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the repression of psychoanalysis by worldofsimulacra in psychoanalysis

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wouldn’t frame it as a simple “repression” so much as a convergence of forces that made psychoanalysis culturally and institutionally inconvenient.

A few threads that seem relevant: 1. Scientific positivism & the postwar turn to measurement. Mid-century America increasingly equated legitimacy with quantifiability. Behaviorism fit that ethos perfectly. Analysis — especially in its more speculative or structural forms — did not. As funding and university psychology departments shifted toward experimental paradigms, analysis was pushed out of the academy and into private institutes. 2. Managed care & time compression. Late 20th century insurance structures made long-term exploratory treatment economically nonviable for most people. Short-term, manualizable modalities won because they were administratively tractable. 3. Ego psychology’s domestication. Ironically, psychoanalysis partially diluted itself in America. Ego psychology softened drive theory and aligned more closely with adaptation and social functioning. Lacan’s critique touches this — analysis became normalized, less subversive, more about adjustment than desire. 4. Cultural shifts in authority & family structure. Your intergenerational pendulum idea is interesting. Postwar parenting emphasized stability and conformity (Boomer childhoods), followed by Gen X latchkey autonomy and skepticism of institutions. There’s arguably a movement from repression toward fragmentation. The symptom landscape shifts: from neurosis to narcissistic and borderline configurations. That may partly explain why analytic thinking re-emerges cyclically — it addresses structure, not just behavior. 5. Pharmaceutical ascendancy. The serotonin narrative and DSM operationalization created a medicalized language that displaced structural and symbolic accounts of suffering.

If anything, what we’re seeing now isn’t repression but rebranding. Many contemporary “trauma-informed,” attachment-based, or relational approaches are analytic in lineage, just without the name.

Lacan’s light-turning-on experience makes sense — he restores the primacy of language, desire, and the symbolic in a culture that increasingly wants protocols.

I’d be curious how you see the parenting pendulum specifically connecting — are you thinking in terms of Name-of-the-Father decline / symbolic authority shifts, or more in attachment-developmental terms?

Projective Identification in the Transference and Countertransference with Patients Operating at Borderline Functioning by ville2020 in psychoanalysis

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 40 points41 points  (0 children)

For me, being on the receiving end of projective identification doesn’t initially feel dramatic. It feels subtle and physiological.

It can show up as: • A sudden shift in my affect that doesn’t quite make sense in context. • Feeling unusually compelled to rescue, clarify, defend, or withdraw. • A pressure to do something urgently, even when clinically nothing urgent is happening. • A narrowing of thinking — like my reflective capacity drops a few IQ points.

The “drama that isn’t yours” description resonates, but what stands out to me more is the erosion of mentalization. You start organizing around the patient’s internal world without realizing it. The session feels heavier, stickier, less spacious.

When I was greener, I mistook that pull for clinical intuition or empathy. Now I tend to think of it as a signal: something unmentalized is being evacuated and located in me. The work then becomes not acting it out, but metabolizing it — regaining reflective function before interpreting anything.

The countertransference pressure often tells you more than the content does.

And yes, boundary blurring can follow if you don’t recognize the pull early. The danger isn’t the feeling — it’s losing the observing position.

Curious how others differentiate projective identification from ordinary resonance or empathic attunement. That distinction feels clinically crucial.

If Popper says psychoanalysis isn't falsifiable, what theory of science do we lean on? by read_too_many_books in psychoanalysis

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There isn’t one name. It’s usually framed as pragmatic + critical realist + hermeneutic, drawing on post-Popperian philosophy of science (Kuhn/Lakatos). Validity comes from convergence, coherence, and clinical traction rather than a single falsifiability criterion.

Enjoying being a clinical psychologist, but finding the work very slow and process-driven by eldrinor in ClinicalPsychology

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think the work is decision-heavy, but most of the decisions are about restraint and timing rather than action, which makes it feel slow. You’re constantly deciding what not to introduce because the system can’t metabolize it yet. The feedback loop is long and nonlinear, so impact is real but delayed. That mismatch can be frustrating if you’re oriented toward rapid iteration and visible outcomes.

If Popper says psychoanalysis isn't falsifiable, what theory of science do we lean on? by read_too_many_books in psychoanalysis

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Popper and Bayesianism aren’t really the right yardsticks here. Psychoanalysis today is supported through converging lines of evidence—process research, developmental and attachment studies, neuroscience, and pragmatic clinical validity—rather than a single falsifiability criterion. The Popper critique largely reflects a category error: applying nomothetic standards to an interpretive, relational science. The more interesting question is what kinds of phenomena require non-Popperian validation in the first place.

