Talk:Psychodynamics

message: To help appease your confusion, although I’m not going to type up a history lesson for you, quoting from chapter one, “Freud’s Scientific Heritage”, of Calvin Hall’s 1954 book A Primer in Freudian Psychology: first in 1859, when Freud was three, his family took him to Vienna to see the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.  The following year Gustav Fechner founded the science psychology when he demonstrated, in 1860, that the mind could be studied scientifically and that it could be measured quantitatively.  These two men, Darwin and Fechner, had ‘a tremendous impact on the intellectual development of Freud.’  Hall continues: 
:”There were other influences that affected Freud even more profoundly.  These came from physics.  In the great physicist, Hermann von Helmholtz, formulated the principle of conservation of energy.  This principle stated, in effect, that energy is a quantity just as mass is a quantity.  It can be transformed but it cannot be destroyed.  When energy disappears from one part of a system it has to appear elsewhere in the system.  The fifty years between Helmholtz’s statement of the conservation of energy and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was the golden age of energy: thermodynamics, the electromagnetic field, and quantum theory.”
This is the basis of Freud's psychology.  Hall goes on to discuss how the founding thermodynamicists, namely “James Maxwell, Max Planck, James Joule, Lord Kelvin, Josiah Gibbs, Rudolf Clausius” had an influence on Freud and that after studying under Ernst Brucke, who was a close associate with Helmholtz, who had worked previously with him in the years 1838-42, in the laboratory of the German physiologist Johannes Muller, that Freud “quickly became indoctrinated by the new dynamic physiology” and that “he was to discover some twenty years later that the laws of thermodynamics could be applied to man’s personality as well as to his body.” I hope this clarifies your uncertainties.  There are dozens of books written about this topic, try reading some of them.  I personally own over 130 thermodynamic books and about a dozen psychodynamic books. --Sadi Carnot 10:04, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: History lesson for misinformed meco

message: The more I follow up on my initial reaction to the attempt at establishing a hierarchy around the term 'Psychodynamics' the more I begin to question the basic validity of this article. I am particularly bewildered by claims by the article's principal editor who asserts to be more or less authoritative on the subject "owning about a dozen books on Psychodynamics". Definitions within the article itself are wildly disparate, one emphasizing the parentage of thermodynamics and asserting Freud as the founder of this branch of psychology. Later in the article Psychodynamics is defined as an "evolving multi-disciplinary field" applying buzzwords from neuropsychology and mind-body intervention with no mention of any relation to thermodynamics at all. This second "version" appears to be lifted verbatim from http://members.shaw.ca/finkleman/psychoDYN.htm, a page which seems to have little to do with any coherent discipline of psychology, where it elaborates:
:Our approach to psychodynamics has been to focus on combining a number of emerging communications, design and psychological sciences -- including the research of  eminent Russian neurophysiologist Dr. P.V. Simonov,  neurochemist Dr. Pavel Balaban, the late social psychologist Dr. Arnold Mitchell, movement psychologist Dr. Stuart Heller and transpersonal psychologist Dr. Beth Hedva, among others.
A Google search on the term "Psychodynamics" yields more confusion and to my preliminary investigation nothing that corroborates the inclinations purveyed in the current article. I get responses like "the psychodynamics of drug abuse and psychological. dependence", "Psychodynamics of Political Correctness", Answers.Com gives the following definition:
:The study of human behavior from the point of view of motivation and drives, depending largely on the functional significance of emotion, and based on the assumption that an individual's total personality and reactions at any given time are the product of the interaction between his genetic constitution and his environment.
Am I the only editor that is seriously sceptical to the validity of out current encyclopedic entry for Psychodynamics? __meco 11:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you should try reading Edoardo Weiss’ 1950, 268 page book  Principles of Psychodynamics to educate yourself.  The contents include: (1) What is Psychodynamics? - alloplastic, psychodynamics, (2) The Ego and the Id integrative - syntonic, integrative, drives, (3) Mental Energy - cathexes, cathexis, libido, along with 19 other sections.  Please, this article is sourced with 9 published references.  I see no need to belittle efforts to write up an article on a basic term.  Please take your trolling somewhere else.  Also, if you don’t have access to a library, please feel free to consult Merriam-Webster who define psychodynamics (1874) as (1) the psychology of mental or emotional forces or processes developing especially in early childhood and their effects on behavior and mental states; (2) explanation or interpretation, as of behavior or mental states, in terms of mental or emotional forces or processes; (3) motivational forces acting especially at the unconscious level.  I think I will prefer to side with Merriam-Webster over you. --Sadi Carnot 15:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article should reflect all pertinent material, and it is the article alone which stands to merit its inclusion in Wikipedia. Referring readers to "read up" on external literature is simply irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a term can be documented and corroborated in all sorts of external sources as long as the article itself doesn't reflect this. In my opinion this article is seriously deficient. __meco 15:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the encouragement.  I have now added a total of 14 references to this article.  I suppose that, according to your logic, the more references I add the worse it gets?  Anyway, thanks for the fun time and for all the moral support! --Sadi Carnot 16:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is anything at all about this article reliable? 

