Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

First, I just don't get how after knowing about freud and his views anyone can trust freudian therapy. Second, I also don't get how people trust strangers with intimate details of their thought life.

I suppose if being happy and functional is your goal, it makes sense to do whatever you can to improve your chances. Personally, I prefer to experience reality and find truth even if it isn't happy or beneficial. I never hear them give advice that makes people unhappy or ask people to sacrifice for others. Furthermore, fundamental views and values I hold are likely very different from any therapist, so they can't qualify to advice me (and many others). Based on what I know about human nature, it's pretty damn scary how much people trust therapists.

Check out century of the self, a documentary I found on HN actually that documens how freudian psychology and modern marketing and capitalism aligned and worked together in the 20th century to create the world we are in today:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

Is most therapy practiced today Freudian, in any sense more meaningful than that Freud helped inspire the whole field?

As I understand, he didn't merely inspire but architected modern psychoanalytic approaches. But even those aside, specific teachings of his or evolutions of his teachings are still thaught. Oedipus complex is the one I dislike the most, claiming boys want to murder their father and sleep with their mother at a subconscious level.

IMO, many cultures long before freud used religion and other means as part of mental health treatments.as I alluded earlier, I take objection to the approach he championed where psychoanalysis is done by people who don't consider belief and world view compatibility and goals that are wildly different from their own. How can you fix a problem for someone if you don't even know what the root cause for that person is and what they want the solution to be? This is a highly subjectivr field where reductivist (why they call them shrinks) approaches only work as a matter of statistical success, not correctness of the approach.

Again, just my opinion and observation.

In my experience, just understanding the mental world someone lives in is a huge undertaking. Two people can look at the same thing and have thing mean wildly different things.

The user you're responding to has no understanding of psychoanalysis, Freudian or otherwise. There is a long standing tradition of judging the field from incredulity at Freud's simiplified conclusions, and you never hear the real critiques of the field from anyone who disputes the way that user does. Better critique comes from seasoned psychoanalysts, e.g. Deleuze and Guattari, and is unfortunately often inaccessible to the public.

As the user he is responding to, your comment and pompous academic attitude is another cririque of mine. You know best and can't be bothered with specifics, because how dare anyone even question the field withour credentials.

"Second, I also don't get how people trust strangers with intimate details of their thought life."

Pretty simple: legal barriers to revealing that information creates an open space for discussing those thoughts that you don't feel comfortable revealing to friends or family.

That's what I don't get, you have such grear confidence in legal barriers but keep in mind, your therapist also has assistants/staff sometimes, they take notes that could get leaked/stolem, they could get hacked if it is digitally stored,etc...

I mean, some shit I wouldn't even dare speak out loud anywhere near a smartphone or network connected device. These days, you say the wrong thing and they'll put you in a 72hr psych hold and ruin your life (having to explain that to your work/spouse!).

Beyond that, these people are experts at manipulation (to an end they consider good), they could take that information and get you to think in a way that is undesirable to you.it could be life changing but it that change does not have to be positive. Your putting your faith in a lot if humans and a lot of processes and checks working right.

If you're concerned about those things, then I get it. I'm not - I've never had an issue.

Yeah, I mean whatever you find helpful, power to you.

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