Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2024 11:10:58 GMT
Should you confront your worries or try to banish them?
psyche.co/ideas/should-you-confront-your-worries-or-try-to-banish-them
Psychotherapists have long believed it’s a bad idea to suppress worrisome thoughts, but new research is prompting a rethink
In 1900, Sigmund Freud treated a young woman called ‘Dora’ who had fainting spells, a lingering cough, and had lost her voice. After diagnosing her with hysteria, Freud learned about an incident between Dora and a family friend, Herr K. Dora was supposed to meet up with Herr K and his wife to watch a church festival, but when she arrived at his office, Herr K was there alone. He suddenly ‘clasped the girl to him and pressed a kiss upon her lips,’ Freud wrote in the case study ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ (1905).
Freud suspected that, along with being kissed by Herr K, Dora felt ‘the pressure of his erect member against her body’, which was ‘revolting to her’. Dora didn’t remember this happening, but Freud proposed that she dismissed it from her memory. He speculated that her symptoms were a consequence of this repression – that her perception of it had been ‘replaced by the innocent sensation of pressure upon her thorax, which in turn derived an excessive intensity from its repressed source.’
This is a classic example of Freud’s ideas about repression: if you have a distressing thought, shoving it out of your mind will only work for so long. It will camp out in the unconscious, biding its time until it can emerge again, often through physical sensations, behaviours, emotions or dreams. One of the goals of analysis was to identify repressed content and make it conscious again.
Freud’s psychosexual interpretations eventually fell out of favour, but the idea that it is problematic to bury one’s thoughts has remained. Psychologists have studied how trying to not think about something can lead to thinking about it even more. Tested therapeutic approaches such as exposure therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and many aspects of cognitive behavioural therapy are predicated on confronting that which is making us anxious or depressed – or else. If we don’t, difficult thoughts will continue to haunt us, metastasising until we do. ‘It’s been an important model and therapeutic intervention for pretty much the entire 20th century,’ says the Cambridge University neuroscientist Michael Anderson. ‘It bled into other treatment approaches. The presumption that it is a bad thing to suppress is very influential.’
psyche.co/ideas/should-you-confront-your-worries-or-try-to-banish-them
Psychotherapists have long believed it’s a bad idea to suppress worrisome thoughts, but new research is prompting a rethink
In 1900, Sigmund Freud treated a young woman called ‘Dora’ who had fainting spells, a lingering cough, and had lost her voice. After diagnosing her with hysteria, Freud learned about an incident between Dora and a family friend, Herr K. Dora was supposed to meet up with Herr K and his wife to watch a church festival, but when she arrived at his office, Herr K was there alone. He suddenly ‘clasped the girl to him and pressed a kiss upon her lips,’ Freud wrote in the case study ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ (1905).
Freud suspected that, along with being kissed by Herr K, Dora felt ‘the pressure of his erect member against her body’, which was ‘revolting to her’. Dora didn’t remember this happening, but Freud proposed that she dismissed it from her memory. He speculated that her symptoms were a consequence of this repression – that her perception of it had been ‘replaced by the innocent sensation of pressure upon her thorax, which in turn derived an excessive intensity from its repressed source.’
This is a classic example of Freud’s ideas about repression: if you have a distressing thought, shoving it out of your mind will only work for so long. It will camp out in the unconscious, biding its time until it can emerge again, often through physical sensations, behaviours, emotions or dreams. One of the goals of analysis was to identify repressed content and make it conscious again.
Freud’s psychosexual interpretations eventually fell out of favour, but the idea that it is problematic to bury one’s thoughts has remained. Psychologists have studied how trying to not think about something can lead to thinking about it even more. Tested therapeutic approaches such as exposure therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and many aspects of cognitive behavioural therapy are predicated on confronting that which is making us anxious or depressed – or else. If we don’t, difficult thoughts will continue to haunt us, metastasising until we do. ‘It’s been an important model and therapeutic intervention for pretty much the entire 20th century,’ says the Cambridge University neuroscientist Michael Anderson. ‘It bled into other treatment approaches. The presumption that it is a bad thing to suppress is very influential.’