message: Here’s another direct quote from page 83 of Robin Robertson and Allan Combs 1995, 408-page book Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences: “Psychological processes are flows of psychological energy in a complex brain.  Thus, Freud founded psychodynamics on the concept of psychological energy, which he called libido.  Based on thermodynamics of closed systems, Freud proposed that psychological energy was constant (hence, emotional changes consisted only in displacements) tended to rest (point attractor) through discharge (catharsis)." --Sadi Carnot 15:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Meco, you can also reference Tasman, Kay, and Lieberman's 1997, 1900-page, two-volume opus Psychiatry to read up on psychodynamic psychotherapy, found in multiple chapters. --Sadi Carnot 16:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am quite pleased with the reference pulled from Robertson and Combs. If we can weed out all unsourced (and conflicting) statements and insert quotes of this calibre in their place, I have no doubts this article has the potential to become exemplary. __meco 17:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, thank-you.  I will try to chip in, in this direction; whenever I come across good sources.  Trying to uncover reliable sources on theories that began over 100 years, however, is always a slow and tedious process. It took me over a year to figure out what chemical affinity is; a theory that goes back over a 1,000 years. --Sadi Carnot 00:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Another reference to appease meco

message: Having read pages 4-5 which are cited in the article as a reference for the following statements:
:In psychology, psychodynamics or dynamic psychology is the study of the interrelationship of various parts of the mind, personality, or psyche as they relate to mental, emotional, or motivational forces especially at the unconscious level.
and
:At the heart of psychological processes, according to Freud, is the ego, which he sees battling with three forces: the id, the super-ego, and the outside world.
I can find nothing on those two pages which supports these statements. In fact the book here deals with defining the term "unconscious" in psychological terms in contradistinction to philosophical ones pointing out that unconscious can refer to two different conditions where a latent idea is absent from consciousness, one being when it can easily be brought back into consciousness and the other where it is repressed by som force and cannot easily be made conscious. __meco 20:36, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The second is a direct quote off the back cover of the Norton & Co. 1960 edition of The Ego and the Id. The first definition is basically found on pages 4-6 of this same book where he speaks of "psychical dynamics", "mental dynamics", the "division of the psychical into the conscious and unconscious", the various "forces" and "work" associated mental "states", and the displacements of "mental energy" as they effect their way towards action, etc. Read the book to get the best picture.  Also, from page 13 of Hall's Primer in Freudian Psychology, "A dynamic psychology is one that studies the transformations and exchanges of energy within the personality."  This is all basic information, found in many books. --Sadi Carnot 23:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then the second is erroneously attributed to the same location as the first. This should be corrected. __meco 18:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Ego and the Id 

