Psychology is to psychiatry as biology is to medicine. (Probably a simplification but I think it will do.)
As noted, psychology has a problem with replication. People trying to repeat the results of famous studies have been unable to do so.
The other joke about it is that psychology is the study of the mind of students with time to participate in psychological studies; and child psychology is the study of the development of children whose parents work at a university.
Ok..what do you think of JP then? Jordan Peterson? Is he overrated?
I think he's a massive grifter and that even the averagely intelligent person should understand this after his very public failure to 'clean his room'. That his fans haven't seems to be a mixture of delusion and sunk cost fallacy.
I don't mind admitting I'm still a fan. Even after his own mental breakdown. He's a motivator.
One of his problems was he was too intense. He needed to chill more. Hes not a Messiah but he knows how to hold an audience.
Ok..what do you think of JP then? Jordan Peterson? Is he overrated?
I gather he's some kind of self-help author?
So you don't know him. Interesting.
I’ve never heard of him. Please explain who he is and why you rate him.
Jungian psychologist
Professor at Harvard previously .
Became a YouTube sensation a few years ago.
Expressed dislike of postmodernism. Had a run in with gay community over alleged transphobia.
If you are left of centre you mightn't like him.
Motivates especially young men to get their act together and stop blaming the world for their problems.
One reason I like him is he likes books and writers I like. Such as Dostoyevsky
Thanks. Yes - I’m way left of centre but I give credit where it’s due, even to our U.K. govt when they, very occasionally, get things right.
You’ve sent me down an ...ology rabbit hole.
My favourite so far, which will affect all our lives profoundly is nanotechnology - not in the least bit lightweight (pun not intended!) or to be ignored.
Thanks. Yes - I’m way left of centre but I give credit where it’s due, even to our U.K. govt when they, very occasionally, get things right.
You’ve sent me down an ...ology rabbit hole.
My favourite so far, which will affect all our lives profoundly is nanotechnology - not in the least bit lightweight (pun not intended!) or to be ignored.
Ok..what do you think of JP then? Jordan Peterson? Is he overrated?
I gather he's some kind of self-help author?
Yeah, going by his fans' comments he helps toxic males embrace their toxic masculinity by labelling social justice as "identity politics" and giving them pseudo-justifications for sexism and bigotry.
Psychology is to psychiatry as biology is to medicine. (Probably a simplification but I think it will do.)
As noted, psychology has a problem with replication. People trying to repeat the results of famous studies have been unable to do so.
The other joke about it is that psychology is the study of the mind of students with time to participate in psychological studies; and child psychology is the study of the development of children whose parents work at a university.
Ok..what do you think of JP then? Jordan Peterson? Is he overrated?
I think he's a massive grifter and that even the averagely intelligent person should understand this after his very public failure to 'clean his room'. That his fans haven't seems to be a mixture of delusion and sunk cost fallacy.
I don't mind admitting I'm still a fan. Even after his own mental breakdown. He's a motivator.
One of his problems was he was too intense. He needed to chill more. Hes not a Messiah but he knows how to hold an audience.
So does Tony Robbins.
Yeah I don't like Tony Robbins. I don't think it's a fair comparison tbh. JP appeals to the intellect without sounding like a snob.
Robbins is just a loudmouth imo.
All I know is, that we are gradually being strangled by overly zealous language guardians. For me"patriarchy" is becoming a well worn cliche for feminists to latch on to, every time a white male opens their mouth.!
(my bold)
I've known previously reasonable progressive people start talking like this. I think JP is poisonous. Satanic even, given values of that word that allow for the fact I don't believe in demons and devils. Not so much in what he says but in his Saruman-like way of convincing others of it.
All I know is, that we are gradually being strangled by overly zealous language guardians. For me"patriarchy" is becoming a well worn cliche for feminists to latch on to, every time a white male opens their mouth.!
A BSc in psychology is to clinical psychology (the speciality within psychology that delivers healthcare) as biology is to medicine.
Not all therapists are psychologists, not all psychologists (clinical or otherwise) deliver one to one therapy. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who have gone on to specialise in mental health.
To say mental health practioners of various trainings are not scientists is a bit like saying carpenters are not mathematicians or physicists. They use the products of various scientific endeavours to carry out practical tasks. (Some of them may also conduct scientific research.)
Science is characterised by the the method of developing a theory and then making testable predictions.
