Psychoanalysis thread. Discuss books, authors, questions, criticism, etc

oedipus bump
>wipes nose on black t-shirt

Hey guys, I'm actually studying psychology. At first, I kind of rejected psychoanalysis as some pseudo-science shit, and went all in with behaviourism. Now, I actually want to read more about psychoanalysis and what it's all about. Should I just jump in and start reading the works of Freud? If that's the case, which book should I begin reading? Or should I read some sort of introductory book about psychoanalysis' most important concepts?

Neo freudians did it best. They corrected the focus from the individual to its relationships.

Stack sullivan is the entry into all of them.

Go check him.

NOW.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Stack_Sullivan
libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=02A50F1CEA87B71C9EBF20CFA39FD6DD

Do I need a better understanding of basic psychoanalytic concepts to read him?

Notes From Underground invented psychoanalysis when Freud was still a child. Read Dostoevsky.

>(((psychoanalysis)))

Psychoanalysis has acquired a reputation for being somewhat arcane, but it's definitely not pseudo-science (or, if it is, it's entirely in its own category).

I actually haven't read a great deal of Freud either. I got here through Zizek (and, much earlier, Joseph Campbell) b/c I found Lacan to be a very tough read. I found Less Than Nothing to be pretty good at explaining Lacan, but as usual with Zizek you have to read a lot of other stuff first. My current interest in Girard draws from his questioning of a few core Freudian concepts, but if you haven't read much of Freud first (and I'll admit, my own understanding of him is very patchy indeed!) it might be a challenge. But who knows, maybe you'll find some things there to explore.

One another suggestion: when in doubt, break glass and read Nietzsche. It's a hammer in there instead of an axe (or dynamite, if you prefer) but a great many roads lead to and from the big moustache. Personally it's only been recently - very recently - that I've started to move on from him, but...well, that's a whole other thing.

That's just my two cents, anyways. I am basically self-taught in this, not in academia and not a scholar. One thing I have learned is that psychoanalysis is one of those things you actually shouldn't try to figure out in complete isolation...anyways, I have to go out for a bit now, but I'll be back to check on in this thread later in the evening.

>libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=02A50F1CEA87B71C9EBF20CFA39FD6DD
Thank you for your answers, m8. Where should I begin with the big moustache man? Chronologically?

>asking the jews what you really think about things

hmm

Ah, what a question! Really, with Nietzsche you can start anywhere you like. You can leave Zarathustra for later and The Will to Power also. Personally, my favourite Nietzsche (you will learn quickly that there is more than one) is Human, All-Too Human. Tastes may vary.

The problem with him is much less in where to begin than where to stop...anyways, enjoy the adventure.

Otto Gross.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Gross

not really. he is proposing a stand-alone theory of human development. of course there are positions that are in dialogue with the old ways, but are not part of them.

On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil are probably his most important books if you want to know what he's about though.

The Gay Science has the famous passage, the parable of the madman; and The Birth of Tragedy is absolutely required reading for the rest of his work.

In the end you will probably want to read it all, though. Maybe more than once. He was the psychologist supreme. I have to go, dammit...ah well.

that's why he was liked by the nazis

Motion to ban Jungians from the general. They're not even psychoanalysts

>tfw no lacanian analysts in my state
>refuse to open myself up to a pleb who would overly just drug me up until I can't think
>my wild narcissism, delusions, and antisocial behavior will never be treated

What are some good books on metapsychology as the formal a-priori of psychoanalytic theory that aren't by Freud, Jung, or Lacan?

>reading about interpretation of dreams
>decide to keep a dream journal
>I stop remembering my dreams

this a great thread, thank you!

you have to write them just as you wake up, while in bed even.

You have to do something about the replicability crisis in the social sciences first to arrive at anything meaningful. A good deal of this is indeed pseudoscientific because there's no real sieve to separate wheat from chaff.

That's an interesting, but tough question...maybe Thomas Reid?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reid

Yes, Dostoevsky is certainly not to be ignored. Nietzsche himself famously claimed that he was one of the few people who really taught him something - and he was not a man who gave praise lightly.

It's one of the things that I think is so admirable about Freud's plan for the field - that he really wanted analysis to be a kind of grand synthesis, a sort of literary science of humanity. We know of course that this is impossible (at least, for today!) but what a remarkable, extraordinary vision.

And just wait until the computers start asking us difficult questions about existence...

Sorry, that picture is of Daniel Robinson, who speaks very highly of Reid, and has written some interesting stuff - namely, his history of psychology, the first 350 of 400 pages is dedicated to the history of philosophy. Freud appears quite late in it.

