Freud never was and still isn’t held ‘in awe’ outside of his field by the scientific community. He was held more in awe by the popular culture. Most biologists, anthropologists, and so on were never enthused about the fellow’s theories. Better understanding of the brain as an evolved or designed physical organ has sidelined Freud even further. The reason one may have poor coping skills or depression isn’t because of some early childhood relationship issue with mom or pop, but a chemical abnormality, physiological disturbance, mitochondrial deterioration, etc. that is corrected with diet, pharmaceutical regimen or allergy avoidance.
Even if someone has a non-physical psychological issue, most health care providers today would still not call in a Freudian analysis but would try other approaches to help the patient. Few would be obsessed with the complexities of the patient’s buried repressed subconscious sexual relationship with their parents. Instead, they might try stress relief, coping skills, etc. Freud would be out of the picture.
I’m not gay but I am schizophrenic. A lot of what Freud said has been debunked. HHis work was a product of his environment. He lived during a highly restrictive time where everything was restricted so all of his deductions were built on suppression.
His theories have never had a field in any scientific community. There is research on psychoanalysis, but it’s not very positive.
There’s no scientific basis for thinking of the brain as a designed organ.
“Early childhood relationship issues with mom or pop” are definitely strong and relevant causes of poor coping skills, depression and other mental health problems. This is one of Freud’s legacies that is still important today. Not in the way he imagined it, though. But this is just completely wrong. Psychological factors are involved in all mental illnesses to a very significant degree, even schizophrenia, and early childhood experiences with primary caregivers are especially important and strong predictors of adult mental health issues. Psychological therapy for depression is just as effective as antidepressants. With mental health, it’s not often just biology.
Historically, GP’s tended to prescribe medication to treat depression. Nowadays, psychotherapy (or counselling) is increasingly recommended as the first intervention, particularly when symptoms are mild to moderate In cases of severe clinical depression, psychotherapy alone may not be sufficient. However, used in conjunction with other treatments, such as medication, it can play an important role in treatment success.
So psychotherapy on its own is more likely to be beneficial for mild or moderate depression.
It was a psychiatrist who had the lecture where I learned this, and it was his textbook that I read. It basically said what you posted, but did not state that psychotherapy alone was more effective than medical therapy alone for mild to moderate depressions. His simplification of this was, paraphrased: “therapy = meds, but both is better”.
Considering he was a medical professor of psychopathology, I do not know if his knowledge of psychotherapy for depression was comprehensive, but I have no good reason to doubt him.
I’m not saying therapy alone is better than meds for mild to moderate depression(though some even among professionals would argue it is). Just that therapy is more likely to help with mild/moderate depression. I fully agree that meds + therapy is the best option although I’m sceptical re the hyping up of CBT. I think that’s because less intelligent CBT practitioners push a “It didn’t really happen that way but that your faulty thinking makes you think so” position which negates and trivialises personal experiences.
However if used as a tool to promote better coping skills whilst acknowledging people’s experiences then it can have a useful role to play.
I guess it very much depends on the intelligence and skill of the person providing therapy.
Yes, and this is exactly what I said that he disconfirmed to us. But I’m not prepared to believe him unconditionally based on his credentials. I have listened to other professionals with different views.
At any rate, the two treatment alternatives are pretty comparable overall, with the caveat that psychotherapy alone is insufficient for most people with severe depression.
What’s best for mental health is a very contentious thing . The danger is if the professionals get more obsessed with intellectual pissing up the wall contests than helping actual patients.
I feel that is exactly what is going on with clinical psychology vs psychiatry. It’s a social status contest, and it’s not helping anyone. It encourages black and white thinking about biology and psychology.
Yes, and NON-mentally ill children often have not-so-great parents. And mentally ill children often have great parents. And non-mentally ill children often have great parents. So that really gets us nothing. Looking at a mentally ill child and assuming bad parenting isn’t just bad psychiatry, it’s bad medicine.
I think it’s dangerous to seperate biology from psychology in either direction. I come from a background in chemistry and I’ve noticed that psychology academics tend to disproportionately attribute physiological disease/symptoms to psychological sources - i.e., that a client’s headache = somatization = caused by a mental issue = not really a headache = don’t treat the headache, or some such nonsense. Conversely, we can’t just call something a “chemical imbalance” (what is that, anyway??) because a treatment reverses it. How about the complex nature of the interaction between the “body and mind,” or better yet, that psychology IS inherently biology and there is no two seperate entities?
Some parts of Freudian theory - transference/countertransference, role of unconsiousness, etc. are relevant to modern psychiatry. Some of Freud’s ideas about sex are outdated. Traditional psychoanalysis is irrelevant. Basic psychodynamic ideas are relevant. Freud hit on/articulated some very universal elements of the human existence and its relation to “problems in living”/psychopathology…no doubt.
100+ years later, clinical psychology/psychiatry has found more pragmatic, efficient and less ridiculous ways of addressing and ameliorating these concerns.
It gets us just as far as comparable biological explanations. The fact is that there are multiple causes, both biological and psychological, and that most of these causes can have multiple endpoints, e.g. different mental illnesses or the absence of mental illness.
With that said, I do agree with what you’ve posted in this post. But the disproportionate attribution goes both ways - doctors also tend to disproportionately attribute mental illness to biological causes (and honestly, I think you do, too). It’s exactly this kind of black and white thinking and rhetoric I’m arguing against.
I think both have their part to play. Mental illness is best explained by a combination of biological and environmental factors the degree of which differs from individual to individual. Clinical psychology and psychiatry should be working together not fighting for dominance.
Well put.
see no evil lol