Jonathan Shedler
Professor, psychologist, author. Tweets about psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy. I say the quiet part out loud.
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It's hard to engage with certain therapist accounts when my overriding feeling is that I'm being marketed to /1
1/ At the risk of alienating all colleagues of all orientations... I don't believe there's such a thing as psychoanalytic therapy. You can't go and "get" psychoanalytic therapy. Yo...
1/ Some people don't distinguish understanding from blaming. A therapist says, "let's think about this." They hear, "let's decide who to blame" Their psychology requires that ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ...
1/ "The more narcissistic version of masochistic personality dynamics, commonly called moral masochism, applies to people who equate self-renunciation and suffering with virtue. Fo...
1/ "๐๐ญ๐ญ people have a personality style and it is a mistake to conflate personality styles with 'disorders.' Unfortunately, the DSM, from the 3rd edition on, has led many clinician...
1/ Fever is a "nonspecific" physiological response that can be caused by an enormous range of different medical issues, from the common cold to ebola. Anxiety is a non-specific ps...
1/ Teaching "Freud" in psych 101 is a terrible idea Students in biology 101 don't study "Darwin" Students in astronomy 101 don't study "Copernicus" Focus should be subject matter...
1/ "Many Freudian ideas now seem so commonplace, commonsense, and taken-for-granted that people do not recognize they originated with Freud and were radical at the time. For exampl...
Some of the cruelest and most malicious conduct I've seen on Twitter has come from therapists who speak of kindness or compassion in their bios. This level of self-contradiction &...
1/ Some New Year's reflections ๐งต Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of "golden repair." Cracked or broken pottery is rejoined with lacquer & gold. The object becomes STRONGER in...
"We count on the patient to fuck up the psychotherapy relationship in the same kinds of ways they fuck up their other relationships... By talking about it, thinking about it, & ref...
1/ It troubles me when therapists avoid the word "attachment" & instead warn about "dependency" Meaningful psychotherapy *requires* attachment. Without secure attachment to the th...