Negative 1nc

Psychoanalysis

AT: Framework

Their attachment to theory is both useless and devolves into dogma

Bird 6, works at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, (John, ON THE POVERTY OF THEORY, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs/journal/v11/n3/pdf/2100097a.pdf)//kap
We could now think about theory and the attachment to theory as a form of psychic retreat, especially where this attachment avoids contact with reality and gives us a feeling of being locked in, such that theory becomes an end-in-itself. This allows the free flow of phantasy and omnipotence in which the community of theorists avidly colludes. Theory allows protection – from external and internal anxieties, ‘‘[but] at the expense of [the] development and evolution of meaning’’ (Armstrong, 1998, p 7). Thus, Lacan and Zizek have the answer for everything – even the answer to which is the real Freud – and the community of Lacanians and Zizekians colludes with this and excludes those who are not in the community.

If theory is a form of psychic retreat then what are the anxieties that this retreat is addressing? With reference to depressive affects, the helplessness and despair of the theorist in the face of terrible social and political events – 9/11, global warming, famine, the Asian Tsunami, 7/7 in London – make theory an attractive retreat, an alternative to engagement with the realities of despair. With reference to paranoid-schizoid anxieties, the persecution of the theorist when faced with the call to certainty and a return to fundamental truths may lead to a paranoid attachment to theory through retreat from both a real and a phantasied persecution. These forms of retreat may be exacerbated in three ways: first, through the paranoid style in much contemporary political and social action and thought, a paranoid style exacerbated by the fear engendered by the war on terror; second, through the peculiar and particular conditions of the social production of knowledge in the academy (Sibley, 2004), with its attachment to systems of quality control and assessment, of tenure and promotion, of user engagement and so on; and third, through what seem to be the structural conditions of post-modernity, in which the fragmentation of the self and of identity become, as it were, normal conditions. The structural insecurities of flexible labour markets, and the constant pressure to change and cultivate identities, feed into forms of defensive attachment to theory (Bauman, 2005).

False self-relationships to theories

The idea that theory may be a form of psychic retreat implies that we often use theory for defensive purposes, both as individuals and as members of social organizations. As Belger suggests (2002), we can approach the difficulties and dangers of theory in another, but related way, that is, with reference to Winnicott’s idea of the False Self:

…this False Self functions as the reactive protector of the true core of the individual in an environmental context in which impingements [infantile and contemporary] and neglect, rather than attunements, have dominated the developmental field... The False Self is reactive instead of proactive. (Belger, 2002, p 51)

In the context of theory – in this case, the role of theory in the training of analysts – Belger postulates false self-relationships to theory which ‘‘foreclose potential space and inhibit the healthy development of the therapist-as-subject’’ (Belger, 2002, p 51). As such, there is ‘‘an elaboration of the intellectual at the expense of the real’’ (p 55). These defensive, false self-relationships to theory are further analysed by Ogden:

The illusion of knowing is achieved through the creation of a wide range of substitute formations that fill the ‘‘potential space’’ in which desire and fear, appetite and fullness, love and hate might otherwise come into beingy . In the absence of the capacity to generate potential space, one relies on defensive substitutes for the experience of being alive... (Ogden, 1989, cited in Belger, 2002, p 55).

Theory becomes defensive and delusional and provides us with a phantasy of being all-knowing and omnipotent. For Belger and Ogden, the problem becomes one of releasing omnipotent control in much the same way that the infant may find it difficult to release its control in its relationships with carers. As Belger suggests, following Wheelis (1958), theory becomes a way in which we foreclose creativity, such that it is not experience which dictates what might be called truth, but dogma. As we will see later, this release of control and this withdrawal from theoretical dogma is part of the development of what could be called a healthy relationship to theory.

2ac – theory wrong

Psychoanalysis can’t describe IR, but the neg’s insistence that it does stems from their own anxiety of political impotency and a desire for control – that turns the K.

