
For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem (1992) - chesterfield
https://newrepublic.com/article/90898/shame-why-americans-should-be-wary-self-esteem
======
rpiguy
Although I agree with comments that this particular article meanders and could
have been more focused, what stunned me was not the idea presented by the
article, but how much more verbose and lengthy articles like this were 25
years ago.

I am all for brevity and often skip to the TL;DR summary of long posts, but
sometimes I think we have taken brevity too far. Not all ideas can be
distilled into PowerPoint bullets.

~~~
ameister14
I don't think the New Republic or Current Affairs have changed massively in
terms of the verbosity of their articles.

~~~
rpiguy
Fair point. If the New Republic still publishes articles this long perhaps
they feel shorter because the language is less dense? Maybe it is just my
perception then based on how the writing style has changed.

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rrggrr
“the vast symbolic fields of the humanities no longer form the shared matrix
in which psychoanalytic work is organically embedded...owe very little to the
best psychoanalytic tradition and suffer accordingly."

Sorry, no. Study after study is demonstrating that any one of Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness practice, mediation, or even exercise benefits
patients more than psychotherapy. There is truly no point in marinating a
patient in past traumas or broken modes of thoughts - for years - expecting
awareness alone to produce useful behavioral change.

~~~
erokar
> Study after study is demonstrating that any one of Cognitive Behavioral
> Therapy, Mindfulness practice, mediation, or even exercise benefits patients
> more than psychotherapy.

First, CBT is also psychotherapy. Secondly, many newer studies have
demonstrated the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy as equal to or better than
CBT. One study even shows how CBT's efficacy has declined over time.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/07/therapy-
wars...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/07/therapy-wars-revenge-
of-freud-cognitive-behavioural-therapy)

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0081246316653860](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0081246316653860)

[https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf)

[https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%2...](https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%20falling.pdf)

~~~
rrggrr
Meant to say psychoanalysis. You have a point.

------
magice
Hmm, this "article" (let's be charitable and call it that) should probably be
named "For Shame: Example of Bad Writings that Make You Want to Hurt the
Authors."

I still am at loss of what is the message (which someone insists to be too
simple for such long writing). The article/random-musing/writing/thing starts
with history of treatment of Shame, then crosses over to self-esteem, then
switches back to warnings of something with Freud last name (who's Anna
Freud?), then links the failures of heeding that advice with some political
failures (apparently), then makes some weird assertions about democracy
(somehow, magically, Democracy becomes single standard; since WHEN did
Democracy mean single standard, three fifths a person notwithstanding?), then
it jumps to comparison of psychology treatments and something about deep
understanding, and finally ends with how good religions are.

Phew. I hope I collected all the main points of the writing piece. At some
point, my eyes glazed while words and paragraphs floated around without really
making any sense.

Can somebody help with how this pops on Hacker News' front page?

~~~
thanatropism
Anna Freud was ostensibly Sigmund's doctrinary heir. Whereas Jung, Adler,
Reich and others started developing their own ideas.

Jacques Lacan later claims to be a "return to Freud" too, but is entirely
different.

\----

The key thing to realize about psychoanalysis is that it's a sham
psychological treatment in utter opposition to current scientific practices.
As far as psychotherapy goes, it's basically fraudulent -- at least in the
light of today's knowledge.

However: in the process of building psychoanalysis, many interesting ideas
about society and language and even politics were floated. These ideas are
salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their original goal (building a
psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to sudden insights) has long been
known to be a dead end.

So... stop thinking psychology, the good parts in Jung and Lacan etc. are not
the psychology.

~~~
Nav_Panel
> _These ideas are salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their
> original goal (building a psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to
> sudden insights) has long been known to be a dead end._

^^^ Yes. My favorite example is that Freud's original name for "The Oedipus
Complex" was "The Nuclear Complex" \-- it demonstrates that he came up with
the idea by noticing an interesting pattern in contemporary society (relating
to the nuclear family). My speculation is that he renamed it because he
believed himself to be doing Science and Medicine, rather than pure Philosophy
or Sociology, and wanted the theory to be seen as more serious (and what could
be more serious than invoking the ancients?).

In particular, reading Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" after having
read Foucault's "History of Sexuality", a lot of the issues and commonalities
Freud identifies are not so much medical conditions as they are deep insights
into how living in modern society shapes us.

It's interesting to see how much of the rhetoric around "mental health" still
directly stems from his writing. Such as, specifically and most
controversially today, the idea that mental illness is a strictly
physiological illness requiring medical treatment, rather than a set of
patterns emerging from our shared social and developmental conditions.

Dream analysis is also a fun hobby, and a lot of his ideas about free
association seem interesting and personally useful, although they are
certainly not serious science.

------
1337biz
41 Points and no comments? That's a really rare phenomenon around here...

~~~
mamon
Hacker News lacks bookmarking functionality, so upvotes are used as "save for
later read" feature.

~~~
hellofunk
That used to be true but HN has had a bookmarking feature for a while now.

------
IncRnd
The article was written by a historian, someone who either reads or writes for
a living. Yet, this article is practically illegible. The longest sentence is
over 80 words long. As one example, readable.io gives this text a D for
readability.

If an author cannot write clearly on a subject, that author is likely not an
authority on the subject.

