The problem is that I’m a physicist so I see a wiki page with a bunch of quotes from people of all disciplines including a physicist who was famously a huge sceptic of psychiatry and I think of all the physics pages that have all these “opinions” that are wrong

Very few of those quotes mention evidence of outcomes of psychoanalysis but only mention very specific parts of it being questionable. I think you’re jumping the gun a bit. Don’t worry, that’s very common among people who are newer to science

There are many modern meta analysis assessing the (in)efficacy of psychoanalysis and comparing it to other approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (which is the gold standard nowadays) and other approaches, which back my arguments.

I am not really interested in going more deeply about this, but I encourage you to research it, if you are interested. There is a lot of research about this.

And by the way, I am sure that you can also find meta analysis which will tell you that psychoanalysis works. This does not mean that it is necessarily true (or at least, not for the reasons that people think it is true), for various reasons, some of which I'm sure you can deduce.

The problems with psychoanalysis are not just about its (substandard) efficacy. There are many other troubling issues with this practice.

This is why it is important to follow a field of study and what current scientists, field practicioners/experts and academics know (from various disciplines and fields of study, in order to get a consensus as best as possible), and not just read some isolated meta analysis and extrapolate conclusions from it.

> I think you’re jumping the gun a bit.

I think what I'm talking about is pretty well established at this point, it's not news for someone who works in this field.

I suggest you do more research before arguing about a field you don't seem knowledgeable about.

Look, if you are so interested in this, why don't you do the research yourself?

I literally just googled "meta-analysis psychoanalysis" and the very first link that came up [1] was, surprisingly, a meta-analysis about psychoanalysis which concluded the abstract with the following phrase:

"In contrast to previous reviews, we found the evidence for the effectiveness of LTPP [long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy] to be limited and at best conflicting."

I'm not interested in wasting more of my time on this topic, so don't expect any more replies.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22227111/

I knew this was going to turn into this pointless debate.

I even mentioned it in my parent comment that you can always find some study which says the opposite of what I'm saying. That does not refute what I said and it is not how science works.

You have to analyze a bunch of evidence, from many studies and meta-studies together as a whole, you can't just pick and choose the studies that are more convenient to you.

Not to mention that you asked me to cite a meta-analysis (which I did) and then you counter-act with a single study about a single trial.

So here's the thing: I am not interested in you citing me any study or meta-analysis. As I said before, I'm not interested in continuing this discussion.

I was just arguing what I know about this topic and what I've learned from experts (in psychology and methodology, mostly) and my own research.

You can feel free to ignore me or to continue arguing, but I'm not going to answer anymore.

I don't have a horse in this race and I don't want to waste any more of my time.

There are a handful of problems I can think of for using a waitlist in the community receiving traditional psychotherapy as a control for a group receiving intensive inpatient treatment.

But the article you linked does not support your point in the context of this discussion.

The control group is corrupted, the control-treatment pairs for comparison were selected by the researchers, and the provided “psychiatric treatment” includes

> In addition to weekly individual sessions the inpatient program at both groups contained two 75 min group sessions each week. In addition, VITA had shorter group meetings each morning (15 minutes). Patients in both treatments participated in two physical exercise sessions per week, weekly psycho-educational lectures and art-therapy groups, and both groups finish each week with end of the week status groups. On average, patients in both treatments received seven sessions of therapeutic activity each week.

“Both treatments” here is not control and treatment but both intensive treatments.

You can get large effects in almost everything by completely changing a person’s experiential environment from their prior environment, which is what they did here. In addition to everything listed, their sleeping conditions, diet, daily routine, and social environment were probably dramatically changed, although the researchers didn’t record that so we can’t know.

It’s impossible to tell if the actual psychiatric interventions were effective. This fact, though, is particularly damning as to the efficacy of the actual treatments provided:

>The analysis also showed minimal differences between the two intensive inpatient treatments, suggesting that the differences in effect may not be due to the theoretical rationale within the inpatient treatment but rather the treatment context.

There were no significant differences between two very different treatment modalities. This essentially admits that “something else” and not the psychiatric treatments were responsible for the uptick. My guess is regular schedule, connecting with people (community formation) and mattering to someone, none of which do you get from psychiatric treatments.

Very far from discredited, as you seem to want to claim (with no evidence). Difficult to study != disproven

My position is that the extended difficulty over the past hundred years in supporting it scientifically means it is in essence not a science. It is too complex to measure using these means and so science in pursuit of “proving the efficiency of psychiatric treatments” where psychiatric treatments are anything more than medications is largely a waste of time and effort, and will remain so until or unless we develop better methods of addressing complexity in a rigorous way.

The reproducibility of the studies feeding into the meta analysis is less than 50/50. Why bother to perform a meta-analysis on noise? The fact that people do tells you a lot about the state of psychiatry as a science.

Which? Serious question!

> Which? Serious question!

Ok, well, the thing is, I'm not an expert in psychology/psychotherapy, so you shouldn't trust me.

But if you'd like to find out more, here are some avenues that I suggest you dig into. They are based on conversations I had with a psychologist that I know but it's been many years and therefore I could be wrong about almost all (if not all) of this (or at least, misremembering):

1. If I remember correctly, psychoanalysis encourages a long form of therapy in a way that may not be in the best interests of the client. It is fine to have long therapies when needed, but it is not OK to extend a therapy longer than it is necessary to deal with the demands of the client and/or any other relevant and substantial issues that might come up during therapy.

Many would argue that psychotherapy should be about dealing with the issues at hand and what's preventing you from achieving your goals, in an efficient and practical way, not going on and on infinitely about exploring your infancy and your past while the weeks, months and years go by and the dollars fly away from your wallet to the therapist's wallet.

2. Psychoanalysis may also encourage finding (some would argue manufacturing) "issues" and "traumas" that have nothing to do with the problems that the client was having and may only serve to cause additional and unnecessary emotional suffering, besides all the problems that the client was already having when he decided to go into therapy. In extreme cases, this may even lead to implanting false memories of traumas.

3. Psychoanalysts may also tend to (inadvertently or "advertently") inflict and/or encourage emotional dependence between the client and the therapist, in a way that is not healthy, desirable nor in the best interests of the client.

4. The above issues may all feed into and magnify each other.

I am sure there were more issues that I've discussed, but I simply can't remember.

Note that I'm not saying that all psychoanalyst practitioners fall into the above traps, or that practitioners of other forms of psychotherapy don't, I'm only suggesting that psychoanalysis is more prone to the above issues than other forms of psychotherapy that are usually considered more scientific (like CBT).

And once again, please take all of the above with a huge grain of salt and don't trust me. I'm not an expert and I could be completely wrong and/or misremembering the above issues. So I encourage you to do your own research.

It has no relevance with regards to my knowledge.