DV EXPOSE: Amateur Psychoanalysts

 

 

 

We’ve all been putting up with amateur psychoanalysis for too long…it’s time something is said.

WHAT IS AMATEUR PSYCHOANALYSIS?

 

“Amateur psychoanalysis” is a term I’m giving to the commonly seen behavior where someone with little or no training as a mental health professional attempts to psychoanalyze others. The “psychoanalysis” can range from a casual attempt at solving someone’s problem (“Dude, sounds like you’ve got some issues from childhood you need to work out”) to a clumsy and stumbling stab at professional analysis (“You had a dream about a clown? I think that’s supposed to mean you’re gay”.

WHERE DOES AMATEUR PSYCHOANALYSIS COME FROM?

 

Like I previously mentioned, Sigmund Freud’s near “rockstar” status (or maybe, “jazzstar” since there wasn’t rock music yet) propelled analysis to the forefront of Western culture. Psychoanalysis inevitably spread to books, movies, TV shows and music, to varying degrees of reality (while a film like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” has been hailed for its accurate portrayal of mental health in the ‘70s, I doubt anyone would attempt to defend “The Bob Newhart Show” or “Analyze This” as bearing any semblance of reality).

Once psychoanalysis appeared in movies and on TV, people do what they always do: they copied what they saw. The same way idiots repeat the stunts they see on “Jackass” and burn their houses down thanks to “Beavis and Butthead,” idiots started talking and acting like the psychiatrists and psychologists they saw on TV. Yay!!

WHY IS AMATEUR PSYCHOANALYSIS SO FUCKING ANNOYING?

 

If you just look at all the idiot kids who are on Ritalin and Paxil you can see that mental health professionals are fucking up right now. And that’s the PROFESSIONALS. So what makes you, a manager at Best Buy, think you have the right, the know-how and the expertise to “psychoanalyze” me?

I don’t think I can go a day without hearing someone’s feeble minded attempt at breaking down my problems (“Oh Lukas, you look mad…sounds like you’ve got a lot of blocked issues you need to deal with!” “No…it’s just that you’re standing on my fucking foot”).

The truth is that the practice of analysis is already dubious beyond extreme cases (like people in psych wards and drug addicts, people dealing with death, shit like that). So I don’t need my “case of the Monday’s” broken down and mapped back to some incident that happened to me on a Monday as a kid (sorry I let my grandpa give me pantsless lap rides on Monday’s, what’s a brother to do?)

THE HARMS

 

 

 

You know what happens when really persuasive amateur psychoanalysts start to gain footing and influence? You get things like Scientology, a “religion” bent on attacking psychiatry that’s actually just a bastardized version of psychiatry itself. And Scientologists hate “South Park,” so you know they’re full of shit.

You also get shit like “The Secret,” which compiles a collection of self help gurus (AKA amateur psychoanalysts) who want to show you that the “secret” to life is to have blind belief in bullshit like ignorant positivity.

The more people attempt to self diagnose their problems (and the problems of their friends and family) the further people get from the true root of most of their problems…which isn’t some buried childhood memory, but the shit going on in your life right now.

THE IRONY

The funny thing about angrily attacking an issue like amateur psychoanalysis is that a slew of amateur psychoanalysts reading this are gonna try to diagnose the anger that’s emanating from the article itself.  I’m sure I’m gonna get some emails saying:” Sounds like you’ve got some relationship problems, Lukas!” “Do you have trouble communicating without ranting?” Or, of course, “Sounds like you need to get laid!” Unfortunately for you, I just did get laid, a few hours before I wrote this. Sorry, your retarded amateur version of analysis doesn’t work. Why don’t YOU get laid?