Psychoanalysis starts with Freud. It is the study of unconscious motivation that affects our behavior. Freud was a believer that interpretation was curative, that telling people why they act a certain way was curative. Modern Psychoanalysts don’t really believe that. Knowledge is not itself curative. If I told you why you were acting certain ways […]
Archive | Dr. Spotnitz
Why do Psychoanalysts encourage their Patients to Say Everything?
One of the other things we should talk about is why we say everything. I've had patients ask, "How does this help? Why do I need to come and say everything?" Dr. Spotnitz gave me an anecdote. He said so much resides in our unconscious and affects our behavior. The more you talk the more […]
Negative Transference
Some analysts as part of the analysis suggest, that you do not discuss all your thoughts and feelings with your friends. I don’t do that. The problem occurs, not so much as you say things to your friends, but when your friends start giving you advice. That’s where you can run into problems. I wear […]
When Should an Analyst Talk?
When I went in to see Dr. Spotnitz the first time he said, “Tell me your life story, minute by minute, moment by moment” and he didn’t say a word for two years. When I asked him a question he would say, “Keep talking.” Those were the most frustrating years of my life. I don’t […]
What Kind of Training Do You Have?
One interesting thing about psychoanalysis is that the training is enormously complicated and long. I went to ACAP: Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis in Livingston, New Jersey. It’s almost like when you go to French, total immersion in French class or any language, the first class you take and you’re thinking “what are they […]
What is the ‘narcissistic defense’?
The interesting thing about modern psychoanalysis is the way we perceive schizophrenia and many of the major mental illnesses. There is a term coined by Dr. Spotnitz and it’s called the narcissistic defense. The idea is that a baby is frustrated, can’t communicate, needs the mother (the object) to fulfill it’s needs. It’s guess work […]