Rosen-Carole 10 – Visiting Professor in the Philosophy Department at Bard College (Adam, “Menu Cards in Time of famine: on Psychoanalysis and Politics”, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2010 Volume LXXIX, No. 1)//RZ

The second approach to the problem has to do with psychoanalytic contributions to political theory that avoid Freud’s methodological individualism, but nevertheless run into the same problem. An expanding trend in social criticism involves a tendency to discuss the death or aggressive drives, fantasy formations, traumas, projective identifications, defensive repudiations, and other such “psychic phenomena” of collective subjects as if such subjects were ontologically discrete and determinate. Take the following passage from Žižek (1993) as symptomatic of the trend I have in mind:

In Eastern Europe, the West seeks for its own lost origins, its own lost original experience of “democratic invention.” In other words, Eastern Europe functions for the West as its Ego-Ideal (Ich-Ideal): the point from which [the] West sees itself in a likable, idealized form, as worthy of love. The real object of fascination for the West is thus the gaze, namely the supposedly naive gaze by means of which Eastern Europe stares back at the West, fascinated by its democracy. [p. 201, italics in original]

Also, we might think here of the innumerable discussions of “America’s death drive” as propelling the recent invasions in the Middle East, or of the ways in which the motivation for the Persian Gulf Wars of the 1990s was a collective attempt “to kick the Vietnam War Syndrome”— that is, to solidify a national sense of power and prominence in the recognitive regard of the international community—or of the psychoanalytic speculations concerning the psychodynamics of various nations involved in the Cold War (here, of course, I have in mind Segal’s [1997] work), or of the collective racist fantasies and paranoiac traits that organize various nation-states’s domestic and foreign policies.7 Here are some further examples from Žižek, who, as a result of his popularity, might be said to function as a barometer of incipient trends:

• What is therefore at stake in ethnic tensions is always the possession of the national Thing. We always impute to the “other” [ethnic group, race, nation, etc.] an excessive enjoyment: he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or he has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment. [1993, pp. 202-203]

• Beneath the derision for the new Eastern European postCommunist states, it is easy to discern the contours of the wounded narcissism of the European “great nations.” [2004, p. 27, italics added]

• There is in fact something of a neurotic symptom in the Middle Eastern conflict—everyone recognizes the way to get rid of the obstacle, yet nonetheless, no one wants to remove it, as if there is some kind of pathological libidinal profit gained by persisting in the deadlock. [2004, p. 39, italics added]

• If there was ever a passionate attachment to the lost object, a refusal to come to terms with its loss, it is the Jewish attachment to their land and Jerusalem . . . . When the Jews lost their land and elevated it into the mythical lost object, “Jerusalem” became much more than a piece of land . . . . It becomes the stand-in for . . . all that we miss in our earthly lives. [2004, p. 41]

Rather than explore collective subjects through analyses of their individual members, this type of psychoanalytically inclined engagement with politics treats a collective subject (a nation, a region, an ethnic group, etc.) as if it were simply amenable to explanation, and perhaps even to intervention, in a manner identical to an individual psyche in a therapeutic context.

But if the transpositions of psychoanalytic concepts into political theory are epistemically questionable, as I believe they are,8 the question is: why are they so prevalent? Perhaps the psychoanalytic interpretation of collective subjects (nations, regions, etc.), or even the psychoanalytic interpretation of powerful political figures, registers a certain anxiety regarding political impotence and provokes a fantasy that, to an extent, pacifies and modifies—defends against—that anxiety. Perhaps such engagements, which are increasingly prevalent in these days of excruciating political alienation, operate within a fantasmatic frame wherein the anxiety of political exclusion and “castration”—that is, anxieties pertaining to a sense of oneself as politically inefficacious, a non-agent in most relevant senses—is both registered and mitigated by the fantasmatic satisfaction of imagining oneself interpretively intervening in the lives of political figures or collective political subjects with the efficacy of a clinically successful psychoanalytic interpretation.

To risk a hypothesis: as alienation from political efficacy increases and becomes more palpable, as our sense of ourselves as political agents diminishes, fantasies of interpretive intervention abound. Within such fantasy frames, one approaches a powerful political figure (or collective subject) as if s/he were “on the couch,” open and amenable to one’s interpretation.9 One approaches such a powerful political figure or ethnic group or nation as if s/he (or it) desired one’s interpretations and acknowledged her/his suffering, at least implicitly, by her/his very involvement in the scene of analysis.