To say psychology has a reproducibility crisis, or isn’t a hard science - is to miss the fact that it is possible to make and test predictions based on psychological theories. Some of these are so fundamental people cease to notice them.
The principles of behavioural reinforcement are an interacting series of psychological theories about learning, for example, and they inform how you train both animals and people. As anyone with a guide dog can tell you, they work.
Psychology is a massive field of knowledge and enquiry, and to claim all of it is no better than superstition is rubbish.
But just as medicine evolves over time, or physics, new theories are proposed, tested and disapproved (or not) all the time. What you read about in the papers are mostly new and developing areas.
Rogerian counselling, mentioned above, is a talking therapy - but it is one of many different talking therapies based on one of several ways of conceptualising the mind and personal development. Different therapies work better or worse for different kinds of problem and different kinds of people - much like the way different medicines are targeted at different problems and impact individuals somewhat differently.
For example, counselling is contraindicated for ptsd - it can make it worse - whilst trauma focussed CBT or emdr can be useful for traumas related to one instigating event, but may be unsuitable for patients who experience complex ptsd and extended repeated trauma who may benefit from coping skills and distress tolerance work in the first instance.
Motivates especially young men to get their act together and stop blaming the world for their problems.
One reason I like him is he likes books and writers I like. Such as Dostoyevsky
Nobody respectable in Dostoyevsky gets their act together. Only people like Luzhin do that. Respectable people in Dostoyevsky spend all their worldly goods on prostitutes with hearts of gold before running naked into the street crying, I am guilty before everybody, out of universal love.
(Dostoyevsky is great.)
I was interested to read upthread about psychiatrists and clinical psychologists being too eager to use drug therapies rather than counselling. My experience is of being sent for various kinds of counselling that don't work rather than antidepressents which do
Then they wean you off them again and the whole cycle restarts.
Perhaps tangential but I think there's been far too little research into how well counselling therapies work with neurodiverse patients as my experience of CBT has been that some of it comes across as "stop thinking the way an autistic person thinks!"*
Motivates especially young men to get their act together and stop blaming the world for their problems.
One reason I like him is he likes books and writers I like. Such as Dostoyevsky
Nobody respectable in Dostoyevsky gets their act together. Only people like Luzhin do that. Respectable people in Dostoyevsky spend all their worldly goods on prostitutes with hearts of gold before running naked into the street crying, I am guilty before everybody, out of universal love.
(Dostoyevsky is great.)
Think you are linking two different concepts there. I don't have time to explain everything.
JP is not that stupid anyway.
Good point Doublethink. I would say that therapy is not advisable for some people who are fragile. It produces too much of an overload, but then there are very low key therapies, which don't stir up the depths. Meditation may also be inadvisable.
Motivates especially young men to get their act together and stop blaming the world for their problems.
One reason I like him is he likes books and writers I like. Such as Dostoyevsky
Nobody respectable in Dostoyevsky gets their act together. Only people like Luzhin do that. Respectable people in Dostoyevsky spend all their worldly goods on prostitutes with hearts of gold before running naked into the street crying, I am guilty before everybody, out of universal love.
(Dostoyevsky is great.)
Hey but I respect your passion for Dostoyevsky. What a psychologist!! Just brilliant.
I was interested to read upthread about psychiatrists and clinical psychologists being too eager to use drug therapies rather than counselling. My experience is of being sent for various kinds of counselling that don't work rather than antidepressents which do
Then they wean you off them again and the whole cycle restarts.
Perhaps tangential but I think there's been far too little research into how well counselling therapies work with neurodiverse patients as my experience of CBT has been that some of it comes across as "stop thinking the way an autistic person thinks!"
I think there is not enough funding, research and training on reasonable adjustments. I work in LD services and therefore see people with asd regularly - but mainstream MH services see neurodiverse folks in therapy less often and are often commissioned in ways that allow for little adaptation to meet different needs.
That said talking therapies tend to work for about 2 thirds of folk who try them (not unlike anti-depressants) and therefore do not work (or work well enough) for a chunk of people. CBT for depression is known a) to produce observable changes on brains scan by itself b) to work better in combination with anti-depressants.
(FYI my experience has been unstructured methods of counselling such as Rogerian tend to work less well for people with asd, but I haven’t seen any research studies on this.)
"To say mental health practioners of various trainings are not scientists is a bit like saying carpenters are not mathematicians or physicists. They use the products of various scientific endeavours to carry out practical tasks. (Some of them may also conduct scientific research."
Guess I speak for the average punter who gets these things confused .