Robinson's lectures on The Learning Company are also recommended. He's a great lecturer, and very fun to listen to.

jung wasn't a psychoanalyst

he was liked by the nazis because he was basically the first non jewish person in the world of psychology but he was also hated by the nazis for not being a nazi himself and put on a hitlist

jung is the one who was obsessed with nietzsche from a young age

I can't remember where I heard this, but there is some upside to analysts with access to drugs instead of theory - apparently back in the day marriage counsellors used to prescribe MDMA as a last-ditch effort when everything else had failed. That was how molly eventually entered the disco scene in the 1980s in the States. So there is some upside. Of course, I don't know how many marriages were saved in the process...

I think it was primarily Ann Shulgin who brought it to popularity as legitimate use in therapy but I haven't read a lot about MDMA and marriage counseling. I think it was for those with terminal cancer and that sort of thing - now they're using it for everything from depression to PTSD in experimental trials thanks to groups like MAPS and research at John Hopkins university with psychedelic drugs in general. As far as when it entered the rave scene, I'm not certain which year it did but definitely the pressed-pill ecstasy/XTC tablets were manufactured by clandestine chemists after the initial scheduling of the drug by the DEA.

Yes, I remember reading about the Shulgins and their research. Controversial stuff, IIRC, and probably very un-Freudian (although if Freud wasn't a gigantic stick-in-the-mud we probably wouldn't be here). Of course there's also Leary - and that one incredible guy who ran the missile silo full of LSD in Kansas while working for the drug policy centre at UCLA - where's the movie about him? Anyways...

It's an interesting question, for sure, the role of treatments like these. I obviously don't have a professional opinion on it but I'm not sure where I would be on that subject. I really don't know.

Now I'm feeling all wistful and sentimental about other things I used to do before I began reading philosophy...balls. Philosophy and analysis are definitely cool, but I think I used to have more fun.

Zizek's "How to read Lacan" and "The metastases of enjoyment" are pretty interesting.

pic from "The ticklish subject"

I've done MDMA and don't plan on ever doing so again. I can see how it might be useful, but the day after makes it not worth it imo.
Therapists now just prescribe shit like SSRIs and benzos which I have no intention of every getting fucked by. I think 5ht2a agonists have great therapeutic potential, and what little research has been allowed supports this. In college I worked briefly on drug policy, specifically in this area, and it's a shitshow. To even do a study you have to jump through so many hoops and then no matter your result, LSD is still schedule 1, and you can bet that if people start using some new analogue it will hit that too (and it's already a grey area with the federal analogue act).

I've done a decent number of Shulgins beloveds, and really wish there was more legitimate scientific research on them, but it's blocked by repressive government bias.

Goddamned hippies ruined drugs for everyone.

The boomers got to have their cake and ban it too.

The good news is that the federal analog act is unconstitutionally vague, we just need a legal challenge and appropriately-minded justices and it'll fall in the next twenty years.

The judge would need to have a basic understanding of biochemistry for that. I wouldn't hold your breath.

It's like all the rulings on the internet that make no sense because judges don't know how it works. We need a more specialized judicial system imo where judges rule on topics they actually know about.

Yeah, Ann was/is a Jungian. I don't see why people consider Alexander's work controversial. It was purely scientific

Academia and the scientific/intellectual community distanced themselves from Leary once he started getting really out there

RE the LSD comment: I assume you're talking about the Skinnard/Pickard case? I wasn't aware of any connection to UCLA

There are much more interesting and worthwhile people related to the LSD phenomena/culture or psychedelics in general besides them (although I don't think LSD is particularly relevant in the modern age, at least compared to other psychedelics) - namely its creator, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann who was also responsible for many other important discoveries

Psychedelic drugs, or what they used to call psychomimetic drugs because they thought it created a model psychosis in the person taking them, are very important to psychology and understanding the brain, the mind, consciousness

These things have been taken by human beings since ancient times and now there is scientific evidence to promote their benefit and hopefully we'll soon have a culture that views drug policy differently, at the very least with things like classical psychedelics and cannabis, so that something like the research of a scientist like Shulgin won't be seen as controversial

Call me crazy, but I always thought of the day after as a kind of a bonus. Strange. I always had very positive experiences there. But, of course, that's all highly contextual...

