Psychoanalysis has suffered the accusation of being “unscientific” from its very beginnings (Schwartz, 1999). In recent years, the Berkeley literary critic Frederick Crews has renewed the assault on the talking cure in verbose, unreadable articles in the New York Review of Books (Crews, 1990), inevitably concluding, because nothing else really persuades, that psychoanalysis fails because it is unscientific. The chorus was joined by philosopher of science, Adolf Grunbaum (1985), who played both ends against the middle: to the philosophers he professed specialist knowledge of psychoanalysis; to the psychoanalysts he professed specialist knowledge of science, particularly physics. Neither was true (Schwartz, 1995a, b, 1996a, b, 2000). The problem that mental health clinicians always face is that we deal with human subjectivity in a culture that is deeply invested in denying the importance of human subjectivity. Freud’s great invention of the analytic hour allows us to explore, with our clients, their inner worlds. Can such a subjective instrument be trusted? Not by very many. It is so dangerously close to women’s intuition. Socalled objectivity is the name of the game in our culture. Nevertheless, 100 years of clinical practice have shown psychoanalysis and psychotherapy not only to be effective, but to yield real understandings of the dynamics of human relationships, particularly the reality of transference—countertransference re-enactments now reformulated by our neuroscientists as right brain to right brain communication (Schore, 1999). . Joseph Schwartz
Some Similar Quotes
  1. My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection. - Sigmund Freud
  2. A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the... - Erich Fromm
  3. ‎"..θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείÏ‚, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μαÏ‚, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τουÏ‚ δίνει η φαντασία μαÏ‚ . - Marquis De Sade
  4. Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from... - Norman Doidge
  5. Cine n-ar dori să moară visând că moare? - Anonymous
More Quotes By Joseph Schwartz
  1. From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure.
  2. And it's his illusions about whatconstitutes the real world which are inhibiting him... His reality, his reason, his society. .. These are what must be destroyed
  3. Like the turtle's shell, the sense of self serves as a shield against stimulation and as a burden which limits mobility into possibly dangerous areas. The turtle rarely has to think about what's on the other side of his shell; whatever it is, it can't...
  4. I am born anew at each green fall of the die, and by die-ing I eliminate my since. The past - paste, pus, piss - is all only illusory events created by a stone mask to justify an illusory stagnant present.
  5. Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.
Related Topics