Would be interesting to do a survey on the street to answer:
What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist? Would as many 50% know?
Thanks. Yes - I’m way left of centre but I give credit where it’s due, even to our U.K. govt when they, very occasionally, get things right.
You’ve sent me down an ...ology rabbit hole.
My favourite so far, which will affect all our lives profoundly is nanotechnology - not in the least bit lightweight (pun not intended!) or to be ignored.
Thanks. Yes - I’m way left of centre but I give credit where it’s due, even to our U.K. govt when they, very occasionally, get things right.
You’ve sent me down an ...ology rabbit hole.
My favourite so far, which will affect all our lives profoundly is nanotechnology - not in the least bit lightweight (pun not intended!) or to be ignored.
I think a distinction has to be made between the natural sciences and social sciences. Psychology is normally included in the latter, though some psychologists would beg to differ. It might be pseudo for psychology to pose as a natural science, but is a perfectly respectable social science discipline, IMO, of course!
At my university, psychology was taught as both a physical science and a social science, with different classes for each. In order for an arts-major to get their science requirement, they needed to take a physical-science class.
Which is what I did. A lot of stuff about the chemical basis for nerve impulses and whatnot. It was a morning class, and I think I attended a total of six lectures, and my final grade worked out to a stanine point for each class.
The Psychological Science major will provide you with a scientific understanding of our psychological processes and the relationship of these processes to brain function. You'll develop an understanding of how these psychological processes are affected by ageing, brain damage and disease.
I went to a technical university, mostly engineering and computing students but there were a few language degree courses offered. One of my friends took French and German and got a B.Sc in it.
The rest of her family were scientists who took Oxbridge degrees - they all had M.A.s.
I went to a technical university, mostly engineering and computing students but there were a few language degree courses offered. One of my friends took French and German and got a B.Sc in it.
The rest of her family were scientists who took Oxbridge degrees - they all had M.A.s.
I want to go back to the earlier comment about the way that psychoactive drugs have been discovered in practice, from the way in which drugs developed for other things have been observed operating on the psyches of those taking them. I would suggest holding all forms of therapy up to the same light. Lacan wrote of psychotherapy as rewriting the patient's self- narrative, and if the process is healing and helps the patient to live a fuller life in less distress (the last is more objective as a measure, but I think the first is also important - the value of a distress-free life at the price of total inactivity and intertness is surely questionable), then I don't see why the psychoanalyitical approach is any less proven to be effective than the psychoactive drug. As for the results of therapy not being reproduceable - so what? Do we dismiss chisels as tools because not everyone can liberate Michaeangelo's David from a block of stone? There are control effects in every form of therapy, including drug therapy, but that does not make them ineffective. To me, a mythological structure that heals those who allow themselves to be rewritten by it is validly as powerful as a drug that cures or helps those who agree to swallow it.
Thunderbunk, I enjoyed your post. Your point about rewriting the client's narrative is debatable. I think more common is the notion of allowing it to be revealed. Freud wrote about the "mutilated telegram", which analysis aims to recover. However, Freud himself was more proactive than today's analysts, and overdid it, see the Dora case study, where F is over-interpreting, and Dora walks out.
Interesting about mythological structures, which sounds very Jungian. I think they are healing, if they are not imposed. Hence, the value of religion.
Thunderbunk, I enjoyed your post. Your point about rewriting the client's narrative is debatable. I think more common is the notion of allowing it to be revealed. Freud wrote about the "mutilated telegram", which analysis aims to recover. However, Freud himself was more proactive than today's analysts, and overdid it, see the Dora case study, where F is over-interpreting, and Dora walks out.
Interesting about mythological structures, which sounds very Jungian. I think they are healing, if they are not imposed. Hence, the value of religion.
Different psychoanalyitical theorists use different metaphors to talk about their process, but I would argue that Freud's is every bit as much a mythological structure as Jung's or indeed Lacan's. Lacan used structuralism and language as his source structure; Freud communication (not quite the same thing), narrative - notably his own dream and his patients' - and medicine, and Jung avowedly used belief structures including religions. They are all building mechanisms for transformation of the patient's psyche through the exchange of transference, through which each party identifies their shit with the wall they threw it at. Out of the mudslinging comes healing.
Psychology is to psychiatry as biology is to medicine. (Probably a simplification but I think it will do.)
As noted, psychology has a problem with replication. People trying to repeat the results of famous studies have been unable to do so.
