging in early stages of self-development), as well as more existential, humanistic or even transpersonal therapy types (e.g. such as psychedelic-assisted therapy) have their place, potentially especially in the re-alm of higher developmental stages of development. 

Yeah, I'd say much of that by and large is true. Much of my personal issues for example are preverbal traumas which is why I'm now actually hunting for body based trauma therapies like Somatic Experiencing to release those deeper contractions and disturbances because stories and talking can actually become a form of actually re-traumatizing myself. Then again, psychoanalysis has extensive history with alleviating preverbal stuff too. Go read a book called "Hysteria" and you'll read some crazy cases. You can read cases of people getting out of things like paralysis and so forth. It can be deep as fuck. I've certainly had my case of "hysterical releases" and boy was I shocked.