message: I’ve fixed the references, so that three support the intro-definition and I’ll keep my open for more down the road.  Also, regarding the merge proposal there are about 40 pages that link to psychodynamic psychotherapy and a different 40 or so pages that link to psychodynamics; confounding the two, in my opinion, will only further confuse the situation, where the separate terms are already confusing to begin with. --Sadi Carnot 23:33, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge discussion

message: This volume is cited as a reference for the article's definition of Psychodynamics, however, having read the cited page I must conclude that this is a misapplication. The book reads: 
:"The forces, motives, and energy generated by the deepest of human needs are referred to as psychodynamics. Psyche which means 'soul' or 'heart,' and dynamics, which means 'energy' or 'forces,' have their origins in the developing personality. An explanation of exactly how childhood development influences subsequent preferences, needs, desires, and interests would take volumes. Suffice it to say that psychodynamics is at the bottom layer of feelings, attitudes, and needs that are often not available to the individual for conscious investigation or analysis." 
This is obviously not a reference to any modality or system of psychology, but merely defining a term which the book subsequently applies. __meco 15:14, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: David Klimek has a PhD in clinical psychology and is a member of the American Psychological Association and this is his published definition of “psychodynamics” in mate selection psychology, which he defines as “the social, emotional, and psychological forces which propel men and women into paring”.  If you don’t like his definition, then that is your point of view.  Also, instead of attacking the references I find, why don’t you try find some references and definitions of psychodynamics and add them to the article. Thank-you. --Sadi Carnot 02:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The definiton is fine, that's not what I'm complaing about. He is defining a term whereas you read this as a definition of a system of psychotherapy. There's a huge difference between the two. As I see it, the article is currently ALL about the psychological term psychodynamics with no emphasis on describing any system of psychology with this same name. Why are there no references neither in this article nor in Psychodynamic psychotherapy to professional associations, educational institutions, journals, or even the odd website professing to represent Psychodynamics as a discipline, modality or system of psychotherapy? __meco 15:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As I no longer understand this article to be attempting to describe a system of psychotherapy I no longer hold the above position. Why I held this conception for this long I don't clearly see. It could be that the diffuse language of the introduction, as I see it, confused me. __meco 07:17, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My intentions here are to define the term "psychodynamics", its history, and how it is used in psychology presently. --Sadi Carnot 07:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

text: As for the above reference and others, yes I agree this is a confusing topic.  In short, I feel that if we collect enough references, from all points of view, then we can get a well-rounded article, being that there is not standard college courses on psychodynamics, as a stand-alone.  The basic feeling I get from my readings is that between 1874 and the 1960s, psychodynamics was stand-alone, but has since branched off and been embedded into modern psychology in its various branches. --Sadi Carnot 07:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beneath Mate Selection and Marriage 

message: You ask for links to groups and such, etc., so here’s a few more examples: 
*Psychodynamics – Powerpoint Overview
*Columbia Academy of Psychodynamics - Study Group on Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, meeting monthly since 1978, The Washington School of Psychiatry.
*Psychodynamics.com – claims that Psychodynamics Research Institute has been in business since 1981 and on the Internet since Dec. 1999.
*The Psychodynamics of News
*Psychodynamics of Scapegoating
*Psychodynamics - A Critique Is Child Father to the Man?, Derek J. Lainsbury
*Psychodynamics of Drug Dependence
*Group psychodynamics and Cults
*Quantum Psychodynamics of Dreams
To name a few. --Sadi Carnot 08:09, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Links and related pages

