Necessary?

pisslips

I have been thinking about behaviour patterns and thought patterns and how they might be restricting my growth and ability to prosper.

I have realised that I'm extremely narcissistic and self-obsessed. And I can now see that all the people in my life are aware of this too but I guess, put up with it.
I guess I make friends with other people just like that, I feel comfortable with people who don't care about me, it's a good arrangement.

Anyway, before I get too paranoid about it, I realised that it's not necessarily a bad thing. Feeling detached from other people's plight is a good thing, I feel comfortable that way. Things don't affect me so much and though I have never felt 'in' with a person or group, I feel comfortable that way, I'm not that interrested in them.

The point I'm making is that, though there is a major flaw in my personality, I'm happy this way. I've often wondered about councilling. Whether the councillor has an image of the ideal emotionally healthy character, against which he or she will compare and help the patient realise the dysfunctions that are restricting their life. But do these dysfunctions restrict the patients prosperity, perhaps their flaws are essential to them in functioning, perhaps it defines them and their purpose.

For example, before Jesus Christ came to terms with the fact that he believed he was omnipotent, if it had been revealed in a councilling session, in that moment he may have negatively reinforced the idea that he was omnipotent, eventually thinking it delusional and counter-productive to his prosperity.
If that had happened would Jesus have been a carpenter, rather than a figure head for a collection of ideas that has changed civilisation.

Should people be re-adjusted? Is it better for the evolution of humanity?
Surely we need people with a wide spectrum of mental illness.

Obviously councilling is mostly passive, I'm not disputing that.And obviously it has saved and vastly improved the quality of life for many individuals.But why?

You could say the same about medicine, except that medical practice is more advanced and the brain much more complex and less understood than any other part of a human.

We need extreme and unhappy human beings for the good of the human race.

Anyway this is more a ramble, just thought someone might like to talk about any part of it really, I don't understand psychology at all.

Odysseus

I don't help people to adapt to society if that is what you are saying, though some schools would take that viewpoint. My understanding is that my main role is to get people to see their own role in their suffering, an early Freud refence encapulates it for me "Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health you will be better armed against that unhappiness".

Clearly that is just a short statement about a long process and cannot encapulate the process, but it may give a sense of one form of treatment, as he stated about 35 years later "life is too hard for us" which inturn causes various symptoms.

On the JC thing I would have seen him as a psychotic.

Anyway you haven't been reading any "self-help" books have you? They tend to aid people in self-diagnosis which is usually off the mark in my experience.

pisslips

No not at all. I just looked up the definition on wikipedia one day and thought, yeah, thats me, hahahaha....

And also people have explicitly said as much and relationships with people have broken down over it.

It's not even a problem like, it's just a type of personality really.

It's all very vague to me, where you guys draw the line between personality and mental illness, I had presumed that you took things like contentment, fullfillment into account, or 'happiness'. But then you must let the patient set the definition for those things I guess. The problem is that if people reinforce their own views and are detached from the ques of other people, can you let them define their own contentment?

For example, a sociopath would presumably never want to change and would be content as a sociopath even if they were aware that all other people thought it was awfull and that it even restricted the prosperity of the individual sociopath, he/she definitely wouldn't consider societies opinion, unless of course society penalised them. Then surely the sociopath is not mentally ill at all but content.

I can't deal with the idea that you have this process thats just definied piecewise and that behind it all is just a sense of empathy. I mean it must have a purpose beyond helping people be happier.

As opposed to academic psychology which I guess is an attempt to better understand human thought and emotion.

I understand that you're trying to empower a person to realise how they are affecting their own discontentment and help them take control and affect change. However as with JC, who may have had problems with his psychosis in his early life, if he had been empowered to change, then it would debatably been to the detriment of mankind.

Odysseus

You make some interesting points, but I must add that my responses are merely my own, and I would be right in saying that lots of the regular posters here would have vastly different opinions. It all very vague to me as well after 12 years working in this area, it can be quite difficult to qualify the distinction between the normal and the pathological. If you want to read up on the common psychological viewpoint goggle the ICD-10 or the DSM these are the diagnostic manuals used by psychology and psychiatry. I would suggest the ICD-10.

Do you define normality with health? Or with the statistical average and anything that falls out of that is abnormal? Or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Though I have never met a self actualised person? Or is it something to do with passing through certain developmental stages? Then you have people like Thomas Szasz who viewed mental illness as a myth, or psychoanalytically we are all pathological in that we are either neurotic, psychotic or perverse. I am quite interested in psychodiagnostics but each question only leads to further questions. Most people I know who would use the ICD-10 model for example acknowledge it limited, it fails to capture everything. So I certainly wouldn’t come on here an state I have a ultimate answer for you around that, but you can research the above ideas.

