There are undoubtedly many smart, kind psychoanalysts who undertook the long, insanely expensive analytic training in hopes of learning to recognize something like subconscious patterns of thought. I know several. They way things play out in real life for many who got analytic training is that the training gives them some skills and schemas and forms of attunement that get tossed into the mix with all the other stuff they have learned or figured out or know instinctively about how to get people unstuck from various hells. Pure psychoanalysis is rarely practiced these days. Its glamor has faded and it is extremely expensive -- $450/ session in NYC, and patients come for 3-4 sessions/week - so there aren't a lot of customers.
I do think that of the various schools and styles of psychotherapy, unadulterated psychoanalysis is about the worst in terms of the power imbalance between patient and therapist. I would rather have some psychopharmacologist telling me I should take drug X in order to tame my attentional deficit, psychotic flares or whatnot than to have a psychoanalyst telling me he knows better than I do who I want to have sex with. The former would be giving me expert info about how to tame my brain with drugs -- the latter would be telling me he knows more than I do about who I am.
There are undoubtedly many smart, kind psychoanalysts who undertook the long, insanely expensive analytic training in hopes of learning to recognize something like subconscious patterns of thought. I know several. They way things play out in real life for many who got analytic training is that the training gives them some skills and schemas and forms of attunement that get tossed into the mix with all the other stuff they have learned or figured out or know instinctively about how to get people unstuck from various hells. Pure psychoanalysis is rarely practiced these days. Its glamor has faded and it is extremely expensive -- $450/ session in NYC, and patients come for 3-4 sessions/week - so there aren't a lot of customers.
I do think that of the various schools and styles of psychotherapy, unadulterated psychoanalysis is about the worst in terms of the power imbalance between patient and therapist. I would rather have some psychopharmacologist telling me I should take drug X in order to tame my attentional deficit, psychotic flares or whatnot than to have a psychoanalyst telling me he knows better than I do who I want to have sex with. The former would be giving me expert info about how to tame my brain with drugs -- the latter would be telling me he knows more than I do about who I am.