message: Please Dasha, start with the newer version with 3,000+ kb of new material with new references used for the intro, and add in your changes slowly over the next week, otherwise I can't tell what sentences you have issues with, when you delete entire sections.  Let's start over and work together step-by-step.  Could you please first state below what you have issues with.  Thank-you. --Sadi Carnot 16:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no problem with this.  I do have a problem with your on-going deference to Meco, however. --DashaKat 17:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we’ll I may have jumped the gun on some comments, but we got off on the wrong foot with his accusation that I added a “spurious establishment of thermodynamics parentage” to the article.  Hopefully, we have worked together enough now to have cleared that issue up? --Sadi Carnot 17:44, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully.  No ill will intended toward either of you, being something of a pompous know-it-all myself, I find Meco's style to tend toward the bullying, and would be disappointed to see anyone fall prey to that.  --DashaKat 19:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Usually exchanges that become this personal are relegated to users' own discussion pages, however, in the current context, with the present company, I find them justified and constructive. Could you therefore clarify, perhaps by simply rephrasing, your point here? I don't think I understand the phrase "to tend toward the bullying". __meco 19:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Meco, I've idea to which "other thread where you were being critical" you are referring.  What I was referring to is that you, as I, am an intellectual bully.  I woudl align myself with you in stating that we tend tot hink before we think and, in that moment, think that we are right and everyone else is wrong.  If I've read you wrong, I apologize, but I beleive you've provided evidence supporting this assessment in your own words.  It was not an insult, but an observation.  Blessings. --DashaKat 20:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then we're on level. And I agree with your perspective. However, I can't envisage myself being a bully the way I perceive that term. I can be agressive, preferably sharply, but unfortunately sometimes also bluntly, a trait which I would rather hone and refine than attempt to rid myself of. But I see being a bully as someone who displays callous or inadvertent disregard for the feelings and position of others, and I would be extremely uncomfortable if I found myself in that role. I can live with others seeing me in that role as long as I see them as being wrong, not counting all sorts of resistance which that provokes, but I want to be able to look deep into myself without having to fend off by means of psychological defenses any intolerable attitudes I may project. And being a bully unequivocally is one such.  __meco 20:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I have just added a response in another thread that is rather critical of your efforts, not generally, but in one particular respect. As I have before. I have previously had some pretty harsh words come in my direction as well, warranted or not so warranted. I think we so far have made a very good cooperative effort of collectively calming ourselves when these hotpoints have flared up. I can sometimes be blunt and sometimes I see, in hindsight, that my initial point wasn't all that clearly in my favour which I started out believing. It is easier said than done to prevent these sometimes transgressions, because it has to do with my temporally dynamic impulses to invest myself in this article. If I am indeed to participate in the process of producing this article, I have to make the most of periods (occasions rather) where I find myself getting worked up ("energized" would be an appropriate term here) enough to delve into the process of absorbing text, both from the article itself, the external sources, and of course the discourse taking place on this page, then processing this both linearly (logically?) and by associations and analogies, hopefully contributing with some lateral thinking as well to the benefit of everybody, and finally, before the (hopefully cool) air exits the balloon, put some significant thoughts down in writing in a way that facilitates the continuing collective effort. __meco 19:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, in any event, I hope were all on the same page.  I stopped by the library and printed out four articles on psychodynamics, 1940s to 1950s, from JSTOR a few minutes ago.  After I read them, I will probably add some material to the article in the next week or so.  Talk later: --Sadi Carnot 21:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: DashaKat edits

message: In addition to what I have stated above, i.e. how "psychodynamics" (the most generally-used term presently), goes by various names by different noted authors, but is invariably the same concept, i.e. any application of physics, particularly thermodynamics, to psychology that can trace its roots to Freud. Bowlby (1969) calls it “Freud’s psychical energy model”, Jung (1928) calls it “psychic energism and dynamism”, Freud (1923) calls it the “dynamic view”, or “mental dynamics”, etc., is that prior to the 1970s, approximately, the science of thermodynamics was still referred to by many as the “science of energetics”, among other names, such as the “theory of heat”, and the term “energetics” was mostly used in reference to life.  One example, is American physiological chemist Albert Lehninger’s very popular 1973, 2nd edition, Bioenergetics – the Molecular Basis of Biological Energy Transformation, in which the first chapter is “biological work”, the second chapter is “principles of thermodynamics”, and the rest is ATP-energetics and its applications, essentially.  The modern day equivalent of this is American biophysicist Don Haynie’s 2001 textbook Biological Thermodynamics.      
Another term for thermodynamics, particularly in the late 19th century, was “mechanical theory of heat”. In 1876, for instance, American civil engineer Richard Sears McCulloch, in his Treatise on the Mechanical Theory of Heat and its Application to the Steam-Engine, "the mechanical theory of heat, sometimes called thermo-dynamics (note the hyphen), is that branch of science which treats of the phenomena of heat as effects of motion and position."  These types of transitory views in terminology, might help us shed some light on why Freud, who began thinking about this issue in 1874, doesn’t specifically come right out and say (or reference) in is publications (although I still need to read more of his work), something to the effect that, “my new theory is the thermodynamics of psychology”.  --Sadi Carnot 05:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical terminology

