BiteSize Therapy

“Freud’s Ghost in the Machine” 🤣
A more serious offering: “The Digital Depths”

For those overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of Rascal’s account, the Maillard reaction is not a psychoanalysis thing 🤣

Did you sear the beef beforehand? I know it says you can skip that step but…

Although in plain English the word 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 has a connotation of adversarial belligerence, confrontation as a therapeutic technique should be carried out with courtesy and tact and, above all, with genuine curiosity.
- Frank Yeomans

“I’ve sometimes jokingly said that your functioning as a therapist could improve 31.6% if you would just substitute one word for another…’Both, and’ is one way, or ‘also’ vs. ‘really.’” Saying or thinking, ‘What you’re really feeling is…’ implies what you’re thinking is false.
- Paul Wachtel

psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-...

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“Thus, the two terms (unconscious and implicit) are roughly equivalent and are mostly differentiated by who is writing and for whom.”
- Stoycheva & Weinberger, 2014

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“Where analysts talk about unconscious processes, nonpsychoanalytic branches of psychological science employ a different label, 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡, in the belief that this term is more value neutral, scientific, and empirical…”

Many intuitively resonant ideas and common cultural notions come from the psychoanalytic tradition (e.g, identity crisis, inferiority complex, defense, projection) but are often not seen as psychoanalytic. There is an idea that if it makes sense, it isn’t psychoanalysis.
- Nancy McWilliams

Alpha function acts on the data from a person’s total emotional experience…it renders this emotional experience comprehensible and meaningful…By naming it alpha function, Bion hoped to be able to keep the concept open to avoid the premature imposition of meaning.
- Joan & Neville Symington

“My clinical experience with treatments that seemed to founder…because conflict and psychic pain that should have been verbalized were instead being expressed largely through somatic discharge.”
- Joyce McDougall

Wilfred Wonderland 🤣🌲

Surprisingly, “One Battle After Another” is not about Therapy Twitter.

Are you now too distinguished for “Tryst for the Mill”? 🤣

A patient communicates on three channels (verbal, non-verbal, reactions evoked in others). The therapist communicates this way, too. Thus, it’s vital for a therapist to believe in their approach. If the therapist speaks inauthentically, 2 out of 3 channels will be playing something different.

As this article wonderfully illustrates, the spurning of psychoanalytic thought has led to serious deficiencies in training programs.

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“Shouldn’t a therapist be excellent at understanding symptoms, wise about people, and extraordinary at relationship maintenance?”
- Michael Karson (2018)

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“This is, of course, exactly what it means, but clinicians hear it in a pathologizing context, as if you just said that you want to be the best member of a family. When Tom Brady discusses his pursuit of excellence, no one chides him for making the other quarterbacks feel bad…”

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“The whole idea of a treatment manual or a programmed approach is that therapeutic expertise is not needed to implement it. Some colleagues treat the desire to become excellent as if you were trying to surpass both them and your patients….”

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“In much of contemporary psychotherapy, 𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 is a dirty word. In many programs focused on so-called evidence based treatment - which has become a synonym for manualized or at least simplified treatments - excellence is relevant only to writing the manual…”

An AI therapist will know you about as well as Spotify Wrapped.

a man in a suit and tie is screaming and says i want the truth ALT: a man in a suit and tie is screaming and says i want the truth

Rascal’s neighborly discussions be like… 🤣

“Psychotherapy is no simple life hack. In our age of the quick fix, therapy is a long-term commitment that requires patience and nuance on both sides.”
- Aaron Balick

The practice of psychotherapy 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠 much easier than it is. Once trainees get in the chair, illusions of ease fall away.

This is a niche post for therapists 😅👏🏻

Don’t forget about turn signaling

If we’re fighting about validation, does that mean we’re not fighting about neutrality? 🤣

𝐸𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐…my fanciful term for perhaps one of the most frequent and fundamental of all transferences: the need to share life experiences with someone else…Our experiences need to be shared, confirmed, ratified…after which we somehow feel different about them.
- James S. Grotstein

A joke tells of two analysts who meet on the street. One says to the other, “Hello, how are you?” The other wonders darkly to himself, “I wonder what he means by that?”
- Herbert Schlesinger, 𝘌𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 & 𝘉𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