Thank you for the response.
With your permission I’ll continue the matter:
Do you have any recommendations for improving psychoanalysis?
How, in your opinion, can one best trace the causes for the formation of a mental tendency in a certain direction?
Could it be that the field is doomed to nonsense from its very foundations?

Absolutely not. I think I already wrote here about Freud’s genius in inventing a language in which one can formulate things, discuss them, make progress, and also claim that one is dealing with baseless speculation. Without a language, nothing can be done. But even given a language, there is no guarantee of an ability to create science. Perhaps that follows from the very nature of the field.

I think behaviorism tried to offer a way, but didn’t really succeed (there it’s a clinging to facts without a language—meta-empirical terminology, which even in physics is impossible to do without). Today the way forward seems to be through the brain sciences. In my estimation, psychology is facing the end of its road (it’s actually been there for a long time; people just don’t realize it).
Not long ago I heard that the Hebrew University decided to move psychology to Givat Ram (and it didn’t happen only because of technical problems). Good for them.

With regard to section 3, this is not only the Rabbi’s experience. I too once read some kind of study claiming that what characterized successful psychologists was their personality and not any particular method. They simply knew how to listen. And by the way, from my own experience too, what mainly helps a person who is suffering psychologically is the fact that someone carries the suffering with him (that’s what happens in real listening—that is, when someone really tries to understand you), and not the advice he gives (unless he really is listening, in which case those are no longer advice but real solutions—but even then, in most cases he won’t need to tell them to the patient, as I’ll explain in a moment). The main healing is the calm that comes along with sharing the burden, and afterward, once one calms down, the solutions to the external problems that aroused the emotional suffering arise on their own in the patient’s mind, even without the therapist having to give advice. Good psychologists make money from listening. People simply don’t know how to listen, and therefore someone who does know can make up to 500 shekels an hour from it.

Eilon, the psychologist’s listening is indeed part of the healing process, but it is not the whole story. They claim (D. W. Winnicott and those who follow in his path) that the analytic process is a process of completing a missing parental figure that grants security, protection, and self-confidence, and that is no small art.
A psychologist is not supposed to give advice, but rather to create good feelings about the patient’s “self” and to “clean the chimneys” (in Freud’s phrase).

To Shai

As I said, this is my own personal observational experience. All the other claims made by those you mentioned—forgive me—are nonsense. All kinds of undefined things like “parental figure,” etc. How can one even test such a thing, or whether that is the component that helps? But everyone in the world knows how to tell when someone is listening to him or not. So I have no need to define that. It is an extremely clear concept. I am simply claiming that this is what ultimately helps the patient. And that too can be tested. Just ask patients what the thing was that really helped them, and that’s it. My prediction would be that they would answer, “He was there for me,” which in plain Hebrew means, “He listened to me when I needed it.”

Eilon:
It is commonly said that the clinic is like a laboratory in which emotions are brought up (many times toward the therapist figure, what is called “transference”), and they try to understand the source of those feelings, and the very engagement with them and understanding them helps the patient gain control over his life.

That said, I accept your reservation about the field. As Yeshayahu Leibowitz once said, “Psychology is the Jews’ way of making money.” Psychotherapy may not be a science, but it is a great art.

The question is whether the field is inherently meant to be full of hot air, or whether, if we invest enough, we will move from the pre-paradigmatic stage to a scientific stage based on established principles (the paradigmatic stage, in Popper’s terms). Maybe psychology is still in its infancy, and throwing up our hands will prevent the field from maturing?

David, the problem with the field of psychology is that it deals with experience, and experience is not an exact thing at all. Very often one experience is made up of several different and contradictory feelings. So it may be that the field was destined for non-scientific status from the outset, like poetry and art.

To Shai

What you said is “commonly said” is just another one of the lies in this field. And I’m not talking about the lack of clear definition in the claims, but about wallowing in the patients’ self-absorption—which borders on obsessiveness—and often wallowing in self-pity that accompanies the field. In my experience, all the talk about emotions and experiences and feelings and their source does not help the patient one bit. It’s like wallowing in mud that only causes you to sink deeper into it. Nor is there such a thing as gaining control over one’s life. Part of mental health is understanding that we do not have such control, but that at most we have a choice about certain actions in relation to a given unpleasant reality, along with acceptance of what we have no choice over. Someone who has emotional distress lacks the calm needed to look at reality clearly, distinguish between the two, act regarding what he can act on and change, and accept what he cannot act on. And for that, one simply needs someone who does have that calm and will share the burden with him—and that itself brings that calm.