message: Can anyone explain to me what is going on in the current section?  There is a mix between an ordered list and bullets, but I'm lost.  Can we resolve this?
--1000Faces (talk) 00:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current section 

message: I find it somewhat remarkable that a Wiki article on such a well-known theoretical framework lacks a section devoted to criticism of this framework.
Is it really that there are no criticisms of psychodynamics that meet Wikipedia standards of notability ? 
Could someone with relevant knowledge please address this issue ?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.178.36.3 (talk) 23:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Criticism AT ALL ? 

message: First of all it should be clearly stated that it is nothing more than a PSEUDOscience. This belief is neither falsifiable nor testable thus it doesnt fulfil criteria of a scientific theory. Psychodynamics must not be described as to be equal to both biological psychiatry and cognitive-behavioral psychology.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.10.12.76 (talk) 01:19, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  PSEUDOscience 

message: I have long thought that the term Psychodynamics suffers from the problem of being used in two ways.  The first, as used in the opening sentence of this article, is non-specific and a category of study that includes all past and future approaches.  The second refers to 'all theories originating with Freud'.  The two are mutually exclusive, especially as the Psychoanalytic world divided into three groups long ago, and many researchers who started with a Freudian-based training analysis, such as R D Laing and John Bowlby, rebelled openly early on and went their own way.  Criticism?  There can be no criticism of Psychodynamics under the broad (and surely preferable) definition, because it is a category, a field of study that is ongoing and constantly revised. Of Freud and his theories of course there is much criticism.  Compare with Physics, which defines a field of endeavour, and thus cannot be subject to criticism (except by those opposed to knowledge).  Newtonian physics of course can be criticised, but we do not define Physics as 'all theories that originated with Newton'.  There is a similar dilemma with Evolution which Wiki editors insist on defining as synonymous with 'The Modern Synthesis' or 'Darwinian theory of Evolution'. They thus seek to destroy the very possibility of 'evolution' as a subject of ongoing study; which it very much is. This is straight out of Orwell and 1984.  I know it's not currently the role of Wikipedia to define words, but I think it is going to have to be (along with explanation like this) if it is to get out of some of the traps that it is currently stuck in. Does anyone here think R D Laing, John Bowlby etc worked in Psychodynamics? If so, lets extend the list of theories, and emphasise Psychodynamics as a broad category of psychology. If it is not that, then we have no name for a field that very much needs a name, and has nothing necessarily to do with Freud or Thermodynamics. I consider the opening sentence to be spot-on. --Lindosland (talk) 22:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The problems arise from conflicting definitions 

message: In the introduction there is the sentence; "Psychodynamic therapies depend upon a theory of inner conflict, wherein repressed behaviours and emotions surface into the patient’s consciousness; generally, one conflict is subconscious".  I am not sure how the last phrase of this fits in or even what it means.  Can anyone clarify?  LookingGlass (talk) 21:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introductory confusion 

message: Cite: <<(a) the interaction of the emotional and motivational forces that affect behavior and mental states, especially on a subconscious level; (b) inner forces affecting behavior: the study of the emotional and motivational forces that affect behavior and states of mind.>>
I'm confused -- wherein lies the difference between (a) and (b)?
Mentropane (talk) 11:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  (a) vs. (b)