Jonathan Shedler

We rarely hear the voices of clinical practitioners in public discourse. The voices of academic researchers dominate and take up all the oxygen - and they are the voices of people with no meaningful clinical experience.
- @jonathanshedler.bsky.social

Good comments by @jonathanshedler.bsky.social in this article in today's Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/20/triggered-toxic-narcissist-are-you-fluent-in-therapy-speak

3/
https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2010)%20Efficacy%20of%20Psychodynamic%20Psychotherapy.pdf

2/ I also knew from first-hand experience that 'evidence-based' therapy—typically a code word for brief, manualized CBT—fails enormous nos. of patients. I was supervising in a university-based psychiatry clinic & saw them every day. Someone had to set the record straight"

1/ "I was fed up with the false narrative we hear over and over, that psychoanalytic therapy has been discredited & so-called evidence-based therapy is scientifically proven. I knew the research and knew that the public, policy makers, & MH professionals were being sold a bill of goods.

3/3 Note how such arguments—made routinely in psych literature & social media—create hermetically-sealed logic system

All possible corrective input is already discredited

Profoundly flawed arguments are made from position of smug superiority / high horse of "science"

No wonder they have bad sex

2/3 If someone says it's bad sex, responses will be:
1️⃣ Evidence-based sex has strongest evidence, nothing proven better
2️⃣ Without evidence, it’s unethical to have sex any other way
3️⃣ If you have something better, show the data
4️⃣ Ad hominem accusations of bias & allegiance to unscientific theory

1/3 If we had "evidence-based" sex, researchers who get little sex themselves would write manuals with standardized instructions, do studies showing instruction-manual sex is better than no sex at all, then declare it to be the “gold standard” of sex. Then accuse critics of being anti-science.

🙏

Hi Bluesky people, 🎉 @jonathanshedler.bsky.social aka Jonathan Shedler is here! He writes some of the most compelling threads (on the bird app) about psychology and psychoanalysts. Highly recommend 🕶️

Yes, but... now people want to play word games with the term "conversion therapy," attaching it to any approach that doesn't conform to a specific ideology... including regular insight-oriented psychotherapy aimed at self-knowledge

Truth ends when words cease to be connected to consensual reality

#1244 Know Thyself - Dr. Jonathan Shedler - The You Project American psychologist Jonathan Shedler, PhD is known internationally as an author, consultant, and clinical educator. Can we truly know ourselves? Can others truly know us? This was an eye-opening, mi...

New podcast just dropped!

⭐️"Know Thyself with Dr. Jonathan Shedler"⭐️

All the way from Australia—on The You Project with Craig Harper

Where I answer the perennial question: What is psychodynamic therapy really about?

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6nS1ZZ2xqQTA5NUysuXTuA

7/7 indeed hateful & destructive. This is called "projective identification."

The end result is that the person can deny their own sadism, cruelty, and hate—and simultaneously act it out without restraint.

And feel themselves to be 100% on the side of truth and right as they do it.

6/7 The person now feels fully justified in unleashing their hate on the other—who is seen (via the defense of projection) as someone monstrous, who must be destroyed

If the person who is the target of the projection responds to the provocation with anger/aggression, this is taken as proof they are

5/7 Instead, they project the badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defense of projection, is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil. That is the projection.

4/7 For professional colleagues looking for a more theoretical explanation, the psychological processes are splitting, projection, and projective identification.

Splitting means not recognizing one's own capacity for hate, cruelty & destructiveness. The person is blind to the bad in themselves.

3/7 They find a way to give free rein to their cruelty, to attack, to treat others cruelly and viciously.

And they find *allies to cheer them on* who also believe they are on the side of all that is good and right.

2/7 The most toxic and hateful people in the world are 100% convinced they fight on the side of all that is good and right.

1/7 One of the most important things I've learned:

Severe personality problems find *camouflage.* No one thinks "I'm a sadist" or "I'm a malignant narcissist."

They find a belief system/social group that validates their most hateful, destructive impulses & construes them as virtues.