Or if such fantasies also provide for the satisfaction of sadistic desires provoked by political frustration and “castration” (a sense of oneself as politically voiceless, moot, uninvolved, irrelevant), as they very well might, then one’s place within the fantasy might be that of the all-powerful analyst, the sujet supposé savoir, the analyst presumptively in control of her-/himself and her/his emotions, etc. Here the analyst becomes the one who directs and organizes the analytic encounter, who commands psychoanalytic knowledge, who knows the analysand inside and out, to whom the analysand must speak, upon whom the analysand depends, who is in a position of having something to offer, whose advice—even if not directly heeded—cannot but make some sort of impact, and in the face of whom the analysand is quite vulnerable, who is thus powerful, in control . . . perhaps the very figure whom the psychoanalytically inclined interpreter fears. 9

Minimally, what I want to underscore here is that (1) a sense of political alienation may be registered and fantasmatically mitigated by treating political subjects, individual or collective, as if they were “on the couch”; and (2) expectations concerning the expository and therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalytic interpretations of political subjects may be conditioned by such a fantasy.

Sweeping psychoanalytic generalizations lack predictive force and preclude effective politics – defer to specifics

Robinson 5 (Andrew, political theorist University of Nottingham, “The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique”, Theory & Event Vol. 8, Issue 1. Date: 2005, project muse)

