mental health
The idea that psychopathology involves entrenchment is not by itself that innovative, but once we conceptualize that entrenchment as canalization, we can now link it to evolutionary phenotypic variation, dynamical systems, the free energy principle, Bayesian frameworks, Hebbian neuroplasticity, etc. and apply ideas from these areas to the study of... See more
Awais Aftab • Reflections on Canalization and Psychopathology
How the concept of canalization enables us to think more scientifically about mental health by linking it to other fields such as dynamical systems and bayesianism.
What do the Buddhists know that Freud and the psychologists don't? Freud understood that we don't own our minds. He was onto the relative puniness of consciousness in relation to experience. But he didn't see the fluidity and changeability of the internal constellations. He kept trying to pin them down (and that's why his theories kept changing),
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“Active listening shifts the focus from us to them”
the ebbs and flows of the therapeutic relationship are not auxiliary to the work — they often are the work. Without the internal prod of an agenda, I have a greater capacity to focus on what really matters in the room — the relationship.
Stephanie Foster • The Remaking of a Therapist
A useful model for thinking about how to support others.
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless
Instead of using therapy to untangle our desires and fears so that we may effectively act on them, therapy becomes the goal in itself—to create mental stimulation through constant rumination.
P.E. Moskowitz • A Culture of Introspective Captivity
What a line “to create mental stimulation through constant rumination.”
“Man’s search for meaning,” Frankl writes, “is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives.”
Omar F. Najjarine • Why modern life feels meaningless
Love this indirect jab at Freud.
Once they get into the trenches of practice, many clinicians discover, as I did, that patients are not coming for interventions. They are coming for a professional who understands.