Posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 7:07:48
In reply to Re: ''Courage to Heal'' » badhaircut, posted by Daisym on June 8, 2005, at 21:20:49
My experience with 'Courage to Heal':
In the mid-1990s I was seeing a psychoanalyst daily (gasp). My analyst said that everyone has repressed memories and that accessing them is key to successful analysis even in these post-neo-neo-Freudian times. So I was trying very hard to let repressed memories come through, looking at dreams and emotions and speaking lovingly to the child inside me and so on.
And, years earlier, a different therapist had casually said that maybe I'd been sexually abused as a kid because I was so randy as a teenager. (Oh, that explains it.)
I picked up the 'Courage to Heal' workbook on my own and really threw myself into it and discussed it with my analyst. I looked at old pictures, made a diagram of our old house, and stuff like that. I considered suspects. ("How about weird Uncle X? He could've done it!" Yes, but he lived 1,000 miles away and never ONCE visited...)
I really, really tried to dredge up something. I actively went at it from every angle, using 'Courage to Heal' among other things, for MONTHS. I was open to the idea for years.
My doubts about the process of recovered memory and the goals & practices of psychodynamic therapy and catharsis accumulated. I read authors like "Robyn Dawes" and "Frederick Crews" and Elizabeth Loftus and gradually, sadly, reluctantly said goodbye to the world in which the mind holds a secret buried key to making me feel better.
I no longer think that because an idea or topic is emotionally upsetting that such a topic provides insight or is any kind of road to mental health. Trying to avoid feelings & memories doesn't work, certainly, but neither does riding them or harvesting them or mining them.
> And it felt to me, like if you weren't out there carrying a sign, vocalizing your past in a proud loud voice, then you were still "under" it all. Ick.
Yeah. That sort of stuff is why I call Davis & Bass domineering and authoritarian. Giving in to an authority, even it's them, doesn't seem "empowering" to me. I don't think they even care about making people truly free and independent.
> And I also wanted to thank you for your last paragraph. It was so eloquent and so true I printed it out.
Thank you so much for saying so, Daisy.
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:508459
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050606/msgs/509963.html