[lit-ideas] Re: Tune and Turn Off - Panic Attacks
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 14:27:20 +0100 (BST)
Some brief comments:-
>1. Everything is determined by economic conditions
> ('Vulgar Marxism' etc.).
>>Money doesn't enter into it. Extreme poverty is
> a whole nother animal. Most unhappy people are not in extreme poverty.
>> Unhappiness crosses all economic lines.
If we agree the thrust of this (as I am inclined to) then we have the problem
to explain why at the same time as we in the West have got measurably richer
we have not got measurably happier - in fact, why depression has markedly
increased in the last forty years? [Answers on a postcard to..]
Donal: >2. That what is not
> resolved through psychoanalysis (eg. anger) is simply>pumped round the
> psyche-system to emerge in a perhaps different form (eg.>depression) [ever
> heard the theory that depression is just repressed anger?] >This
> 'pumping-round' is the 'hydraulic' theory of the mind that I alluded
> to>before, re Freud.
>> AA: This is exactly it in a nutshell. That anger
> (sadness, whatever) is repressed, or depressed, is my
>> mantra in posts.
But my point is that Clark's cognitive therapy undermines any wholesale
'hydraulic theory'; and it is not alone in this. We might plausibly take
certain psychic states as *symptoms* of some underlying pathology and we
might conclude that to treat these symptoms we need to treat the underlying
cause. But what if this is false because a) there is no underlying cause (ie.
the symptom is the cause); b) we can successfully treat the symptoms without
addressing the underlying cause?
Both a) and b) are possibilities borne out by modern research on human
psychology.
>Donal: >(Btw I am sympathetic to the view, as AA
> says, that Freud must be creditedwith opening these problems up; on the
> other hand he can be criticised forsetting up a _dogmatic_ theory {in
> Popperian terms} that hindered theirsolution - particularly because Freud
> claimed a scientific status fortheories which he could not offer a test for
> that would involve a falsifyingobservation). [The theory of 'emotional and
> cognitive self-repression' thatperhaps underpins the 'hydraulic theory of
> the mind' also contains elementsof important truth].
>>AA: The unconscious
>> can't be tested per se. How can that be done?
It depends: surely REM-sleep is a test of the unconscious?
It depends, Popper says. Consider by way of analogy: I push my finger against
my eye and my image in that eye 'splits'. Do I think the world actually
splits according to my visual-image? No. Have I therefore shown there is an
external world outside of my visual-experience? Not conclusively. However, my
experience is suggestive of a distinction between a world that exists outside
my experience of it (and which does not split) and my experience of the world
(which in the case of my visual experience might appear to split in the above
example).
>> It can be inferred through
> the reflections it casts and through demographic and other conclusions (for
> example, that children who are hit are more anxious and aggressive than
>> children who are not hit).
The existence of it [unconscious experience] can be guessed at and even
tested, albeit 'indirectly'. Bear in mind that the existence of *conscious*
mental states cannot be tested directly ie. such states cannot be smelt,
tasted, seen etc. However, we can regard certain things as evidence for them
nevertheless.
>>Direct testing isn't possible or ethical.
There may be no such thing as 'direct' testing for anything.
>> We need a new take on Popper perhaps?
Not on the basis of anything pointed out so far.
> Donal: 3. Addressing the _cause_ for a
> negative thing must hold the
> key to its solution as a problem (Do raincoats, as a response to
'negative'
> rain,actually address the cause of rain?; does psycho-therapy about the
> causes of childhood abuse provide a solution to whatever negative impact
> this mighthave on adult life?)
>>AA Once problems are etched in by
> parents, they're hard to erase, but they can be significantly eased. Also,
> hopefully insight and a better way to express emotions than beating or
>> spousifying children will make the next generation healthier.
This may or may not be so: but to speak scientifically in this area we need
to have developed tests of rival theories that have differential outcomes.
On a related point: Adolf Grunbaum has argued, I believe, that Freud's
theories can be formulated in a testable form. Does this destroy Popper's
critique? Not really - for anyone who properly understands Popper's views
will understand that while he may use Freudianism as an example of a
pseudo-science (one that seems to have many comfirming instances but posits
no falsifying ones) his theory allows that almost any theory can be treated
in a falsfiable manner. It all depends on the method we use to test the
theory. (Consider 'All swans are white': this may be treated as a definition
and there
fore as non-empirical, or as a non-definitional empirical claim; to decide
whether it is one or the other we need to examine the methods by which it is
defended ie. are they verbal-definitional or are they
observational/empirical?).
TTFN
Donal
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