Category: Psyche

Intensive Psychotherapy More Effective Than Brief Therapy For Treating Bipolar Depression

I see stuff like this in my custom google psychotherapy news item.  It seens thgere is a run of research that says psychotherapy is better when intendive & psychodynamic.  More effective than drugs or at least more effective than drugs on their own and so on.

This sort of research is dubious, but I know from so many years of work as a psychotherapy that it fits with my experience.

But there is a danger too, psychotherapy can go badly wrong with a bad therapist, and how do you know?

Easy to know one thing: boundaries.  If there is anything other than meetings in the therapists rooms, for a fee then beware.

Listened to an interesting podcast from Future Primitive featuring Max Adashu who is writing volumes on Witches – Suppressed History

I like her politics and her sane approach to the supression of the feminine, which includes the suppression of the psych, and all things psychological (in the true soul anima sense of the word.) I liked the phrase that in culture male is default.

Art on her site here http://www.maxdashu.net/

Download Podcast here

Try using psychodynamic psychotherapy for panic disorder — HealthandAge:

Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for panic disorder, according to a new study comparing it with relaxation therapy. Panic disorder is a common and debilitating condition characterized by bouts of extreme anxiety, dizziness, palpitations and chest pain. It accounts for as many as 20 per cent of US emergency room visits. Antidepressant therapies can be used to treat it, as can cognitive behavioral therapy. In a new study, researchers at New York -Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center reveal that psychodynamic psychotherapy is also a useful approach. A group of 49 patients was assigned to either 12 weeks of twice weekly psychodynamic therapy or to applied relaxation training. The psychoanalysis was twice as effective as the relaxation. In the study, 73 per cent of those on psychotherapy reported improvement, compared to only 39 per cent in the relaxation group. Psychodynamic psychotherapy allows helps patients confront the root causes of the fear that drives their panic disorder. This was only a small study but the results are promising enough to justify its extension to larger groups of patients.

Source American Journal of Psychiatry March 2007

I suppose it is good to see this sort of report. However it is all nonsense. They muddle up the distinction between psychoanalysis & psychodynamic psychotherapy, and worse it the idea that psychodynamic psychotherapy is focused on a particular symptom with a particular outcome. It may be that there is deep trauma under the panic and even 24 sessions is rushing it. Worse still is that the clients will have had to consent to a battery of tests.

Psychotherapy is like some particles in physics – it changes if you observe it from the outside.

Nice to see a test that says psychotherapy os ok, but still silly

Scoop: Get It Straight: Repeal Section 59 And Cut Crime:

Anne Else’s Letter gets it right.

CG Jung Page – The Ghost at the Back Door

Dolores Brien reviews Sophia Heller’s new work The Absence of Myth. Good review and in its own right a useful discussion about what myth is useful for & what is miss-use. Dolores perspective is the one I am close to

The individual too has the same need. The telling of one’s story is the desire to “place ourselves within a larger story,” not for grandiose reasons, nor even to find Meaning in doing that, but rather, to understand just what was and is going on in this life I am living at this particular moment in history. Despite the radical disruption of postmodernism, there remains, and I venture to guess will always remain, a desire for continuity. To be in touch with one’s past is to be in touch with the fullness of one’s humanity.

However there is some coming together with her antagonist, Heller, as she knocks some miss-use of myth to inflate ego.

Heller’s project paradoxically references ghosts coming in the back door. She is already mythic, or was that introduced by Dolores? Either way myth presents itself, unbidden. I have not read the book, but I can hear the music of that old movie “Ghostbusters”! We live in myths, language is based on it. Far from leading to a lack of consciousness about the here & now, a particular use of myth raises consciousness.

Experience can’t be deconstructed, it is understood in living through it.

~

The whole review is here in case it goes dead:
Continue reading “Myth myth?”