The other joke about it is that psychology is the study of the mind of students with time to participate in psychological studies; and child psychology is the study of the development of children whose parents work at a university.
Ok..what do you think of JP then? Jordan Peterson? Is he overrated?
I think he's a massive grifter and that even the averagely intelligent person should understand this after his very public failure to 'clean his room'. That his fans haven't seems to be a mixture of delusion and sunk cost fallacy.
I don't mind admitting I'm still a fan. Even after his own mental breakdown. He's a motivator.
One of his problems was he was too intense. He needed to chill more. Hes not a Messiah but he knows how to hold an audience.
'Writing in Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Postmodern University, Daniel Burston argues that Peterson’s views on religion reflect a preoccupation with what Tillich calls the vertical or transcendent dimension of religious experience but demonstrates little or no familiarity with (or sympathy for) what Tillich termed the horizontal dimension of faith; which demands social justice in the tradition of the Biblical Prophets.'
That was the split for Freud and Jung, or part of it. Freud hated mythology, although he had his own, and was horrified by Jung's going into the "occult", as F called it. Apart from that, F is a terrific writer, J turgid. But also an oedipal struggle went on between them, F feared being killed by a younger son.
I want to go back to the earlier comment about the way that psychoactive drugs have been discovered in practice, from the way in which drugs developed for other things have been observed operating on the psyches of those taking them. I would suggest holding all forms of therapy up to the same light. Lacan wrote of psychotherapy as rewriting the patient's self- narrative, and if the process is healing and helps the patient to live a fuller life in less distress (the last is more objective as a measure, but I think the first is also important - the value of a distress-free life at the price of total inactivity and intertness is surely questionable), then I don't see why the psychoanalyitical approach is any less proven to be effective than the psychoactive drug. As for the results of therapy not being reproduceable - so what? Do we dismiss chisels as tools because not everyone can liberate Michaeangelo's David from a block of stone? There are control effects in every form of therapy, including drug therapy, but that does not make them ineffective. To me, a mythological structure that heals those who allow themselves to be rewritten by it is validly as powerful as a drug that cures or helps those who agree to swallow it.
Nice analogy. Aye, until the science steps up (give us another century or ten), it's all we got. Retelling stories.
That was the split for Freud and Jung, or part of it. Freud hated mythology, although he had his own, and was horrified by Jung's going into the "occult", as F called it. Apart from that, F is a terrific writer, J turgid. But also an oedipal struggle went on between them, F feared being killed by a younger son.
I want to go back to the earlier comment about the way that psychoactive drugs have been discovered in practice, from the way in which drugs developed for other things have been observed operating on the psyches of those taking them. I would suggest holding all forms of therapy up to the same light. Lacan wrote of psychotherapy as rewriting the patient's self- narrative, and if the process is healing and helps the patient to live a fuller life in less distress (the last is more objective as a measure, but I think the first is also important - the value of a distress-free life at the price of total inactivity and intertness is surely questionable), then I don't see why the psychoanalyitical approach is any less proven to be effective than the psychoactive drug. As for the results of therapy not being reproduceable - so what? Do we dismiss chisels as tools because not everyone can liberate Michaeangelo's David from a block of stone? There are control effects in every form of therapy, including drug therapy, but that does not make them ineffective. To me, a mythological structure that heals those who allow themselves to be rewritten by it is validly as powerful as a drug that cures or helps those who agree to swallow it.
Nice analogy. Aye, until the science steps up (give us another century or ten), it's all we got. Retelling stories.
But telling stories is the beginning and the end. I don't think there is any other way of encountering someone, and therapy is that.
I want to go back to the earlier comment about the way that psychoactive drugs have been discovered in practice, from the way in which drugs developed for other things have been observed operating on the psyches of those taking them. I would suggest holding all forms of therapy up to the same light. Lacan wrote of psychotherapy as rewriting the patient's self- narrative, and if the process is healing and helps the patient to live a fuller life in less distress (the last is more objective as a measure, but I think the first is also important - the value of a distress-free life at the price of total inactivity and intertness is surely questionable), then I don't see why the psychoanalyitical approach is any less proven to be effective than the psychoactive drug. As for the results of therapy not being reproduceable - so what? Do we dismiss chisels as tools because not everyone can liberate Michaeangelo's David from a block of stone? There are control effects in every form of therapy, including drug therapy, but that does not make them ineffective. To me, a mythological structure that heals those who allow themselves to be rewritten by it is validly as powerful as a drug that cures or helps those who agree to swallow it.
