William Sharp 🇺🇦

Psychoanalyst, Professor/@Northeastern University Consultant on Social/Emotional Learning & Counselor Education

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

Still looking for something to do to keep veterans in mind today? Check out this video, 2 fantastic guests, then I come on the last 10mins… https://t.co/yFJWccQbBL?... @Carriganpod @NUGlobalNews @BGSPsyA

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

@Carriganpod @awcoville So happy to add my perspective to this timely episode! Thanks @Carriganpod for covering this and to both @awcoville and Richard for sharing stories! #TalkingHelps @BGSPsyA

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

@drglennsullivan Had a similar experience with “FAP” (a new term for Behavior Modification)… but my students said Fap-ping is something else. Again, don’t google it- will mess up your algorithm

[Glenn Sullivan @drglennsullivan]

Today I learned that CBT stands for something besides Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and that whatever it is, it’s disproportionately popular in North Dakota.

(No, I’m not going to Google it.)

Explains the occasional titter in my undergraduate psychotherapy class, though.

[Preston @pressand_turn]

On free association, Harry Stack Sullivan

[ACAP Events @acapevents]

You don't have to light up every room. Just show up. 🎃 Come as you are to North Jersey Consultation Center. https://t.co/oOoNAhb0wk #NJCC #AffordableTherapy #MentalHealthSupport #NorthJersey #ACAP

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

One of the greatest @nbcsnl skits
ever.

[Susan @SeschipperSusan]

#HaikuSaturday
5/7/5
Puppy and pumpkin
Treasure trove of fallen leaves
Catch us if you can

Short form
Pup Pumpkin
Treasure
Ours

Monoku
Puppy and Pumpkin treasure trove of leaves—catch us if you can

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

“Most [therapists] could benefit by looking harder at why they became therapists and what types of affirmation and gratification they are seeking. From my experience, many suffer from being too passive, masochistic, and conflict-avoidant.”
—Karen Maroda

[Allen Frances @AllenFrancesMD]

DSM-6 is a grift/mistake whose only real purpose is publishing profits for Am Psychiatric Assoc.

Changing its name from 'Diagnostic & Statistical Manual' to 'Diagnostic & Scientific Manual' is putting lipstick on a pig.

Giant leaps in neuroscience during past 50 yrs have had absolutely no impact on diagnosis.

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

This may be the dividing line separating skilled and unskilled therapists. Unskilled therapists see pain and victimhood. Skilled therapists also see the hate and aggression and know how work with it.

How do we know there is hate and aggression? Because the patient is human. 👇

[Susan @SeschipperSusan]

#HaikuSaturday
5/7/5
Orionids peak
leftover comet pieces
beautiful shower

Short form
Orionids
pieces
beautiful

Monoku
Orionids meteor shower …a beautiful show

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

Amazing! Was just teaching Klein Wednesday.

[Jeremy the therapist @psychfox]

“Without partial and temporary denial of psychic reality the ego cannot bear the disaster by which it feels itself threatened when the depressive position is at its height."
Melanie Klein, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1940

Klein's manic defense is what we do so that we do can avoid feelings of need for someone.

Here are 4 manic defense processes:

1) Denial: of the loss, and of the guilt and sorrow that go with it

2) Control: keeping people managed, or "in suspended animation"

3) Idealization: flipping to contempt

4) Triumph: which, as Klein put it, "impedes the work of early mourning"

You see it in the person who's busy, upbeat and efficient the week after the funeral, or the breezy "I'm so over my father" delivered with a laugh.

The contempt is often protecting the love underneath it.

Klein saw these defenses as part of normal development, too. The trouble starts when they never let go.

Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 21, 125–153. https://t.co/nmEgCQ9HxS
Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 16, 145–174. https://t.co/AM9UAV1ByY

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

@jesusrglez Amazing photo!

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

@deewalkerbooks Dungeon Crawler Carl

[Susan @SeschipperSusan]

#HaikuSaturday
5/7/5
Top middle bottom
Squash gourd a fruit of the vine…
Soon jack-o’-lanterns

Short Form
Pumpkins
Gourds
Jack-o’-lanterns

Monoku
Squash gourd pumpkin …soon to be jack-o’-lanterns

[Allen Frances @AllenFrancesMD]

We killed 92 of 94 new diagnoses suggested for DSM-IV.

The 2 we added (Aspergers/Bipolar 2) caused more harm than benefit.

I suggest no new disgnoses until we have solid biological tests.

Dumb new labels take on a dangerous life of their own
(see great description below).

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

@jesusrglez Same same, I do believe that a grounding in one theory makes for a good therapist because then you can pull stuff that works from other theories into your own.

I discourage a salad bar approach where people have done a bunch of different trainings and try to cobble it together

[Susan @SeschipperSusan]

#HaikuSaturday
5/7/5
the sun is peeking
reflecting on the water
thoughts of a new day

Short Form
sunrise
reflections
thoughts

Monoku
Sun’s reflection…thoughts of a new day

[William Sharp 🇺🇦 @drwilliamsharp]

“Advice and commonsense solutions focus on “first-order” causes. Meaningful psychotherapy addresses 2nd-, 3rd-, and nth-order causes.”

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

Training in psychotherapy begins in earnest when it finally sinks in that giving advice does not help.

And it sinks in that common-sense solutions didn’t help in the past and won’t help now.

Meaningful psychotherapy is not an extension of common sense. It is something else entirely.

Why don't advice and common sense help?

ONE crucial reason is that the problem you see on the surface is rarely the problem that therapy needs to address.

There is the surface or “manifest” problem—and there are the underlying psychological problems that give rise to it, and have gotten in the way of previous efforts to address it.

In other words, there is WAY more going on than meets the eye. What you see is almost never what you get.

Advice and commonsense solutions focus on “first-order” causes. Meaningful psychotherapy addresses 2nd-, 3rd-, and nth-order causes.

This is why meaningful psychotherapy requires real expertise and years of training. *We are not addressing the same problems*.

This is why psychotherapy is so often misunderstood.

This is why therapists who are still trying to give advice or provide common-sense solutions are not expert therapists. Their psychotherapy training never began in earnest.

No matter what degrees they have or how how many years of experience, they are operating with a beginner-level understanding of human psychology and providing beginner-level psychotherapy.

“Training in psychotherapy begins in earnest when it finally sinks in that giving advice doesn’t help.”
_____

✍️ Related essay: Much of What Is Called Therapy Is Not Psychotherapy
https://t.co/qtJCpP91Dj