More precisely, I would maintain that "constitutive lack" is an instance of a Barthesian myth. It is, after all, the function of myth to do exactly what this concept does: to assert the empty facticity of a particular ideological schema while rejecting any need to argue for its assumptions. 'Myth does not deny things; on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it is a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact'37. This is precisely the status of "constitutive lack": a supposed fact which is supposed to operate above and beyond explanation, on an ontological level instantly accessible to those with the courage to accept it. Myths operate to construct euphoric enjoyment for those who use them, but their operation is in conflict with the social context with which they interact. This is because their operation is connotative: they are "received" rather than "read"38, and open only to a "readerly" and not a "writerly" interpretation. A myth is a second-order signification attached to an already-constructed denotative sign, and the ideological message projected into this sign is constructed outside the context of the signified. A myth is therefore, in Alfred Korzybski's sense, intensional: its meaning derives from a prior linguistic schema, not from interaction with the world in its complexity39. Furthermore, myths have a repressive social function, carrying in Barthes's words an 'order not to think'40. They are necessarily projected onto or imposed on actual people and events, under the cover of this order. The "triumph of literature" in the Dominici trial41 consists precisely in this projection of an externally-constructed mythical schema as a way of avoiding engagement with something one does not understand. Lacanian theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural matrix which is not open to change in the light of the instances to which it is applied. Zizek's writes of a 'pre-ontological dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality'42, while Laclau suggests there is a formal structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony43. Specific analyses are referred back to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently being able to alter it; for instance, 'those who triggered the process of democratization in eastern Europe... are not those who today enjoy its fruits, not because of a simple usurpation... but because of a deeper structural logic'44. In most instances, the mythical operation of the idea of "constitutive lack" is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of denunciation. For instance, Mouffe accuses liberalism of an 'incapacity... to grasp... the irreducible character of antagonism'45, while Zizek claims that a 'dimension' is 'lost' in Butler's work because of her failure to conceive of "trouble" as constitutive of "gender"46. This language of "denial" which is invoked to silence critics is a clear example of Barthes's "order not to think": one is not to think about the idea of "constitutive lack", one is simply to "accept" it, under pain of invalidation. If someone else disagrees, s/he can simply be told that there is something crucial missing from her/his theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused of being "dangerous" as to be accused of being wrong. One of the functions of myth is to cut out what Trevor Pateman terms the "middle level" of analytical concepts, establishing a short-circuit between high-level generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo-)concrete instances. In Barthes's classic case of an image of a black soldier saluting the French flag, this individual action is implicitly connected to highly abstract concepts such as nationalism, without the mediation of the particularities of his situation. (These particularities, if revealed, could undermine the myth. Perhaps he enlisted for financial reasons, or due to threats of violence). Thus, while myths provide an analysis of sorts, their basic operation is anti-analytical: the analytical schema is fixed in advance, and the relationship between this schema and the instances it organizes is hierarchically ordered to the exclusive advantage of the former. This is precisely what happens in Lacanian analyses of specific political and cultural phenomena. Zizek specifically advocates 'sweeping generalisations' and short-cuts between specific instances and high-level abstractions, evading the "middle level". 'The correct dialectical procedure... can be best described as a direct jump from the singular to the universal, bypassing the mid-level of particularity'. He wants a 'direct jump from the singular to the universal', without reference to particular contexts47. He also has a concept of a 'notion' which has a reality above and beyond any referent, so that, if reality does not fit it, 'so much the worse for reality'48. The failure to see what is really going on means that one sees more, not less, because libidinal perception is not impeded by annoying facts49. Zizek insists on the necessity of the gesture of externally projecting a conception of an essence onto phenomena50, even affirming its necessity in the same case (anti-Semitism) in which Reich denounces its absurdity51. This amounts to an endorsement of myths in the Barthesian sense, as well as demonstrating the "dialectical" genius of the likes of Kelvin McKenzie. Lacanian analysis consists mainly of an exercise in projection. As a result, Lacanian "explanations" often look more propagandistic or pedagogical than explanatory. A particular case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can, confirm the already-formulated structural theory. Judith Butler criticizes Zizek's method on the grounds that 'theory is applied to its examples', as if 'already true, prior to its exemplification'. 