I have citations on my other computer. which is not here. When I get a chance I’ll put them on here. However the general dissatisfaction with psychotherapy is pervasive.
JimL
Karma: 6
One is internally focused and tends to concern itself with resolving past causes while the other is primarily concerned with behavior and developing helpful habits and thought patterns in response to external stimulation, realizing that emotion and action are inter-causal and self-reinforcing.
Game theory and...
Keep a journal. All your life. It is easy to harbor irrational thoughts and emotions in life. It is much more difficult when you must write them down. The exercise has multiple benefits. One learns to summarize, it clarifies thoughts and emotions, and provides cathartic relief. A healthy mind is one that can write; irrationality is a hundred times more difficult in print. Pity that today’s journalists are in general such bad examples.
Please allow me to offer a different perspective.
I remain extremely skeptical of psychological diagnosis. Studies continue to show that a year of psychoanalysis with a trained analyst remains less effective than reading a book on cognitive psychology focused on measured self-improvement. Similarly, psychologists are statistically unable to distinguish between ‘normal’ and neurotic patients. Tests on ‘subjects’ are prone to confirmation bias and inter-causality issues.
Humans are deeply social animals, and arguably our intelligence has evolved at least partly to meet the challenge of those associations. Our minds are also heavily prejudiced in favor of habits, especially those we adopt as children. IOW, we are acutely susceptible to gaining our life stories from our parents, and Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow experiments arguably reflect those predilections, especially since we clothe our memories, responses and behaviors in a tight weave of rationality and emotion. Those stories are not only difficult to break, but inevitably produce consequences.
I am therefore skeptical of a ‘personality disorder’ named BPD. I was married to a woman who fits all the descriptions. My unwillingness to quit, my devotion to the institution of marriage, and my belief in my continued investment over time to produce healthful change eventually led me to thwart my career and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to help her feel more secure and ‘happy.’ In the end, she actually left me, and I now support her and her boyfriend and my son and their daughter.
Do I think she is sick? I think she has control issues. I think she uses emotional commitment as leverage and her flight response is very high after she becomes convinced that her significant other will no longer act as savior or slave.
Does this make her sick? It certainly makes her socially inept, which reinforces her life story. By now I view her relationship requirements as very particular; just the right combination of attributes must be present to be successful. And many of her impulses lead to pain and unneeded hardship which takes an emotional and psychological toll.
But I do not view her as suffering from a ‘malady.’ I view her as a person whose life story tends to be often self-destructive. And without the benefit of constant daily guidance and an honest willingness to change, it is likely to remain so. Ultimately, despite awareness of her issues, it was me who could not get through. I am just sad I played the hostage game at all. I thought I was more mature than that.
I think your implication of highly specific partner preference gives the impression that I am wrong on this last point. It implies such behavior is whimsical and easy to change, if only the person were to wish it.
I was in no way trying to minimize your post. Actually, my attempt was to suggest the opposite; it is absolutely difficult to change behavior. Habit tied with emotionality is fantastically sturdy and able to withstand all manner of influence.
My beleaguered point was that I find neurosis interpreted as life stories buttressed by habits and emotionally charged mind thoughts more helpful and actionable than clawing through my childhood or viewing it through a malady / psychoanalysis matrix.
I can then work on actions and behaviors, and changing how I choose to react to a stimulus. I don’t necessarily have to spend so much time trying to understand how I got there. IOW, I am attracted to any model that emphasizes choice and inner control. It emphasizes my freedom, the space between stimulus and response where my choice can exist. I am enervated by concentrating on that space and enlarging it.
It is one of the reasons cognitive behavioral psychology has had such a significant effect on the discipline.