This is the assumption that Freud, and the next fifty years of psychologists, ran under. It seems quite obvious at first glance. We all like to think that our thoughts are important, significant to who we are as a person, as they come from some intimate place that is the essence of who we are as people.
Yes, that sounds comfortably conventional and profound, but what does that really mean for us as people? If someone cuts you off in traffic, and for just a brief moment you wish they didn't exist, are you homicidal?
Questions like these are what completely changed the field of psychology.
Around 1980, psychologist Aaron Beck introduced the idea that we shouldn't read so far into our thoughts. In particular, he coined a term for the negative thoughts that passively run though people's heads: "automatic negative thoughts." These are the kind of thoughts that you have when you've done done poorly on a test, and all of the sudden you're thinking that you're overall an unintelligent person. The interesting part about these kind of thoughts, Beck says, is that people automatically accept these thoughts without investigating their validity to any extent.
So, Beck began telling his patients to challenge and contradict these thoughts, unlike Freud, who had spent years chasing them down rabbit holes, and his patients were getting better much quicker. Thus began Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which has been taking over analytical therapies ever since. CBT holds that our thoughts are relatively insignificant, not revealing anything particularly profound or indicative of us as people.
CBT was revolutionary, but more recently it has been undergoing an overthrow, just like what happened with the idea of analysis. This new outlook deems that when people try to negate their negative thoughts, they are giving those thoughts way too much credit and taking it too seriously. So, instead of working to counter dark thoughts, as in CBT, this new wave of thought teaches its patients how to pay absolutely no attention to them.
This new wave of psychology is often called Mindfulness or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and maintains the polar opposite position of Freudian therapy: that our thoughts often mean absolutely nothing at all. It calls on its patients to acknowledge their existence, sure, but that if you credit them with any sort of driven attention you will drive yourself crazy.
Around 1980, psychologist Aaron Beck introduced the idea that we shouldn't read so far into our thoughts. In particular, he coined a term for the negative thoughts that passively run though people's heads: "automatic negative thoughts." These are the kind of thoughts that you have when you've done done poorly on a test, and all of the sudden you're thinking that you're overall an unintelligent person. The interesting part about these kind of thoughts, Beck says, is that people automatically accept these thoughts without investigating their validity to any extent.
So, Beck began telling his patients to challenge and contradict these thoughts, unlike Freud, who had spent years chasing them down rabbit holes, and his patients were getting better much quicker. Thus began Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which has been taking over analytical therapies ever since. CBT holds that our thoughts are relatively insignificant, not revealing anything particularly profound or indicative of us as people.
CBT was revolutionary, but more recently it has been undergoing an overthrow, just like what happened with the idea of analysis. This new outlook deems that when people try to negate their negative thoughts, they are giving those thoughts way too much credit and taking it too seriously. So, instead of working to counter dark thoughts, as in CBT, this new wave of thought teaches its patients how to pay absolutely no attention to them.
This new wave of psychology is often called Mindfulness or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and maintains the polar opposite position of Freudian therapy: that our thoughts often mean absolutely nothing at all. It calls on its patients to acknowledge their existence, sure, but that if you credit them with any sort of driven attention you will drive yourself crazy.
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