The personal benefit of psychological knowledge

New.White.Socks

This is something I've been thinking a lot about recently... does having studied a psychological phenomenon benefit someone going through whatever it might be?
I had presumed that understanding models of, causes and maybe solutions would be beneficial, but am now not so sure.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

JuliusCaesar

by psychological phenomenon, do you mean problems/disorders? Like depression for example?

Definitely found the child development module of my psych degree useful in later life, though I hated it at the time! As for spotting my own cognitive biases, well, let's just say its harder to see the mote in someone else's eye than my own.

New.White.Socks

When I asked the question I had more of a problem based perspective in mind, but left it vague intentionally so that anything might pop up.

That's an interesting one, how did you find developmental helpful? Organising play and that sort of thing based on stages of cognitive development? That's interesting never thought about it from that perspective.

What I had in mind was actually bereavement, something very few of us are lucky enough to avoid in our lives.
Having briefly studied it I thought that I had a reasonable understanding; that it is a personal process that hasn't got a timescale, one has to come to terms with it, reaffirm life assumptions, come to terms in own time etc.

I'm unsure though whether this kind of information is helpful on a personal level in that situation. This made me wonder about whether psychological knowledge can be personally helpful (it can undoubtedly be helpful to others).

Odysseus

The bereavement one is interesting for me in many ways, for example I was a Congress yesterday devoted to Freud's paper Mourning and Melancholia, and when he suffer a bereavement of his grandson in a few years later it profoundly effected him and change his viewpoint some what. He had already suffered bereavements that strongly affected him but this one more so and it changed his view on the process on mourning.

I deal with a lot of death in my clinic my clients encounter many different types of deaths, overdoses, violent deaths etc. 18 months ago I my Dad died I was still working through death themes with clients whilst he was on his way out. It was a difficult time as we had him at home and I was very involved in his care. This is where supervision comes in; I had a place to speak about the topics my clients where bringing to me and how that was affecting me. Lacan has a saying "the client pays with his money, the analyst pays with his soul".

So to your point I don't think it changed the way I work with clients, it did I think give me a subjective perspective on the process, and engaged me with the topic on a more theoretical level. The topic of loss with some clients would still resonate with me in some cases and that's the place of supervision again.

I when to the hospice for two months to use their service and did not find it helpful really. I must acknowledge that it was very beneficial for some of my family, but when my therapist started to identify with me around her experiences of death I was horrified. I when to speak about me, not listen to her. I was lucky that with my profession I had a lot of people to speak to.

However, whilst there might be some similarities between the process of mourning for me and the process of mourning for my client, they are also completely different and in my opinion need to be kept out of the therapeutic process to the best of ones ability. Part of the reasoning behind my five years of personal analysis was to try facilitate me in this, working on my onw subjectivity, in order to allow me to my personal history outside of the consulting room, though this is impossible it can help around basing your interventions on that level.

However, organisations like AA, NA, the list goes on one the last figures I had showed something like 130-140 such organisations like this in the States. The basis their is we have a common experience and what worked for us will work for you. However, we must note that such organisations are self-help not professional. Yet it much be noted that they have helped hundreds of thousands of people world wide.

On a similar topic its like what I believe to be false assumption of having to experience some to fully understand the process for the individual, like the recovering addict becoming a therapist, or any of the numerous examples. Do I have to experienced psychosis to work with a psychotic person, or be an abuser to work with someone who engaged in acts of sexual violence?


As you said you left it vague so that’s my thoughts on what we could call the life experience of life side, and the prior experience of for want of a better term certain disorders.

Interesting question though.

JuliusCaesar

New.White.Socks wrote: »

That's an interesting one, how did you find developmental helpful? Organising play and that sort of thing based on stages of cognitive development?

When I had my own children! It was interesting to watch their cognitive development, social development, physical development etc. I had a great deal more understanding of the world through a child's eyes.

Torakx

i tend to waffle alot so il try keep it short lol
i think your question is asking if your suffering from bereavement does understanding the process help you get through it.

from my personal experience with anxiety/depression/agrophobia etc etc i found ONLY after i understood what was happening to me could i move passed it.doctors messed me up and i did not go to therapy or counseling so the latter may have helped a great deal and saved me some time.
but i cannot stress enough how much studying psychology personally has helped me understand why i felt certain ways.

wether they were exactly the causes that i settled on may not even matter(another theory i need to look into).
it could even have been the fact that i had a notion of why that allowed me to move on and change my view on life.
i have not much experience with bereavement but i cant imagine studying the process would do any harm.hopefully it would allow you to tell yourself that it is ok to feel this way and maybe help focus on the process while the grieving period is at its peak.
just a laymans 2 cents

krankykitty

From my experience, knowing about the psychological process can make things a little less confusing as you have a bit more insight into what is going on for you - however, I don't believe when you are experiencing very strong emotions linked to say, bereavement, that it makes it any easier to know about the process. You still may feel the pain! In my opinion anyway...

I can definitely see that more knowledge can be helpful though, especially in recognising your issues and where they might be coming from. for example, more awareness out there about psychological issues such as depression can only be a good thing, in terms of understanding it yourself as a sufferer, and also having more understanding of those around us who are going through it. Normalising it in a way.