'The theory is articulated on its self-sufficiency, and then shifts register only for the pedagogical purpose of illustrating an already accomplished truth'. It is therefore 'a theoretical fetish that disavows the conditions of its own emergence'52. She alleges that Lacanian psychoanalysis 'becomes a theological project' and also 'a way to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement' involved in studying specific cases53. Similarly, Dominick LaCapra objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific 'losses cannot be adequately addressed when they are enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence... Conversely, absence at a "foundational" level cannot simply be derived from particular historical losses'54. Attacking 'the long story of conflating absence with loss that becomes constitutive instead of historical'55, he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between absence and loss, with 'confusing and dubious results', including a 'tendency to avoid addressing historical problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms', and a tendency to 'enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise, them in a generalised discourse of absence'56. Daniel Bensaid draws out the political consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics. 'The fetishism of the absolute event involves... a suppression of historical intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization'. The space from which politics is evacuated 'becomes... a suitable place for abstractions, delusions and hypostases'. Instead of actual social forces, there are 'shadows and spectres'57. The operation of the logic of projection is predictable. According to Lacanians, there is a basic structure (sometimes called a 'ground' or 'matrix') from which all social phenomena arise, and this structure, which remains unchanged in all eventualities, is the reference-point from which particular cases are viewed. The "fit" between theory and evidence is constructed monologically by the reduction of the latter to the former, or by selectivity in inclusion and reading of examples. At its simplest, the Lacanian myth functions by a short-circuit between a particular instance and statements containing words such as "all", "always", "never", "necessity" and so on. A contingent example or a generic reference to "experience" is used, misleadingly, to found a claim with supposed universal validity. For instance, Stavrakakis uses the fact that existing belief-systems are based on exclusions as a basis to claim that all belief-systems are necessarily based on exclusions58, and claims that particular traumas express an 'ultimate impossibility'59. Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe use the fact that a particular antagonism can disrupt a particular fixed identity to claim that the social as such is penetrated and constituted by antagonism as such60. Phenomena are often analysed as outgrowths of something exterior to the situation in question. For instance, Zizek's concept of the "social symptom" depends on a reduction of the acts of one particular series of people (the "socially excluded", "fundamentalists", Serbian paramilitaries, etc.) to a psychological function in the psyche of a different group (westerners). The "real" is a supposedly self-identical principle which is used to reduce any and all qualitative differences between situations to a relation of formal equivalence. This shows how mythical characteristics can be projected from the outside, although it also raises different problems: the under-conceptualization of the relationship between individual psyches and collective phenomena in Lacanian theory, and a related tendency for psychological concepts to acquire an ersatz agency similar to that of a Marxian fetish. "The Real" or "antagonism" occurs in phrases which have it doing or causing something. As Barthes shows, myth offers the psychological benefits of empiricism without the epistemological costs. Tautology, for instance, is 'a minor ethical salvation, the satisfaction of having militated in favour of a truth... without having to assume the risks which any somewhat positive search for truth inevitably involves'61. It dispenses with the need to have ideas, while treating this release as a stern morality. Tautology is a rationality which simultaneously denies itself, in which 'the accidental failure of language is magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the object'62. This passage could almost have been written with the "Lacanian Real" in mind. The characteristic of the Real is precisely that one can invoke it without defining it (since it is "beyond symbolization"), and that the accidental failure of language, or indeed a contingent failure in social praxis, is identified with an ontological resistance to symbolization projected into Being itself. For instance, Zizek's classification of the Nation as a Thing rests on the claim that 'the only way we can determine it is by... empty tautology', and that it is a 'semantic void'63. Similarly, he claims that 'the tautological gesture of the Master-Signifier', an empty performative which retroactively turns presuppositions into conclusions, is necessary, and also that tautology is the only way historical change can occur64. He even declares constitutive lack (in this case, termed the "death drive") to be a tautology65. Lacanian references to "the Real" or "antagonism" as the cause of a contingent failure are reminiscent of Robert Teflon's definition of God: 'an explanation which means "I have no explanation"'66. An "ethics of the Real" is a minor ethical salvation which says very little in positive terms, but which can pose in macho terms as a "hard" acceptance of terrifying realities. It authorizes truth-claims - in Laclau's language, a 'reality' which is 'before our eyes67', or in Newman's, a 'harsh reality' hidden beneath a protective veil68 - without the attendant risks. Some Lacanian theorists also show indications of a commitment based on the particular kind of "euphoric" enjoyment Barthes associates with myths. Laclau in particular emphasizes his belief in the 'exhilarating' significance of the present69, hinting that he is committed to euphoric investments generated through the repetition of the same.