I wonder also if part of the receptivity to chemical treatment just belonged to what really was a kind of epoch within the twentieth century. I've recently been reading a lot of science-type reading from the 1970s and 1980s and you really begin to understand why Deleuze, for example, thinks the way that he does. Maybe there was just something in the air at that time that lent experimental treatments more popular leeway than they would have today. I have always had an undeniably romantic view of psychedelics and other mood alterers, possibly because I just had a very good run of experiences with them (and I read Hunter Thompson at a far too early age to have done me any good)...but these are, admittedly, things that do not necessarily translate well into professional settings.

But I can understand that the pushback would be frustrating, esp if you were doing serious work. It's a whole other horizon that is out there.

I, at least, would be interested to hear more about your experiences and what research you were invested in, or as much as you're interested in sharing.

Trite wallpaper image inbound. You've seen the Erowid archives, I'm sure? Can't hurt to include a link.
erowid.org

LSD has been schedule one since 1966 because the United States government could not find a way to weaponize it and it was not the truth serum the were looking for. MK Ultra was a failure

Since then there have been countless derivatives and at this very moment there are quite a few novel lysergamides that are currently unscheduled by the DEA. The most popular probably being the research chemical 1p-LSD which is most likely a prodrug of LSD in a similar way that the unscheduled 4-acetoxy-dmt (first synthesized by A. Hofmann in the 1960s) is a prodrug of psilocin

This is part of the thing that I find interesting about Girard. He explores this concept mimesis, where he focuses on the relationship between the twin rivals, rather than the father and the son. I can see why Freudians would regard this as too much of a departure, and I get that; still, though, I am totally convinced that he's on to something (again, for whatever my own opinion is worth here...not much...sigh...).

One of the game-changing ideas for me, besides the scapegoat and mimetic desire - a concept Lacan really gets to, and gets there first - is this idea of the how religion does to tragedy what tragedy does to myth: namely, it dismantles and explains it.

So I think I can understand why Girard would not have a great reputation among the analytical community (would need confirmation on this), and perhaps it's because Christianity figures so centrally in his thought, and perhaps that is interpreted as a cop-out. Still though I've been making my way through his oeuvre and I totally see his perspective on this and why he does so.

Subject, object, and *rival.* Was huge stuff for me. Not trying to take this in a whole different direction...more interested in seeing where these guys connect and depart from one another.

I'm not quite a shill for the Raven Foundation yet...maybe someday tho.

I'll definitely have to do some tweaks to their handouts, if that's the case. They're not bad, but a little bit clunky.

plus guattari brings the 420 factor to philosophy

I'm aware of the analogues. Have you heard of the case (in the 60's or 70's iirc) of the guys making ALD52 that were prosecuted for it on the grounds that it is functionally equivalent to LSD? They even proved that in their synthesis they never went through LSD itself.
Like I said RCs are a legal gray area. It's all fine and dandy when you're purchasing small amounts from Chinese labs, but as soon as something gets big or money gets involved, the government can and will step in and put a stop to it.
4-aco-dmt is a good one. Whenever people are talking about mushrooms I end up having to explain it like "I've never technically done then, but I did a bunch of 4-aco-dmt which metabolizes in the same way" and get into that whole thing, going I'm not talking to "uhh I only do natural stuff like weed and mushrooms, research chemicals are dangerous, except LSD and MDMA for some reason" people.
I didn't really like it as much as some others like 4-aco-met or 5-meo-mipt though.
My work was in policy, not the actual science. I did a bunch of research on what science was being done and got pretty dejected. Therapists sang the praises of psychedelic drugs in every test they were in, but that's not enough to stop the war on drugs. At that time I was also really getting burnt out on activism in other areas (mainly environmental) and I ultimately gave up on all of it. I now work in a regular office doing boring shit all day for decent-ish pay, but I'll take that over butting heads with beurocrats 24/7 for no pay.

Recently I have started to think that drug reform is on the way though. Once marijuana legalization passes in a few more states I could see psychedelics being next. What I don't get is how nobody seems to understand how bad criminalization is at reducing harm done not just to users, but to society at large. The numbers just don't add up, and that's that obvious the whole time.

Yes, that was a very famous case in the late 60s I believe
Drug policy is weird and doesn't address the science behind it. A lot of it seems pretty arbitrary. Why do they choose to schedule the specific plant as opposed to the active alkaloids in certain cases and not in others? P. somniferum, the opium poppy is not banned for certain reasons (i'm aware of its popularity with florists) yet morphine and codeine are... cannabis is explicitly scheduled.... to my understanding magic mushrooms are not (i may be wrong) but possession of even foraged psychoactive mushrooms would be considered possession of a scheduled substance (psilocybin/psilocin)?

research chemical is a vague term as well, I think the only thing that distinguishes them from known street drugs are the history and/or mention of them in scientific literature. LSD at one point could have been considered a research drug i suppose, but it now has a relatively long history of use and has probably been studied scientifically more than almost any psychedelic drug
have you tried dipt or any of its derivatives? it fascinates me more than just about any tryptamine just because of its unique characteristic of producing, from my understanding, solely auditory hallucinations

A critical view of lacan by fucktheory.tumblr.com

rollsafe.org/

and some humor

Sorry, I don't engage with criticism written on now cards and prayed on tumblr.

