Clinical Psychology is past due for a revolution. Psychotherapist Eliot Rosenstock proposes a philosophical foundation for mental health treatment based on the writings and ideas of Slavoj Zizek.
Clinical Psychology is past due for a revolution. Psychotherapist Eliot Rosenstock proposes a philosophical foundation for mental health treatment based on the writings and ideas of Slavoj Zizek.
Individual philosophers, Mental health, Psychoanalysis
Psychotherapist Eliot Rosenstock proposes a philosophical foundation for mental health treatment based on the writings and ideas of Slavoj Zizek. Zizek in the Clinic examines the state of the psychotherapy profession, capital motivated reductionist treatment modalities and a philosophy of liberation for the therapeutic subject.
With the acceleration of technological advancement reminiscent of the machine gun’s implementation in World War One, the contemporary subject can be benefited by a working knowledge of their own psyche so as not to be pulled in the direction of anything that provides comfort and vague entertainment. Zizek's analysis and application of Lacanian theory is a necessary component in the psychoanalytic fight for our own minds and our will to shape our own future in the deterritorialized hellscape of modern technocapital.
Civilization has never known discontents like the ones currently wrought. This is not to say, Civilization is more brutal than it has ever been. Civilization is however, at a certain tipping point regarding technological information flow and the expansion of capital: a future demanding illusion. The answer isn’t a collapse of all ideology which we use to function in our day to day lives, but a clinical Zizekian lens.
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This book is a rare find and I do welcome its brave and clear demand that we psychotherapists and psychoanalysts open our ears and eyes to the power of philosophy and to it’s essential aide for the contemporary subject who finds itself in deep trouble. Rosenstock clearly sets out a grounded defense against the capitalist attack the subject and our profession is up against. He exposes cognitive approaches and the objectified “evidence based” fantasy for what it is: in his words “a reactionary negation of the abstractions and esoteric properties of psychoanalysis and depth psychology” (Rosenstock, 2019, p.7). With their simplistic claim to improve individual’s mental health or to provide some sort of happiness those cognitive approaches fundamentally miss the complex subjectivity with its dialectic, systemic and unconscious dimensions, Thus ignoring an important part of our difficulties and problems that individuals do bring to their therapist or analyst. Rosenstock further argues that “if the dialectic is not formed between a human being and their unconscious, leading to an understanding of their unconscious, the conscious thoughts of humans, are simply inaccurate” (Rosenstock, 2019, p. 16). Rosenstock demonstrates how current cognitive and behavioral approaches give up on understanding psychic reality and instead offer their client’s tools based on needs. This toolbox for reducing pathological symptomology reflects the unleashed neoliberal interests of insurance companies that “reterritorializes the human psyche as something singular and objective”. (Ibid., p. 13) Rosenstock clearly understands that capitalism with the help of hyper-speed technology erodes the foundational reference points of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis while it cleverly invents new psychotherapeutic industries that will produce therapeutic goals which are more marketable and promise “a better-behaved child for your parental dollar investment” (Ibid,’ p. 14). One of the most important tasks of a therapist Rosenstock believes, is his or her clinical capacity to choose “what becomes repressed when beginning to examine the psychic content of a client and then to choose how to approach it.” (Ibid., p. 20) Here he uses the power of a therapeutic Žižekian method that includes Hegel, Lacan and Freud and their willingness to deal with unconscious desire and its lively negation of the negation, the unknown (or the not yet known) and the lack of the Other. Hegel’s own algorithmic approach has already shown how we take away or destroy what was there before we do something new. In his inspiring book he further argues for a Žižekian influenced psychotherapeutic dialectic in order to do justice to our psychic reality and in the hope of liberating us from the ‘technocapital’ that flows at “hyper-speed and is primed to grab onto our drives so it can bind us into capitalistic integration and into the will of the Other” (Ibid, p.9). Basically it is not enough nowadays to be just a consumers but we have to be happy and satisfied consumers. We need to form an identity around products and identities are constructed and sold to us on so many different levels. If we follow the psychotherapy industry and its demands for evidence based “facts”, symptom reduction, objectivity and it’s negation as well as ignorance of working with the unconscious we not only do not belief in the unconscious but are “compelled by the commodifying of psychotherapy to the detriment of the psychotherapy patient”(Ibid., p.46). His book will provide the psychotherapeutic reader with many delicious philosophical flavors and a better understanding of what might be happening between you and your client. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. ~ Gerhard Payrhuber, Transformations, The Journal of Psychotherapists & Counsellors for Social Responsibility