It’s junk science that doesn’t even work clinically

Ellis 2, PhD in psychology, has written books on the harmfulness of psychoanalysis, (Albert, revised in 2002, Chapter 5: Psychoanalysis in Theory and Practice: Is Psychoanalysis Harmful from the book Psychiatric Opinion, http://studysites.sagepub.com/personalitytheoriesstudy/05/resources2.htm)//kap
Many articles and books have been written which purport to show that psychoanalysis is an ineffective form of psychotherapy. Behavior therapists, existentialists, physical scientists, ra­tional philosophers, Marxists, and many other kinds of thinkers have held that psychoanalytic therapy rests on unverified assumptions and that it is largely a waste of time. Relatively few critics, however, have objectively pointed out some of the actual harm that may occur if an individual enters classical psychoanalysis or even undergoes intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy. To give and to document all the main reasons why virtually any form of truly psychoanalytic therapy is frequently injurious to clients would take a sizable book; and someday I may write it. For the present, let me briefly and inadequately outline some ways in which analysis does more harm than good. SIDETRACKING Probably the greatest harm that psychoanalysis does is its tendency to sidetrack clients from what they had better do to improve and to give them a “good” excuse not to work hard at helping themselves. What disturbed people preferably should do is fairly simple (although it is not at all easy); namely, to understand precisely what are the self-defeating irrational ideas they firmly believe and to vigorously contradict them, both verbally and actively. Thus one of the main senseless notions they usually hold is, “Unless I am remarkably competent and popular, and unless I am superior to others, I am rather worthless as an individual.” They can strongly contradict this philosophy by asking themselves, ‘Why am I no good just because many of my performances are poor? Where is the evidence that I cannot accept myself if others do not like me? How is my self-acceptance really dependent on external criteria?” And they can actively work against their self-defeating attitudes by performing, even when they may not do very well; by risking social disapproval when they want to achieve a desired goal; and by experimenting with potentially enjoyable pursuits in spite of the possibilities of failure and rejection. Psychoanalysis sidetracks health-seeking individuals verbally by encouraging them to concentrate on innumerable irrelevant events and ideas: such as what happened during their early years, how they came to have an Oedipus complex, the pernicious influence of their unloving parents, what are the meanings of their dreams, how all-important are their relations with the analyst, how much they now unconsciously hate their mates, etc. These may all be interesting pieces of information about clients. But they not only do not reveal, they often seriously obscure, their basic irrational philosophies that originally caused, and that still instigate, their dysfunctional feelings and behaviors. Being mainly diagnostic and psychodynamic, analysis is practically allergic to philosophy, and therefore often never gets around to the basic ideological assumptions and value systems with which humans largely create their symptoms. To make matters much worse, psychoanalysis is essentially a talky, passive, insight-seeking process which encourages clients mainly to lie on their spine or sit on their behinds in order to get better. Sensible unorthodox analysts frequently supplement this passive procedure by giving advice, directing the clients to do something, helping them change their environment, etc.; but they do so against psychoanalytic theory, which stoutly insists that they do otherwise. Meanwhile, the poor analysands, who probably have remained disturbed for most of their lives largely because they will not get off their asses and take risk after risk, are firmly encouraged, by the analytic procedure and by the non-directive behavior of the analyst, to continue their avoidant behavior. They now, moreover, have the excuse that they are “actively” trying to help themselves by being analyzed; but this, of course, is a delusion if anything like classical pro­cedures are being followed; and they consequently tend to become more passive, and possibly even more disturbed, than before. DEPENDENCY Most clients are overly dependent individuals who are afraid to think and act for themselves and to risk being criticized for making mistakes. Psychoanalysis is usually a process that greatly fosters dependency. The sessions are often several times a week; they continue for a period of years; the analyst frequently forbids the clients to make any major changes in their life during treatment a positive transference between the analyst and analysand is usually encouraged; the clients are constantly brainwashed into accepting analytic interpretations, even when they seem to have a far-fetched relationship to the facts of their lives; and in analytic group therapy, a family-like setting is often deliberately fostered and maintained. While many forms of therapy also abet the client’s being dependent on the therapist, classical analysis is surely one of the worst, and psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy one of the second-worst modes, in this respect. Several activity-directed forms of therapy, on the other hand — such as assertiveness­training therapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, and structured therapy — urge clients, as soon as feasible, into independent action and teach them how to t hink clearly for themselves. EMPHASIS ON FEELINGS Because it heavily emphasizes free association, dream analysis, and the involvement of the client and therapist in transference and counter-transference relations, psychoanalysis inevitably puts a premium on the expression of feelings rather than the changing of these feelings and the self­defeating philosophies behind them. A good deal of the improvement in analytic therapy seems to come from clients’ feeling better, as a result of catharsis and abreaction, and because they believe that the analyst really understands and likes them. This tendency of clients to “feel better,” however, frequently sabotages their potentiality to “get better.” Thus, the analysand who is terribly depressed about his being refused a job and who gets these feelings off his chest in an individual or a group session will often come away relieved, and feel that at