There's no question that all the research on confirmation bias backs up the theory that psychoanalysis and research are both going to be prone to focusing on being right, not going in lightly and being completely open to being wrong. And, the difference between research and psychoanalysis is that when a researcher …
There's no question that all the research on confirmation bias backs up the theory that psychoanalysis and research are both going to be prone to focusing on being right, not going in lightly and being completely open to being wrong. And, the difference between research and psychoanalysis is that when a researcher is wrong, the scientific process makes that fact hard to escape, whereas psychoanalysis doesn't lend itself to that.
However, there was new research discussed in the Monitor on Psychology just this month that did discuss how discussing trauma DOES hold value. They discovered that people with PTSD experience did not work in the hippocampus at that time, whereas constructively stored sadness or neutral memories did light up the hippocampus, which organizes and contextualizes memories. They also discovered that talking about trauma helped start moving those memories into the hippocampus. Go therapy! So, that study does support the probability that psychoanalitical discussions about trauma could be productive.
Interesting discussion!
There's no question that all the research on confirmation bias backs up the theory that psychoanalysis and research are both going to be prone to focusing on being right, not going in lightly and being completely open to being wrong. And, the difference between research and psychoanalysis is that when a researcher is wrong, the scientific process makes that fact hard to escape, whereas psychoanalysis doesn't lend itself to that.
However, there was new research discussed in the Monitor on Psychology just this month that did discuss how discussing trauma DOES hold value. They discovered that people with PTSD experience did not work in the hippocampus at that time, whereas constructively stored sadness or neutral memories did light up the hippocampus, which organizes and contextualizes memories. They also discovered that talking about trauma helped start moving those memories into the hippocampus. Go therapy! So, that study does support the probability that psychoanalitical discussions about trauma could be productive.
Good stuff!
Doi: 10.1038/s41593-023-01483-5