Please comment on the psychotherapy my brother and I received around 1965

[curious_guy (imported)]

I am 61 years old. I live with my brother who is 3.5 years older than I am. When our parents were getting a divorce, our parents, my brother and I had individual psychotherapy (no group therapy).

Recently my brother told me that when he first saw his therapist, the therapist said, "You bite your nails because you don't like yourself." My brother was very upset about that. He thinks he bit them because of stress.

I do not know if I had the same therapist or not. I did not bite my nails. My therapist told me at least six times that I blamed myself for the divorce. I am 99.9 percent sure that I did not.

I have no training in psychotherapy but I would have asked a patient why he bit his nails. If the patient said it was stress, I would have given the patient a rubber band to snap on his wrist, taught him how to file his nails properly and given him a new emery board. I would not discuss the possibility of the patient not liking himself until much later.

I would ask a patient if he thought the divorce was his fault.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

As best I can determine, psychology is based on science. People observe, conduct experiments, evaluate statistics, and get peer reviews by other psychologists. Psychiatry, on the other hand, is more a branch of philosophy. There are Freudians and Jungians and other branches, just as there are Catholics and Lutherans and other denominations of churches.

After my brother and I were sexually abused by our father, we benefited a great deal by sessions with a psychologist, but I have no use for psychiatrists. They make high-sounding pronouncements based on whatever school of thought they're trained in with no scientific basis at all, as far as I can tell. Find another psychiatrist, and he'll likely tell you your brother's nail-biting is a sign that he wasn't ready to quit breast-feeding when he was weened as an infant. Another may tell you he's still dealing with abandonment issues from when your parents divorced.

Some claim to benefit from psychotherapy, but some claim to benefit from witch doctors, too. That doesn't give them credibility in my book.

I'd say save your money, get a rubber band and new emery board, and find somebody with no training in psychiatry who's just willing to listen. There are a bunch of such people here.

Sandi

[curious_guy (imported)]

As best I can determine, psychology is based on science. People observe, conduct experiments, evaluate statistics, and get peer reviews by other psychologists. Psychiatry, on the other hand, is more a branch of philosophy. There are Freudians and Jungians and other branches, just as there are Catholics and Lutherans and other denominations of churches.

I am confused. I know that psychiatrists are medical doctors that can prescribe drugs and that psychologists cannot prescribe drugs. I thought they both had branches of philosophy.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

I am confused. I know that psychiatrists are medical doctors that can prescribe drugs and that psychologists cannot prescribe drugs. I thought they both had branches of philosophy.

What you say is correct. My bias from dealing with them is showing, I guess.

If someone has schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression, he heeds to see a psychiatrist. A psychologist can't do much to help him, because these illnesses are actual malfunctions of the brain and seem to be best treated with medication. But if someone simply bites his nails or obsessively washes his hands, my experience is that a psychiatrists tends to be too quick to make lofty pronouncements, based on whatever philosophy the doctor subscribes to, about why he does, and a psychologist is more prone to helping him find ways to avoid having the quirk cause problems in his life.

It may be that I'm confusing psychoanalysis with psychiatry and psychology with behavioral therapy. Maybe the psychiatrists I've dealt with were simply arrogant individuals whereas the psychologists I've dealt with were nurturing and caring. Or maybe I'm all wet. Maybe what I said above simply reflects my positive experiences with psychologists and negative experiences with psychiatrists. Someone else may have different experience.

But getting back to your original question: If you're 99.9% sure you don't blame yourself for the divorce, and your brother thinks he bites his nails because of stress rather than self-loathing, I'd tend to go with what you and your brother think.

And with that, I'll get off my soapbox.

Sandi

[george2u2 (imported)]

My personal opinion of both are the same.

Thieves living off of other people's suffering.