In the same way that there is not ultimate therapeutic technique or modality that will address human suffering there is no one modality that has the ultimate answer. Even within my own modality, there are different schools with different forms of treatment and so fort, you have Freudians, Lacanians, Kleinians, ego-psychologists, various schools of what we call the British School of psychoanalysis. So you may be a long time looking for those answers.

To be honest when you speak about the process as piecemeal I get a sense of your question, but I would need to consider it for awhile to give you an appropriate answer, and that’s just with my own modality, the end of analysis is a big question in my game, Freud suggested another idea on it as opposed to the one I gave in an earlier post and that was about the ability to work and love. But as I said it a big question for us as in my modality its not just about the reduction of the presenting symptom. But different people will have different views on it.

With the person you called the sociopath check out dissocial personality disorder it may tell you a bit more, but to stay with the term you used it is often noted that some very successful business people fit that criteria, on the other I saw a programme about some research in the States a few years ago and the essence of it was shocking, basically these are horrible people and society needs to protect itself from them I was shocked and appalled. I have not references for the about but I will try dig something out. Hopefully I haven’t waffled on too much and responded to your post in some way.

pisslips

Thats excellent, probably one of the best responses I have ever recieved to a question.

I'm speaking completely as a layman here but I appreciate that you have given me a starting point to begin to understand the process involved.I have numerous friends with degrees in psychology and I've often bugged them about different issues from psychotherapy and diagnosis to organic things but I've never recieved such a well balanced answer.

Thanks.

Oh and I guess apologies for not sticking to one point too. I seem to have gone off on a tangent relating to how would councilling affect the development of the human race as a whole. As in the need for a whole spectrum of personalities and perspectives, ones which are sometimes completely off the wall, in order to stop the evolution of mankind from bottlenecking. Like it's obviously important to have as large a variance as possible in the population to create new ideas and avenues for investigation.Hence, my point on JC. Or even Yeats, or hitler, Joan of Arc, Aristotle. These people are just famous ones we can all relate to but there are billions of people who used their variable perspective to influence the evolution of human knowledge. What effect does it have if a process that corrects the outliers of a population develops, on the future of the human race.

Ok I'm just waffling now maybe.

Odysseus

pisslips wrote: »

Thats excellent, probably one of the best responses I have ever recieved to a question.

I'm speaking completely as a layman here but I appreciate that you have given me a starting point to begin to understand the process involved.I have numerous friends with degrees in psychology and I've often bugged them about different issues from psychotherapy and diagnosis to organic things but I've never recieved such a well balanced answer.

Thanks.

Oh and I guess apologies for not sticking to one point too. I seem to have gone off on a tangent relating to how would councilling affect the development of the human race as a whole. As in the need for a whole spectrum of personalities and perspectives, ones which are sometimes completely off the wall, in order to stop the evolution of mankind from bottlenecking. Like it's obviously important to have as large a variance as possible in the population to create new ideas and avenues for investigation.Hence, my point on JC. Or even Yeats, or hitler, Joan of Arc, Aristotle. These people are just famous ones we can all relate to but there are billions of people who used their variable perspective to influence the evolution of human knowledge. What effect does it have if a process that corrects the outliers of a population develops, on the future of the human race.

Ok I'm just waffling now maybe.

I don't know about the well balanced bit but thanks inanyway. Its a difficult topic and to reseach the history and development of psychopathology is a very interesting area whatever your particular modality. I became interested in it bcause of a intrested in dual disgnosis, I work in the addiction field so that would be addiction and any other disorder such as generalised anxiety disorder for example. I done a two year reseach Masters on the differences between psychological diagnoses based on the ICD-10 and the DSM and psychoanalytic diagnoses based upon speech, language and transference. I may get around to doing a PhD on it some day, but there are a few other topics I have an interest in.

However, as I keep saying what I'm giving your is merely my opinion based on my clinical work and study, other people will differ, the thing is the questions are more important than the answers. It a hugh area an I tend to swicth off when someone is described as an expert in such and such a field. Human subjectivity is so complex that I don't think we can be experts in it. It constant learning.

To look at your question from another viewpoint about the impact of mental health on mankind's development another way of looking at it again psychoanalytic is the concept of obessional neurosis, people like this would have placed a vast amount of psychical energy into the work helping us develop new ideas and concepts, however of course these invention may be used for good or bad.