Astral Codex Ten

psychoanalysis

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psychoanalysis

Article

psychoanalysis is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 20, 2022 and June 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Pure psychoanalysis is rarely practiced these days”; “In this metaphor, psychoanalysis is like superstring theory”; “The mid-20th century was the golden age of nurture. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s”. It most often appears alongside FeepingCreature, Freud, Lacan.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: April 20, 2022
  • Last seen: June 26, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn"
April 20, 2022 · Original source
The book is meant to frustrate the reader. One difference between psychoanalysis and psychology is that the former is a series of meta-frames which allow you to scientifically generate knowledge about a single individual. So, to say the book has an overarching "point" is to miss the "meta-point", which is that the book takes as many angles as possible in hopes that one will hit, make you pissed off, and then hopefully get you thinking about why you got pissed off, and maybe discover something about yourself/your knowledge.
There are undoubtedly many smart, kind psychoanalysts who undertook the long, insanely expensive analytic training in hopes of learning to recognize something like subconscious patterns of thought. I know several. They way things play out in real life for many who got analytic training is that the training gives them some skills and schemas and forms of attunement that get tossed into the mix with all the other stuff they have learned or figured out or know instinctively about how to get people unstuck from various hells. Pure psychoanalysis is rarely practiced these days. Its glamor has faded and it is extremely expensive -- $450/ session in NYC, and patients come for 3-4 sessions/week - so there aren't a lot of customers.
I do think that of the various schools and styles of psychotherapy, unadulterated psychoanalysis is about the worst in terms of the power imbalance between patient and therapist. I would rather have some psychopharmacologist telling me I should take drug X in order to tame my attentional deficit, psychotic flares or whatnot than to have a psychoanalyst telling me he knows better than I do who I want to have sex with. The former would be giving me expert info about how to tame my brain with drugs -- the latter would be telling me he knows more than I do about who I am.
Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis
April 26, 2022 · Original source
I know this is a weird way to start this book review. But I kept thinking about it while reading A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis, by Bruce Fink. Psychoanalysis - like AI alignment - is about how newly-created entities get desires, and what happens if the desire they get isn’t the one other people wanted them to have. Fink writes:
Inline links: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Okay, that’s Lacanian philosophy in a nutshell! What about the clinical psychoanalysis?
Obsession, in which someone pretends that the Other doesn’t exist, they’re self-contained and don’t need anybody else, there’s no such thing as the unconscious, and nothing can possibly go wrong. Fink describes Ayn Rand characters as a “perfect” example, which I found helpful. Obsessives deal with their fear of sex by focusing on a single aspect of the sex partner (eg breasts, penis) and desperately trying to pretend they’re not a real full person. If you doubt the utility or veracity of Lacanian psychoanalysis (Fink warns us), it probably means you’re obsessive and that’s your defense mechanism.
Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
June 26, 2025 · Original source
The mid-20th century was the golden age of nurture. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s convinced most experts that parents, peers, and propaganda were the most important causes of adult personality.