*The word manifesto come from two Latin words: Manifestus: OBVIOUS and manifesto: MAKE PUBLIC, therefore the manifesto makes the obvious public. Manifestos, though short, omnipotent, playful and at times childlike, were powerful tools in many of the twentieth century avant-garde movements such as marxism, surrealism and gay rights to name only a few. Manifestos are both general and particular, they are abstract but call to action.***
Psychoanalytic Manifesto by Will Braun
Arron Beck is a salesman. We could learn a lot by taking a page from his playbook. He has made his empire by throwing psychoanalysis under the bus. Beck***s well-constructed sales pitch goes something like this: I trained as a psychoanalyst. Freud was wrong. Come and buy what I am selling. He effectively sets up his argument against psychoanalysis in order to sell seats. He has done a phenomenal job.
I, too, have a Becktian story. I began as a sports psychologist at Boston University using CBT to help NCAA athletes ‘enhance their performance.’ The techniques were great. I helped basketball players improve their free throw percentages and hockey players be more focused on the ice. Although I felt good about my work watching these athletes improve their game through easily measurable results, I became uneasy with the fact that I was disregarding the individual sitting in front of me. Many of their lives off the field, court, and rink were falling apart. I was told in supervision repeatedly to stop listening to the athlete***s issues with his girlfriend and to ignore his worries about what his coach thought about him. Instead of listening, I was taught to stop his thoughts so he could focus on the game. It became clear to me that I was not treating a human being. I was creating automatons to perform a very specific task. By the end of my time at BU I was so turned off by CBT that I began searching for a form of treatment that focused on the whole human being, not just human functions I was trying to enhance.
Modern day psychiatry and psychology no longer listen to people. Their goal is to shut you, me, us up. They medicate your children so that they now sit quietly in their seats. They tell you to think positive thoughts so you will be a good citizen who won***t act up, protest, question. They teach our soldiers to breathe deep and relax so they will stop their crying and go back to being killing machines.
Modern Mental Health is not concerned with why your child is not interested in school. They are not concerned with your opinions, your anger, or your sense of injustice and inequality in the world. And they are definitely not concerned with our soldiers*** fears, upsets, or moral injuries.
Why then, dear analyst, do you keep trying to compare yourself to these inhumane fields? Why do you act as if what you do is even remotely similar? You have spent the better part of the past 40 years trying to prove your legitimacy and your similarity to modern psychiatry and psychology. Psychoanalysis could not be philosophically further from this! Our subject, our goals, our procedures, are completely different. Throw off the shackles of comparison and set yourself free from the Mental Health Industrial Complex.
What psychoanalysis has to offer is nothing short of radical. Its point of focus is the subjectivity of the individual–not a behavior, not a function. Psychoanalysis is the only mode of therapy with the stated goal of helping the subject to articulate. This is in direct opposition to Modern Mental Health. What other form of treatment leaves room for the symptom to speak its truth? Pills quiet symptoms. Behavioral techniques quiet symptoms. Psychoanalysis is interested in what the symptom has to say. It is an alternative way of approaching the human subject. In fact, Psychoanalysis treats the human AS a subject, not an object. We ask people to speak. We don***t shut them up.
Distance yourselves, dear colleagues from these practitioners and the Mental Health Industrial Complex they represent. They have lost all sight of the subjects they claim to be analyzing. Quit comparing yourselves to the inhumane fields of adaptation. Set yourself proudly apart. Embrace the radical nature of what it is you offer.
You offer articulation. They offer anesthetization.
Position yourself as an alternative to Modern Mental Health and champion the subjectivity of the individual.
—
William H. Braun, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst
40 West 86th Street, Suite 1B
New York, NY 10024
646-351-7321
will.braun@gmail.com
Jane Hall
janehallpsychotherapy.com
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