The issue with psychoanalysis is that you can back explain almost any outcome, but you can not well predict from known facts something about the future.
You can analyse, via the scientific method, whether it has a positive effect on patients though - e.g. if you treat 1000 patients diagnosed with depression with 1 year of psychoanalysis delivered 1 hour per week by people trained to standard y - at the end of the trial what percentage of the patients still meet criteria for depression vs treatment as usual vs some other therapy. (The experimental hypothesis would be they get better by some metric the null hypthesis would be an effect no better than chance.)
Using the perspective of CBT, I could predict a number of things that would hold true for the majority of people presenting with depression - certain types of cognitive biases that present in depressive thinking or specific interactions of thoughts feelings and behaviours that maintain a panic cycle or hypochondriasis etc
I find psychodynamically informed approaches (eg cognitive analytic therapy) tend to be more useful for people who have persistent problems in relationships rather than discrete mood problems such as depression and anxiety.
That was the split for Freud and Jung, or part of it. Freud hated mythology, although he had his own, and was horrified by Jung's going into the "occult", as F called it. Apart from that, F is a terrific writer, J turgid. But also an oedipal struggle went on between them, F feared being killed by a younger son.
Comments
I’ve never heard of him. Please explain who he is and why you rate him.
So does Tony Robbins.
Dentistry?
We’d be in a mess without it!
Jungian psychologist
Professor at Harvard previously .
Became a YouTube sensation a few years ago.
Expressed dislike of postmodernism. Had a run in with gay community over alleged transphobia.
If you are left of centre you mightn't like him.
Motivates especially young men to get their act together and stop blaming the world for their problems.
One reason I like him is he likes books and writers I like. Such as Dostoyevsky
You’ve sent me down an ...ology rabbit hole.
My favourite so far, which will affect all our lives profoundly is nanotechnology - not in the least bit lightweight (pun not intended!) or to be ignored.
Cute post thanks. Not meant to sound patronising.
Yeah, going by his fans' comments he helps toxic males embrace their toxic masculinity by labelling social justice as "identity politics" and giving them pseudo-justifications for sexism and bigotry.
Yeah I don't like Tony Robbins. I don't think it's a fair comparison tbh. JP appeals to the intellect without sounding like a snob.
Robbins is just a loudmouth imo.
Why not interesting?
(my bold)
I've known previously reasonable progressive people start talking like this. I think JP is poisonous. Satanic even, given values of that word that allow for the fact I don't believe in demons and devils. Not so much in what he says but in his Saruman-like way of convincing others of it.
Ok you've pegged me. I will try not peg you.
Not all therapists are psychologists, not all psychologists (clinical or otherwise) deliver one to one therapy. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who have gone on to specialise in mental health.
To say mental health practioners of various trainings are not scientists is a bit like saying carpenters are not mathematicians or physicists. They use the products of various scientific endeavours to carry out practical tasks. (Some of them may also conduct scientific research.)
Science is characterised by the the method of developing a theory and then making testable predictions.
To say psychology has a reproducibility crisis, or isn’t a hard science - is to miss the fact that it is possible to make and test predictions based on psychological theories. Some of these are so fundamental people cease to notice them.
The principles of behavioural reinforcement are an interacting series of psychological theories about learning, for example, and they inform how you train both animals and people. As anyone with a guide dog can tell you, they work.
Psychology is a massive field of knowledge and enquiry, and to claim all of it is no better than superstition is rubbish.
But just as medicine evolves over time, or physics, new theories are proposed, tested and disapproved (or not) all the time. What you read about in the papers are mostly new and developing areas.
Rogerian counselling, mentioned above, is a talking therapy - but it is one of many different talking therapies based on one of several ways of conceptualising the mind and personal development. Different therapies work better or worse for different kinds of problem and different kinds of people - much like the way different medicines are targeted at different problems and impact individuals somewhat differently.
For example, counselling is contraindicated for ptsd - it can make it worse - whilst trauma focussed CBT or emdr can be useful for traumas related to one instigating event, but may be unsuitable for patients who experience complex ptsd and extended repeated trauma who may benefit from coping skills and distress tolerance work in the first instance.
(Dostoyevsky is great.)
Then they wean you off them again and the whole cycle restarts.
Perhaps tangential but I think there's been far too little research into how well counselling therapies work with neurodiverse patients as my experience of CBT has been that some of it comes across as "stop thinking the way an autistic person thinks!"*
*Caveat there is no one way.
