ON “MODERN” PSYCHOANALYSIS - what do you think?

Today, Sigmund Freud’s actuality is a truth. In spite of all critiques and revisions, he remains of actuality exactly in the same form psychoanalysis had in the previous epoques. Freud regretfully expressed the fact that his students did not continue his researches and that the public has wrongly understood many of his statements.


About the new developments in psychoanalysis – actually, there aren’t any. Nowadays we witness the apparition of a great number of therapies influenced by or borrowing elements from psychoanalysis. If these therapies don’t pretend to be the “progress” of psychoanalysis, then fine; borrowing remains a problem, however, namely whether these borrowings can work outside the specific psychoanalytic frame.


What is considered to be the result of the “considerable progress” of clinical and theoretical practice nowadays in psychoanalysis is nothing but a sure way of failure of analysis. To restrain the importance of the interpretation of dreams – the royal path to the unconscious – and Fairbairn’s claim that there’s no such thing as id… If practiced in this way, no wonder the revolt against psychoanalysis – that it doesn’t work… How could it work properly when it is sliced according to the “modern” analyst’s mood!?


Let us take the example of Alfred Adler’s “development” of Freudian psychoanalysis. In his therapeutic approach, Adler never bothers to turn unconscious representations into conscious ones, giving up free associations and dream interpretations. "He knows neuroses have all just one purpose: to falsely raise the ill person in the eyes of those around." Adler thinks that any analysis is a struggle between doctor and patient, the latter "refusing to describe his/her symptoms and their origin for fear that would place him/her in an inferior position to their doctor's."


Has man’s inner structure “evolved” over the years, such that one does no longer have unconscious wishes expressed via dreams, or to have no unconscious desires at all? Has the conception regarding women changed – considerably, leaving no stereotyped traces – in today’s world? Is man still not haunted by phobias, absurd fears, with no apparent reason?


To what extent has the inner structure of the human mind changed over the years since Freud’s time? Could we say that there was a “progress” similar to that of a computer? If not, then how come psychoanalysis – the science of the human psyche – could change since its creation by Freud?


It is often the case that time brings progress to various sciences, and technologies. But in the case of psychoanalysis, it reached its peak with Freud and it will endure in the same form for other 150 years to say the least.

ON “MODERN” PSYCHOANALYSIS - what do you think?
Admittedly, not a lot of people pay much attention to Freud any more, and those who ridicule him are the same people who have probably never read his works and would understand them if they did read what he wrote. On the other hand, Freud tried to make his theories as scientific as possible, using the principles of Newtonian physics. He knew nothing of nuclear physics of quantum mechanics, realms of physics which may still be undiscovered. He ignored metaphysics (God and what we call the paranormal or supernatural).


You may wish to read up on Viktor Frankl and logotherapy.
Reply:Wonderful thesis if only I understood what you said. In my opinion psychoanalysis needs many years of development, possibly along different paths to make it work.


I frankly believe in it but only barely.

false teeth