least his analyst (or the group) heard him out, that someone really cares for him, and that maybe he’s not such a worthless slob after all. Unfortunately, in getting himself to “feel good,” he forgets to inquire about the self-defeating beliefs he told himself that maintain his depression: namely, “If this employer who interviewed me today doesn’t like me, probably no employer will; and if I can’t get a very good job like this one, that proves that I’m incompetent and that I don’t really deserve anything good in life.” The expressive, cathartic-abreactive method that is such a common part of analysis doesn’t encourage this client to stop and think about his philosophic premises; instead, it enables him to “feel good” — at least momentarily — in spite of the fact that he strongly retains these same premises, and in spite of the fact that he will almost certainly depress himself, because of his holding them, again and again. In the expression of hostility that psychoanalysis encourages, the situation is even worse. Starting with the assumption that it is bad for the client to feel hostile and to hold in her hostile feelings — which is a fairly sensible assumption, since there is empirical evidence to support it — psychoanalysts usually derive from this view another, and rather false, assumption: that the expression of hostile feelings will release and cure basic hostility. Nothing of the sort is probably true; in fact, just the opposite frequently happens. The individual who, in analytic sessions, is encouraged to express her hatred for her mother, husband, or boss may well end up by becoming still more hostile, acting in an overtly nasty fashion to this other person, engendering return hostility, and then becoming still more irate. Expression of hostility, moreover, is one of the best psychological cop-outs. By convincing herself that other people are awful and that they deserve to be hated, the client can easily ignore her own maladaptive behavior and self-loathing and can nicely avoid doing anything to look into her own heart and to change her irrational thinking and her dysfunctional feelings and acts. One of the main functions of an effective therapist, moreover, is to help the client minimize or eliminate her hostility (while keeping her dislike of unfortunate events and nasty people, so that she can do something to solve her problems connected with them). Psychoanalysis, because it falsely believes that present hostility stems from past occurrences (rather than largely from the individual’s philosophic attitude toward and consequent interpretations about those occurrences), has almost no method of getting at the main sources of hatred and eradicating them. By failing to show the client how to change her anger-creating views and by encouraging her to become more hostile in many instances, it tends to harm probably the majority of analytic clients (or should we say victims?). BOLSTERS CONFORMISM The main reasons why many human beings feel sufficiently disturbed to come for therapy are their misleading beliefs that they need the love and approval of others, that they can’t possibly be happy at all when they are alone, and that unless they are successful they are no damned good. Because psychoanalysis is essentially non-philosophic, and because it does not show clients how to distinguish clearly between their wanting and their needing to be approved and successful, most analysands wind up, at best, by becoming better adapted to the popularity-and achievement-demanding culture in which they live rather than becoming persons in their own right who give themselves permission to think and to enjoy themselves in unconforming ways. Psychoanalysis basically teaches the client, “Since your parents were overly-critical and therefore made you hate yourself, and since you are able to see that I, your analyst, uncritically accepts you in spite of your poor behavior, you can now accept yourself.” And also: “Since you have been achieving on a low level because you were afraid to compete with your father or your brother, and I have helped you gain insight into this reason for your doing poorly, you can now compete successfully with practically anyone, and make the million dollars you always wanted to make.” What psychoanalysis fails to teach the individual is: “You can always unqualifiedly accept yourself even if I, your analyst, do not particularly like you, because your value to yourself rests on your existence, on your being, and not on how much anyone approves you.” And: “There are several reasons why succeeding at vocational or avocational activities is usually advantageous; but you don’t have to be outstanding, ultrasuccessful, or noble in order to accept yourself.” Because analysis is largely concerned with historical events in people’s lives rather than their ideological reactions to these events; because it encourages passivity and dependency; because it over-emphasizes the personal relationship between the analyst and analysand — for these and other reasons it often encourages clients to be more successful conformers rather than ever­growing, courageously experimenting, relatively culture-free persons. The analyst himself, rigidly-bound as he often is by the orthodox rules of the therapeutic game he is playing, and self­condemned by following these rules to be a non-assertive, undaring individual himself, tends to set a bad example for the client and to encourage her or him to be a reactor rather than an actor in the drama that we call life. STRENGTHENS IRRATIONALITY Clients’ basic problems often stem from assuming irrational premises and making illogical deductions from these premises. If they are to be helped with their basic disturbance, they had better learn to question their assumptions and think more logically and discriminate more clearly about the various things that happen to them and the attitudes they take toward these happenings. In particular, they’d better realize that their preferences or desires are not truly needs or demands and that just because it would be better if something occurred, this is no reason why it absolutelyshould, ought, or must occur. Instead of helping clients with this kind of realistic and logical analysis, psychoanalysis provides them with many unverified premises and irrationalities of its own. It usually insists that they must be disturbed because of past events in their lives, that they need to be loved and have to be­come angry when thwarted, that they must have years of intensive analysis in order to change significantly, that they must get into and finally work