Think you are linking two different concepts there. I don't have time to explain everything.
JP is not that stupid anyway.
We are all mad after all? 😀
Hey but I respect your passion for Dostoyevsky. What a psychologist!! Just brilliant.
The great analyst Masud Khan used to say that our self-cures drive us mad. But then he was a bit mad. He built a cinema, which is quite sane.
I think there is not enough funding, research and training on reasonable adjustments. I work in LD services and therefore see people with asd regularly - but mainstream MH services see neurodiverse folks in therapy less often and are often commissioned in ways that allow for little adaptation to meet different needs.
That said talking therapies tend to work for about 2 thirds of folk who try them (not unlike anti-depressants) and therefore do not work (or work well enough) for a chunk of people. CBT for depression is known a) to produce observable changes on brains scan by itself b) to work better in combination with anti-depressants.
(FYI my experience has been unstructured methods of counselling such as Rogerian tend to work less well for people with asd, but I haven’t seen any research studies on this.)
"To say mental health practioners of various trainings are not scientists is a bit like saying carpenters are not mathematicians or physicists. They use the products of various scientific endeavours to carry out practical tasks. (Some of them may also conduct scientific research."
Guess I speak for the average punter who gets these things confused .
Would be interesting to do a survey on the street to answer:
What is the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist? Would as many 50% know?
Hmmm ...
‘Cute’?
... when is such a comment not patronising?
When you have a teddy bear avatar
Pseudo
Pseudo
Write it 100 times because I can't spell it
At my university, psychology was taught as both a physical science and a social science, with different classes for each. In order for an arts-major to get their science requirement, they needed to take a physical-science class.
Which is what I did. A lot of stuff about the chemical basis for nerve impulses and whatnot. It was a morning class, and I think I attended a total of six lectures, and my final grade worked out to a stanine point for each class.
But I guess everyone knew that.
From a uni in australia
Yep. And at our university, you could also get a BA in psychology, by taking the arts-oriented courses.
I'd imagine that's the same everywhere, but I really don't know.
Think I would choose the BA. I'm not good at science
You can get a BSc in Sociology too. What's your point?
The rest of her family were scientists who took Oxbridge degrees - they all had M.A.s.
You can get a BSc in Sociology too. What's your point?[/quote]
Can you get a bachelor of science in English?
Wow...interesting by
That's interesting. At my Canadian university, I'm pretty sure it was only offered via the Arts faculty.
Interesting about mythological structures, which sounds very Jungian. I think they are healing, if they are not imposed. Hence, the value of religion.
Different psychoanalyitical theorists use different metaphors to talk about their process, but I would argue that Freud's is every bit as much a mythological structure as Jung's or indeed Lacan's. Lacan used structuralism and language as his source structure; Freud communication (not quite the same thing), narrative - notably his own dream and his patients' - and medicine, and Jung avowedly used belief structures including religions. They are all building mechanisms for transformation of the patient's psyche through the exchange of transference, through which each party identifies their shit with the wall they threw it at. Out of the mudslinging comes healing.
'Writing in Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Postmodern University, Daniel Burston argues that Peterson’s views on religion reflect a preoccupation with what Tillich calls the vertical or transcendent dimension of religious experience but demonstrates little or no familiarity with (or sympathy for) what Tillich termed the horizontal dimension of faith; which demands social justice in the tradition of the Biblical Prophets.'
What's to be a fan of?
Nice analogy. Aye, until the science steps up (give us another century or ten), it's all we got. Retelling stories.
He was killed by his nephew instead.
But telling stories is the beginning and the end. I don't think there is any other way of encountering someone, and therapy is that.
The issue with psychoanalysis is that you can back explain almost any outcome, but you can not well predict from known facts something about the future.
You can analyse, via the scientific method, whether it has a positive effect on patients though - e.g. if you treat 1000 patients diagnosed with depression with 1 year of psychoanalysis delivered 1 hour per week by people trained to standard y - at the end of the trial what percentage of the patients still meet criteria for depression vs treatment as usual vs some other therapy. (The experimental hypothesis would be they get better by some metric the null hypthesis would be an effect no better than chance.)
Using the perspective of CBT, I could predict a number of things that would hold true for the majority of people presenting with depression - certain types of cognitive biases that present in depressive thinking or specific interactions of thoughts feelings and behaviours that maintain a panic cycle or hypochondriasis etc
Very good.