Eilon, you are speaking in a cold, overly rational way; reality on the ground does not work like that. A person who complains about bad moods that attack him or a lack of healthy interpersonal relationships needs not only your listening but to learn about his motivations, to get to know himself, and thereby improve in that area—for example, by learning how to make a friend feel good in conversation rather than putting him off. Many people complain about feelings of boredom and emptiness in life; you need to be skilled enough to know what causes that. If you only listen to him and nod with a pained smile at his suffering, it won’t help him. You need to accompany him in finding meaning in life, and the like.
One must remember that the realm of emotion is not an exact science, and it is very complex and unclear.

“Psychology helps in rare cases” — how are you not ashamed to write such nonsense? It is obvious from your words that you haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about and no understanding whatsoever of what psychological treatment is, what its goals are, and what goes on in it. You write like the lowest kind of internet commenter.

Ros,
I’m sorry to say it, but Rabbi Michi is right. Psychologists cannot produce a significant change in the patient’s psyche; they can only give him coping tools. Usually a person dealing with a psychological disorder, all the more so with an illness, will deal with it his whole life. The psychologist can help him improve his quality of life by giving him insights into how he copes. And of course, it depends what we are talking about—most psychologists’ work deals with things that are not foundational in the psyche, such as lack of self-confidence, low spirits, and anxiety.

Hello Rabbi,
I agree with the criticism of psychoanalysis as a science. At the same time, in my opinion it is important to distinguish between the psychological discipline as a science and a therapeutic psychological discipline.
Psychological treatment contains four parts: values (for example, therapeutic goals, a treatment contract, and the like), psychological phenomena (for example, transference, countertransference, or whatever we choose to call them), theory (a possible connection between the variables—regardless of which theory. The goal here is not truth but to help), and technique (interventions derived from all of the above).
Psychology as a science relates only to two parts: phenomena and theory (the what and the how).
Although this is not stated explicitly, the use of all the phenomena that occur in the therapy room and the various theories is done not because of a conception of scientific truth, but מתוך an understanding that this constitutes material for advancing therapeutic success. Therefore, the evaluation of the usefulness of treatment is not done according to criteria of control and prediction, but according to the achievement of the value-based therapeutic goals—reducing symptoms, developing new abilities, etc. In other words, this is a closed system that works according to its own principles (which is why, incidentally, professional ethics is of enormous importance).
This distinction is, in my view, very essential for many issues related to the therapeutic field, chiefly: 1) which research paradigm is appropriate and effective for this field; 2) the nature of the professional training (assuming there is such a thing, and in my opinion there definitely is); 3) how this possible field of help should be presented to the patient when he seeks help.
In my opinion, because this is a field composed of all the above elements, and because among all these elements there is interaction in every single therapeutic meeting, it is an art that is very hard to acquire.

(As an aside—there is a discussion related to this topic in the literature of the Sages concerning the qualities of a judge and regarding the question of whether one may rule based on psychological assessment, since not every judge is capable of making such evaluations. A very prominent case over which the Sages and the medieval authorities disputed is the Judgment of Solomon—whether this was a deviation from the laws of adjudication or supreme wisdom.)

There is much more room to elaborate on the subject, but I will stress one final important point.
Psychological treatment, in its various forms, helps. It helps with OCD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and more and more. In certain cases it helps manage an illness, impairment, or disability. In other cases it helps with genuine emotional growth and the disappearance of symptoms, both in children and in adults. Alongside that, it is not perfect and not certain—like any field of providing help. However, in my opinion, one need not convince anyone whether it helps or not, except for one person: the patient. In psychological treatment there are no clear assumptions regarding the nature of the help, unlike, for example, a doctor who gives acetaminophen for a headache, without addressing how exactly that will help him. In my opinion, professional ethics always requires explaining to the patient, at a level he can understand, the connection between his complaint, the professional impression, and the connection between them and the proposed treatment, and how it may affect him. So at the beginning of treatment, so in the middle, and so too at the end of treatment.