Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 22:46:37 +0200
From: Ilan Shalif <gshalif-AT-netvision.net.il>
Subject: Re: M-PSY: The Fraudulence of Freud


Hi all 

Chris Burford wrote:
<snip>
 
<snip> 
> So it is interesting that across our language and visual barriers
> you seem to have taken my joke question seriously, Ilan, about
> talking about your problem. I see that stock phrase as the
> standard way psychodynamic therapists protect themselves (although it
> has been mitigated in more recent years by a greater emphasis on
> psychotherapists monitoring their own counter-transference).
> 
<snip>
My lengthy short post about Freud and the longer one that followed it
was result of frustration to find marxists who even think about Freud as
a contributor to contemporary class struggle.
>
<snip>
> 
> I agree it is arguable that the process of psychodynamic psychotherapy
> can ironically be analyzed in behaviourist terms. The patient gets
> intermittent re-inforcement (the most powerful type of reinforcement)
> by the sparse rewards of attention from the opaque therapist
> for remarks that fit the psychodynamic schema. The patient is
> shaped to recognise the patterns recognised by psychoanalysis
> and the psychotherapist takes it as evidence of an appropriate
> interpretation, when the patient accepts it. This creates gradually
> over months, and sometimes years, a reinforcing alliance of
> interdependence. Growing numbers in society see some
> validity in this approach.
>
Few points to clear. 
a) Dollard and miller wrote about socialization and not about the
psychological processes of psychoanalysis. 
b) learning theory has gone a long way from behaviorism - it is now in
the cognitive-emotional phase. 
c) Psychoanalysis helps part of the involved - in edition to the analyst
- because it provide people with a laboratory kind of experience of
intimate relation. 
d) Like all kinds of psychological interventions of professionals,
crooks and those which are inbetween, the activity and relation cause
many applicants to increase the amount of attention payed to emotional
signals i.e. the various bodily sensations. This is the common active
gradient in all processes of mental improvements.    
<snip> 
>
>I would wish
> the Freudians to shift their model of that complex interpersonal
> reality to one more fully social, and not overwhelmingly
> restricted to the emotions of the nuclear family, strong those
> undoubtedly are.
> 
You CAN teach old dog new tricks BUT it takes allot of effort. And it
succeed only if it is really motivated to make the change. 
>
> OK hopefully this reframing of your criticisms will draw other
> subscribers into serious debate. When one accuses someone of
> fraudulence or hypocrisy it is necessary to think whether they
> were first of all deceiving themselves before they started to
> deceive others. It then rightly has to become a more serious
> discussion of what was wrong, and why the error, if it was an
> error, came to be made.
> 
If he was on the list or I new my post is intended for his admirers I
surely was more scientific in my text. I think the dealing with Freud is
not relevant to the treatment of psychology as science from marxists.


Regards.
Ilan Shalif
                http://www.geocities.com/~drilanshalif

     You CAN teach old dog new tricks BUT it takes allot of effort. 
             So pay attention to the pleasant and unpleasant 
                 bodily sensations... and the troubles
                     will take care of themselves.

                                      Old Dog




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