[lbo-talk] High Hat (Was other things)

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>On Jun 19, 2007, at 12:13 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > I think that middle ground, like much in psychotherapy, is imaginary.
> >
> > In any event, to the extent talking-therapy works at all I think
> > it's because psychoanalysis secularizes the highly effective psycho-
> > purgative practices that were pioneered and refined by the Catholic
> > Church as confession and absolution. ...  >
> > The trouble is, you have to *believe* in the authority of the
> > priest/analyst for this practice to have any anodyne qualities at
> > all.  If you entertain any suspicions the RC church or
> > psychoanalysis is hooey, the magic will not work. Tinker Bell,
> > alas, dies.
> >
> > The alternative to seeking help from hierarchic relationships with
> > priests and shrinks is to rely on the humble time-honored practice
> > of confiding in friends or partners
>
>... Have you ever seen a shrink for any length of time? The experience,
>even when it's as infrequent as once a week, is incredibly powerful.
>It changes the way you think and feel and live your daily life.
>Spilled religion has nothing to do with it.

I had months-long consultations with three analysts at different times in my 
confused 20s, and it changed the way I think only by expanding the number of 
helping professions I dislike to include both the clergy *and* shrinks.  I 
found these analysts highly neurotic and, worse yet, boring.  Note: In 
saying that I acknowledge the futility of making any criticism at all of 
shrinks due to the profession's miraculous defense mechanism of (as the 
nursery rhyme so aptly put is) "being rubber while you're glue -- whatever 
you say bounces off them and sticks to you."

And really, the wholly mystique and dynamic of psychoanalysis struck me as 
exactly analogous to religion -- minus, of course, the great organ music.

Carl

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