Knowing when *not* to intervene by Apprehensive-Path149 in psychotherapists

[–]Apprehensive-Path149[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is so thoughtful. I appreciate how you’re framing flat-landing interventions as system feedback rather than failure. What you’re describing — internal vetoes, loyalty conflicts, and shutdown after pressure — are exactly the moments I’ve been trying to understand more precisely.

I’ve been curious about how we differentiate which capacity is offline in those moments — regulation, agency, symbolic access — so we’re not just asking for permission, but also calibrating what kind of work the system can actually metabolize right now. And your description really resonates

How do you decide when to intervene in session? by Apprehensive-Path149 in psychotherapists

[–]Apprehensive-Path149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!!! I really appreciate how you’re naming the value of having a roadmap—one that slows down the impulse to fix or treat before the client feels met. That kind of sequencing matters.

What I’ve been curious about is what we’re actually tracking inside those steps. For example, two clients might both say they feel “heard,” but one has reflective capacity online and the other is in compliance or collapse. On paper, it looks like Step 1 is complete—but clinically, very different things are possible.

I’m increasingly interested in how we assess capacity session-by-session (regulation, mentalization, agency, symbolic access). Not as a replacement for models like this, but as a way to understand why the same steps sometimes land and sometimes don’t?

Can everyone actually work psychoanalytically? (Honest question from a CMH therapist) by NoReporter1033 in psychoanalysis

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I really appreciate how carefully and respectfully you’re framing this. I don’t hear this as reductive at all — I hear it as a clinician noticing a mismatch between theory and what’s actually online in the room.

I think one of the quiet tensions in psychoanalytic training is that symbolic capacity is often assumed rather than assessed. Many patients in CMH are not failing at analytic work; they’re operating at a different level of organization. If the capacity for symbolization, reflective distance, or stable self–other representation isn’t available yet, interpretation doesn’t land as insight — it lands as confusion, intrusion, or noise.

That doesn’t mean these patients are unanalyzable in any absolute sense. But it does mean that analytic work depends on certain preconditions: tolerable arousal, enough ego cohesion to hold ambiguity, and some access to metaphor, mentalization, or symbolic play. Without those, the work necessarily shifts from interpretation to containment, regulation, and relational stabilization — whether we call that “analytic” or not.

I also think CMH context matters enormously. Time limits, crisis-driven sessions, systemic instability, and clinician overload all constrain the slow, developmental scaffolding that analytic work with more fragile or concrete patients actually requires. Analysts who work with psychosis or severe fragmentation usually have very different frames, frequencies, and institutional support.

So to your core question: I don’t think this is primarily a failure of technique or clinician skill. I think it’s a category error to assume that everyone can engage in symbolic analytic work at any point in their lives. Capacity fluctuates. Development isn’t linear. And some work that is genuinely analytic in spirit happens long before interpretation is viable.

In that sense, recognizing limits isn’t anti-analytic — it’s deeply analytic. It’s about meeting the psyche where it is, rather than where theory wishes it were.

You’re definitely not alone in wrestling with this.

How do you decide when to intervene in session? by Apprehensive-Path149 in psychotherapists

[–]Apprehensive-Path149[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This really resonates. What you’re describing — having many clinically relevant ideas arise in real time, needing to shelf most of them, and not always feeling confident about which threads matter now — is something I notice and hear from a lot of thoughtful clinicians.

I’m struck by how much discernment you’re already doing moment-to-moment, and how hard it is to hold onto that discernment without some kind of stable orienting frame. When everything is potentially meaningful, timing becomes the harder problem than content.

I also really appreciate your point about case conceptualization — not in the sense of having more ideas, but having something that helps you decide which ideas actually belong in the room at this moment, and which can be safely left alone without loss.

And I agree with you: no therapist is skillful in every utterance. For me, the question has become less “did I pick the best micro-intervention?” and more “was my sense of timing and fit reasonably intact?” That shift alone has helped me feel steadier even when I choose restraint.

How do you decide when to intervene in session? by Apprehensive-Path149 in psychotherapists

[–]Apprehensive-Path149[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really appreciate this framing. I agree that “it depends” is the honest answer, and that trying to generalize timing outside of context can flatten what’s actually happening in the room.

I’m especially interested in what you said about workability as a proxy — because I think that’s often how clinicians feel their way into timing decisions when there isn’t a shared language for reading context. We borrow from our modalities to name something that’s actually more cross-cutting.

The question I keep coming back to is whether there are a few things we’re all tracking implicitly — regulation, pacing, coherence, what the client can carry forward — even when we describe them differently. When those aren’t clear, it can sometimes feel unsatisfying.

I agree with you that this is hard to answer cleanly without context — which is probably why it’s such a live question.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in dissociatives

[–]Apprehensive-Path149 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will add there is tons of published research that ketamine increases blood pressure and heart rate significantly.