through an intense transference relationship with their analyst, etc. All these assumptions — as is the case with most psychoanalytic hypotheses — are either dubious or false; and analysands are given additional irrationalities to cope with over and above their handicapping crooked thinking with which they come to therapy. In innumerable instances, they become so obsessed with their analytic nonsense that psychoanalysis becomes their religious creed and their be-all and end-all for existing; and though it may somewhat divert them from the nonsense with which they first came to therapy, it does not really eliminate it but at best covers it up with this new psychoanalytic mode of ‘positive thinking.” Rather than becoming less suggestible and more of a critical thinker through analysis, they frequently become worse in these respects. ABSORBS AND SABOTAGES HEALTH POTENTIALS When clients come for psychoanalysis, they are usually reasonably young and have considerable potential for achieving mental health, even though they are now disturbed. Psychoanalysis, particularly in its classical modes, is such a long-winded, time-consuming, expensive process that it often takes many of the best years of clients’ lives and prevents them from using these years productively. To make matters much worse, analytic therapy leads in most instances to such abysmally poor results that analysands are often highly discouraged, are convinced that practically all the time and money they spent for analysis is wasted, that there is no possibility of their ever changing and that they’d better avoid all other types of psychotherapy for the rest of their lives and adjust themselves, as best they may, to living with their disturbances. An untold number of ex-analysands have become utterly disillusioned with all psychological treatment be­cause they wrongly believe that psychoanalysis is psychotherapy, and that if they received such poor results from being analyzed nothing else could possible work for them. If the facts in this regard could ever be known, it is likely to be found that analysis harms more people in this way than in any of the other many ways in which it is deleterious. The number of people in the United States alone who feel that they cannot afford any more therapy because they fruitlessly spent many thousands of dollars in psychoanalysis is probably considerable. WRONG THERAPEUTIC GOALS The two main functions of psychotherapy, when it is sanely done, are: (1) to show clients how they can significantly change their disordered thinking, emoting, and behaving and (2) to help them, once they are no longer severely disturbed, to lead a more creative, fulfilling, growing existence. Instead of these two goals, psychoanalysis largely follows a third one: to help people understand or gain insight into themselves and particularly to understand the history of their disturbances. Humans — in contradistinction to the analytic assumptions — do not usually modify their basic thoughts and behaviors by insight into their past, by relating to a therapist, or even by un­derstanding their present irrational assumptions and conflicting value systems. They change mainly by work and efort. They consequently had better be helped to use their insights — which usually means, to concretely understand what they are believing and assuming right now, in the present, and to actively challenge and question these self-defeating beliefs and assumptions until they finally change them. They also had better be helped to act, to experiment, to accept discomforts, and to force themselves to do many things of which they are irrationally afraid, so that their actions effectively depropagandize them to give up their dysfunctional beliefs. Psychoanalytic therapy, instead of devoting much time to encouraging and teaching clients to dispute and act against their self-defeating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, takes them up the garden path into all kinds of irrelevant (though sometimes accurate) in-sights, which gives them a lovely excuse to cop Out from doing the work, the practice, the effort, the self-deprivation by which alone they are likely truly to change their basic self-sabotaging philosophies of life. Even if it were a good method of psychological analysis (which it actually is not), it is an execrable method of synthesis. It does not notably help people make themselves whole again; and it particularly does not show them how to live more fulfillingly when they have, to some degree, stopped needlessly upsetting themselves. Because it implicitly and explicitly encourages people to remain pretty much the way they are, though perhaps to get a better understanding of themselves (and often to construct better defenses so that they can live more efficiently with their irrational assumptions about themselves and others), it frequently does more harm, by stopping them from really making a concerted attack on their fundamental disturbances, than the good that well might come to them if they received a non-analytic form of psychotherapy or even if they resolutely tried to help themselves by reading, talking to others, and by doing some hard thinking. CONCLUSION Psychoanalysis in general and classical analysis in particular are mistaken in their assumptions about why human beings become emotionally disturbed and what can and should be done to help them become less anxious and hostile. Consequently, analytic therapy largely wastes considerable time teaching clients often-mistaken theories about themselves and others. Although these theories are frequently highly interesting and diverting, they at best may help the client to feel better rather than to get better. The one thing that analysis usually insures is that analysands will not understand the philosophic core of their disturbance-creating tendencies and consequently will not work and practice, in both a verbal-theoretical and active-motor way, to change their basic assumptions about themselves and the world and thereby ameliorate their symptoms and make themselves less disturbable. Although ostensibly an intensive and ultra-depth-centered form of psychotherapy, analysis is actually an exceptionally superficial, palliative form of treatment. Because it deludes clients that they are truly getting better by following its rules and because it dissuades them from doing the difficult reorganizing of their underlying philosophical assumptions, psychoanalysis usually (though, of course, not always) does more harm than good and is contraindicated in the majority of instances in which it is actually used.