[lbo-talk] Re:Re: Re: RIP, Dr. Fraud (Christian Gregory) Issue 196

[Hari Kumar]

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>CG said: 
>But in a clinical setting, I just don't get how you would operationalize the interesting points of Freud's work--ie pre-Oedipal object choices, the death drive, etc. Moreover, I don't know that you'd want to, except in rare cases. (Again, it's also because they would have so little purchase in a culture in which those ideas are so constantly treated as given.) My brief encounter with contemporary psychiatry taught me, in fact, that 5 sessions with a therapist who's a good listener and a short stint on Paxil were probably a lot more helpful than drawn out analysis would have been. 
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HK:
Hesitate to get embroiled here. Still....
But is not your first sentence in this para - contraverted by your 
experience in the last sentence?
A clinical RCT could be done using the postulates of Freudian therapy to 
compare against any other arm. Perhaps that arm might simply be the 
"compassionate good listener". This would dissect the Hawthrone effect 
of this form the specific Freudian attack.
So it can be done. I have not searched pubmed for this - but there is no 
over-view of it in the selections of systematic review I briefly looked at.
If we insist that drug companies should do RCT's - why do we not for 
other forms of putative therapy?

I do not deny that - contrary to a couple of posters who belvied 
otherwise - that Freud offered historically a great insight, the 
unconscious. TO equate that with shamanism etc - is clearly inadequate 
in my view.
Cheers, hari