The Anti-Primal Solution: Meaning Ayayay

I don’t know why I read the NY Times articles which publishes grinders for me, (NY Times, May 17, 2015 see: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/05/16/no-longer-wanting-to-die/). They love Behavior Therapy and meanwhile I cannot get one of my articles in  their paper.  This blog is a follow-up to the one I just published called, ON BEING LONELY (see: http://cigognenews.blogspot.com/2015/05/on-feeling-lonely-again.html).  I hope to show the bankruptcy of non-dynamic approaches that leave science far behind; where therapists become a cheering section for the oppressed.  “You can do it;  But, you have to accept yourself first”.

Whaaat?  I sit here thinking, “How on earth can I do that?”  Let’s say I tell myself I am good, smart and warm.  But wait a minute I am completely unconvinced. I don’t feel that way.  My whole history makes me feel bad, dumb and worthless, which is absolutely true of my early life.  You mean I should deny who I am and take on another persona who is loveable?  Gee, I’ll try.  Darn,  I just can’t do it.  Now what do I do? I know… I will pretend and please my doctor.

This is about the patient who entered Behavior Therapy for suicidal depression.  He had shock therapy plus years of psychotherapy plus drug after drug; nothing worked.

The opening gambit finds the therapist informing the patient that to get well the first step has to be to “accept yourself as you are.”  These admonitions are throwbacks to early Gestalt therapy, which was “sold” by Fritz Perls.  After he told everyone what to do and how to live, the patient had then to kiss him to end the session.  This advice has no rationale whatsoever and has no basis in science; it is every man for himself. Caprice replaces science.

So let’s go on with his therapy, which has a major space in the NY Times.  This therapy was finally accepted by the patient, and by inference, the NY Times, as well.

The patient’s problems had a history but was again set off by a failed business deal.  He was known as “treatment resistant depression.”  The therapy was not in question; it was his resistance to it.  How neat.
Along comes a new therapy, or should I say a new label for an old treatment, known as Dialectic Behavior Therapy.  I assume they mean some kind of improvement on Behavior Therapy.  It is aimed at suicidal patients.  Dr Linehan, the founder, claims that Behavior Therapy couldn’t work for her so she developed a new approach.

What it does is help patients “identify and change negative and erroneous thoughts".  This sounds precisely like Behavior Therapy.  Dr. Linehan says that the problem with staying on this approach is that it treats the patients’ pain being all in the head, and that “belittles the patient.”  What has to happen according to her is that the patient, first and foremost, must accept himself and be accepted by others as he is.  She realizes that sometimes the person is also overwhelmed by emotions.  So she recommends some skills to stop the flooding of emotions.

“It lies in the pivotal  moment between experiencing the feeling and acting on it.”  So she finds a way:  take ice from the fridge and hold it on your neck.  Distract yourself. Snap a rubber band on your wrist.  Etc, ad nauseam.  In other words, never feel the feelings but treat them as intruders and enemies to avoid.  The only thing that could help healing, feeling one’s feelings, becomes an anathema.  It is anti-healing and anti-Primal.  Which has been given a big boost from an august newspaper.

This so-called new therapy is a simple turn on the usual Behavior Therapy. No scientist need apply because science is not welcome here.

So the therapist believes there is improvement because the distraction (is that really therapy?) lowers anxiety. Is that measured or still part of the booga booga approach?  After a lifetime of being criticized and belittled by parents she argues it can be undone by talking to yourself.  Ayayay.  It is still all in her head and now in the patient’s who thinks he is better.

So every time a feeling comes up, instead of feeling it and improving she asks patients to do the opposite and stop feeling.  Stop getting well, for no matter what she says, it is still “in your head.”

Where are earth does she get her ideas about feelings?  Where does she think they come from?  Do they come from space or are they the results of our experience? What experience?  Does the patient have no history, no previous neglect, or trauma?  This is exactly and only Behavior Therapy.  It is not new, does not make any improvement and treats the patient as ahistoric.

A slight postscript:  what does Dr. Linehan think is the role of feelings?  Does she know that they are guideposts, that they warn us of threat and danger?  That they signal illness and problems internally. That they lead to love and caring and empathy?  That they lead us to make good decisions that are salutary for ourselves?

So why are feelings there? To allow us to love and be loved, to help others, to sympathize with others’ plight and to help us establish good relationships.  They are not our enemy; they help save our lives.  Above all, even though we all have feeling centers, not all of us have access to feelings.  Some of us are so shut off that we are basically unfeeling.  What makes us really human are feelings; why on earth do we want to suppress them?
I think my departing point from Dr. Linehan is that when  she sees emerging feelings, she rushes in to divert the patient away from them.  When we see feelings we help the patient into them in slow methodic fashion, so that he becomes a feeling, sensate human being.  This is the way he becomes human, learns to love and be loved and gets rid of his Primal Demons that have plagued him.

Since we are historic beings how can we get well in an anti-feeling way?  We can’t.