Psychoanalysis And The American Pharmaceutical Industry

there has been a fast growing trend towards rejecting psychoanalasysis/psychodynamic school of thought in the US and to some extent in europe too in the past few decades. many claim that it is due to psychodynamics being non scientific and disproven in research. this is partially true and we have come a long way since the days of freud. but, a significant portion of the push against psychoanalysis/psychotherapy is unwarranted in my oppinion and the oppinions of many. specially the mentality that psychoanalysis should be forever taken out of psychology/psychiatry.

a rather respectable psychiatrist explained this to me{whom i had the pleasure of meeting recently}, it is due to the pharmaceutical industry's strength in the west. since they want to project drugs as bringing ultimate releif to psychological problems, tons of money is put into development, advertisement and research into the drugs they develop. as a result, many people can just demand drugs of their doctors/therapists because they really do not wanna discus their problems, also, the vats amount of research attributed to the drug's effectiveness is taken as a marker for their effectiveness, however, we all too soon forget, that , the reason there is a lack of scientific evidence for psychodunamic/psychotherapeutic approaches is BECAUSE there is no motivation{unlike the drug companies} to do such research and no1 willing to give the funding.

also, "lack of time" for therapists/psychiatrists/mental help facilities, is a great factor in the reduction of use of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis. as it is a very time consuming process and many therapists, or their employers etc really do want them to get through more clients everyday and that is severely marginalised by psychoterpeutic approaches. this is also true for patients who may not be able to affoard the costs of therapy etc.

also remember, that , cognitive/social.behavioural therapies are als favoured because they are the least messy at time and require much less time. so basically, what im trying to say here is that psychodynamic/psychotherapy has its place in a lot of psychological things.

thoughts.

i think that in any side of the medical profession where you have doctors being paid by pharmacuetical companies to push certain drugs will always result in a skew towards the drug aspect of treatment.....this is not just limited to physical symptons obviously

this also results in sometimes, not the most effective drugs/treatment being administered and thus problems can drag out

one solution to the cost of treatment in the US could be mental health charities laying aside money every year to have patients treated via psychoanalyisis....well this would only allow a small amount of patients relative to the numbers that there are to be treated...it could also be where the research comes in to play to secure funding for further treatment

then again perhaps the pharmaceutical industry views psychoanalysis as a mental health version of homeopathic medicine...a threat to their normal stance....and now many general practictionars promote the use of homeopathic treatments despite no hard evidence being available to back it up

perhaps psychoanalysis is the mental equivalent of the placebo effect?

who knows?

good thread though 👆

Every person working in the mental health field would agree that talking is as important as any pharmacological solution. EVERY effective therapeutic treatment has a psychiatric aspect, and there are NO mental health issues that can be solved by drugs alone.

Every mental health professional would agree to your concern over pharmaceutical companies having more access to the public, and thus misinforming them about how to treat problems for their own profit. They would also agree that there is no where near enough funding or public awareness of mental health, and would argue against the stigma associated with visiting a therapist (I would actually recommend it as regularly as you get a checkup or dental inspection).

However, the problem is you are talking about psychoanalysis, which is tied directly into certain assumptions Freud made about the human mind. There is little if any scientific support for these ideas, and better therputic understandings of how to talk people through things are now known. If what you mean is applying these methods through the direct interaction of patient and therapist, nobody in the scientific community would disagree with you. The problem may be linguistic, as "psychoanalysis" is a ancient term in psychological science. The crux of your point however, that pharmaceutical companies misinform the public about mental health issues for their own profit, which leads to people receiving inadequate care, is unequivocally true.

Also, cognitive and behavioural therapies are not necessarily cheaper or shorter in term.

I certainly agree that things like Psychiatric help and stuff is getting shafted by the Medicine industries. It really is frightening how much of a grasp antidepressants have on this country (US).

But, it's understandable I guess. Much more convenient to just pop a pill on your way to work or School as opposed to taking an hour and a half out of your day for a Psychiatrist session. Also probably cheaper to pay twenty dollars (If you have a good health plan) and get a month's worth of mental relief then to pay 50 dollars for a one hour session with a doctor. In today's fast and furious world everyone wants a quick-fix to their problems.

just a note, i do beleive the theory of internal conflict leading to problems, the concious/subconcious/unconcious, dream interpretation{to an extent}, and {again some} events in childhood being responsible for problems etc has some truth to it and more than many wud liek to admit. the psychosexual stages on the other hand, i admit are probably wacked. as is the oedipus/electra thingie. as well as penis envy n stuff.

Originally posted by leonheartmm
just a note, i do beleive the theory of internal conflict leading to problems, the concious/subconcious/unconcious, dream interpretation{to an extent}, and {again some} events in childhood being responsible for problems etc has some truth to it and more than many wud liek to admit. the psychosexual stages on the other hand, i admit are probably wacked. as is the oedipus/electra thingie. as well as penis envy n stuff.

id/ego/superego is somewhat accurate, but not when speaking specifically neurologically. It may actually be helpful in therapy as a tool of explaining behaviour to a patient without a background in brain science. Unless you are saying that it is a paradigm that all people researching the brain must accept (which is provably false) I'd agree that telling someone their behaviour is motivated by subconscious desire conflicting with superego conditioning is more helpful than saliency maps, activation, pattern detection and other complex ideas (that, at this point, are pretty useless in describing behaviour anyways)

dream interpretation, imho, is useless, although real scientists are still debating the issue

Development creating problems later in life is unarguable

the way i see id/ego/super ego is a question of perspective. if you are looking for significant patterns concerning higher thought in neurochemistry and neurbiology, than you wont find it. sorta like you wont find the display on your computer screen by looking at zeros and ones. the gap between the two is too great. your much better off looking at c++ applications n stuff, cause there isnt tooo much of a gap between the higher level languages and the actual output. id/ego/superego is sufficantly "high level" enough{as complex computer languages are} to find some major corellations between behaviour and itself in.

completely. I mentioned this in another thread, but neuroscience is really not served well by a completely reductionist view. There are multiple levels to explaining different phenomenon. We will probably disagree on consciousness and the like, as we have in the past, but ya, as far as explaining how something happened, talking about "choice" or "will" is a much better tool than talking about a race in activation of various potential responses via increased firing in certain regions.

Obviously I think reductionism is very important in explaining behaviour and that neurological mechanisms must be understood, so maybe it is just the knowledge gap (ie: we don't know how billions of interconnected cells work together to create experience), but at this point, I'd say that the id/ego/superego thing is a good tool in helping people understand, and may be simpler and more intuitive than real neuroscience. I would advise against using it in all cases however, as people with neurological damage or things of the like are much better understood in the light of neuroscience than of psychoanalysis.

^as a general rule, psychoanalysis shouldnt be used for very severe cases and/or cases where actual physiological damage is the reason for the problem.

You people make Tom Cruise happy. ALL HAIL L. RON!

Originally posted by leonheartmm
^as a general rule, psychoanalysis shouldnt be used for very severe cases and/or cases where actual physiological damage is the reason for the problem.

indeed...i remember reading about the case of a respected doctor in the US who sexually abused his child...went to jail...his wife left him etc etc...he began a form of sexual reorientation therapy and it didn't help...he then went to hospital on an unrelated issue to have brain scan and was found to have quite a substantial tumour that was compessing his frontal lobe....it was removed and low and behold this desire to have sex with underage girls disappeared...quite a strange case

lmao