Are you the person who makes these? Because they're honestly quite stupid and unsubstancial

Hey it's just one viewpoint. I do think there's something in there

>Lacan is like totally not like important or profound because I say so
>Lacan totally doesn't make any sense even after taking the time to understand him because like I say so
>Lacan is totally like unoriginal because like I say so
>Lacan missreads Hegel and Kant who I admit I have spent little time studying because like I say so

Babby shit, no wonder he hides behind a passive aggressive format like a bitch

I think part of the reason also is that from what I've read, the author has a very positive view of D&G and fairly critical one of Lacan. That's totally understandable - indeed, to my knowledge there has yet to be anyone who has mounted a serious criticism of Deleuze's work, outside of a few of the spec-realism guys.

However, the comments about Lacan do come across as pretty uncharitable. It's not a sin, but it doesn't make for a truly compelling argument. There are certainly ways to criticize Lacan effectively, but calling him a charlatan or a miasma surely is not one of them. Even D&G themselves do not do this, and they're the ones who do more than any other to throw a spanner in the Lacanian workshop (just read Badiou or Zizek on this).

Nevertheless I actually enjoyed reading many of these, so I still appreciate you sharing them, user. I'll be sharing this with my non-continental friends. Oh, who am I kidding...I don't have any non-continental friends anymore...

Same fag

What? Why on earth would I post a link to a tumblr account criticizing a psychoanalysis thread I started, only to then have to spend fifteen minutes writing another post pretending to be a completely different person?

Even I'm not that desperate for attention.

Sorry just assumed anyone who thought that worthless pseud blog was worth sharing was same fagging

No problem. I was trying to be fair, since I did write in the OP that criticism was welcome, and it is. Even somewhat uncharitable criticism. But yeah,

are somebody else.

Confirming this.
Definitely an uncharitable criticism, as others have mentioned you can't have too much substance when your format is notecards.

I posted it because it's a little humorous and echoes my experience with Lacan. I've in general found his work to be unnecessarily incoherent, though I shouldn't suggest that's not in part my own fault. Also the same time I learned about psychoanalysis was being at a uni where everyone rails on it with intense dismissal. My introduction to it was: it's evil and completely false, so I'm still trying to reconcile that.

>My introduction to it was: it's evil and completely false, so I'm still trying to reconcile that.
Sounds like you should hire a therapist

? Not sure if you're serious, I mean in the academic realm, not personal. And I'm currently seeing a therapist.

No, that was a joke.

This is actually one of the most interesting dimensions about analysis: jokes. One does not get the impression that Freud (or Lacan, but who knows) had a particularly sharp comic wit. Zizek seems to have a better sense sense of this - witness his recourse to dirty jokes, Stalinist humour, and so on.

It's not really possible to metaphysically describe humour...indeed, what actually would be funny (or strange, or depressing af) would be watching a room of 20C Viennese analysts trying to figure out what humour is. My own sense is that it depends crucially on this dimension of empathy, as well a very sharp sense of context and nuance, tact...things that really are almost impossible to theorize about. it's why there will always be room for aphoristic writing and so on on the one hand, and systematic and structural writing on the other. Many of the smartest people I have met are completely humourless, while the wisest often have a very good grasp of the absurd and paradoxical.

I suspect we will be replaying much of this in the years to come as computers wake up to what it means to have been created by the death hilarious meatbags that we are.

Like DFW and others, I am very skeptical about the prevalence of irony in contemporary culture. It's the prevalence of cynicism that I really object to. To be sure, wearing black and being 'authentic' is increasingly looking pretty old fashioned, but between doubling down on that and trying to find a joke in everything there's probably a better way through the middle.

Nietzsche has these issues with Don Quixote, finding it inexcusable that Cervantes made Quixote into a buffoon, since in Nietzsche's eyes this man was a tragic hero and a great sufferer. I think part of the blowback on this there is a tendency to become so fragile and thin that outrage is just everywhere, and beyond good and evil. It's worrying no matter where it comes from. Just stuff I've been thinking about as well.