one of the ideas that fucks me up the most is the possibility that people who strongly believe some psychological theory will sort of polarize everyone around them into acting in accordance with that theory
Conversation
i think this thought first vaguely occurred to me reading this bit from SSC's review of PiHKaL and it's just lived in my head rent-free ever since, accreting a shell around itself made of thoughts about self-fulfilling prophecies, evaporative cooling, etc
slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/11/boo
1
2
46
also this bit from "different worlds," also by SSC
"This is worrying not just as a psychiatrist, but as someone who wants to know anything about other people at all."
slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/dif
2
3
58
i suppose insofar as this sort of thing happens the decent thing to do is to err on the side of believing psychological theories that attribute people a lot of agency and fundamental goodness
Quote Tweet
coherence therapy calls this "symptom coherence" - taking the stance that every thing you do that drives you nuts makes deep sense once you get the underlying emotional reality that's driving it. it very cleanly articulates something i've been grasping at for years and years
Show this thread
1
44
also relevant to questions like "why is everyone's psych book full of case studies of patients for whom that specific psych method works so perfectly"
presumably there are multiple selection effects going on, and then perhaps more subtle influence stuff?
3
29
one word for this is "yoga"
1
5
hmmmmmmmm can you elaborate on this?
1
5
well should check my ass here but it's something like getting an attractor loop running in your belly/wherever and various forms of subtle communication pulling people into an analogue of it
if you watch Wild Wild Country and squint you can kinda see Osho doing it
GIF
2
2
12
one thing i've noticed here that seems relevant is that the inventor of a therapy modality seems to be able to run a much stronger loop than their students, and correspondingly seems to affect their clients more strongly and in ways more consistent with the modality
3
14
it frustrates me a little that i haven't seen any commentary about this. but like i've watched a video of richard schwartz doing IFS and it feels really important to me that he sort of... vibe-ly hypnotizes people into believing that IFS works, which makes it work better?
you could probably do the same thing as a faith healer and make faith healing work, as long as you were working with someone who was already inclined to believe that faith healing works (which is why i believe that faith healing works)
3
9
and which is why hypnosis works, and why placebo works
4
I think that this is exactly right
Terms like placebo, predictive processing, and probably QRIs resonance stuff comes into play here
Maybe just "self-fulfilling prophecy"
4
Not sure if it goes without saying but reality distortion fields and charismatic leaders work similarly on themselves and others. I think there are some popular works going around talking about this
To be effectively cultic you have to buy into your own BS
2
5
hmm yeah that definitely seems relevant. it's interesting b/c i wouldn't describe richard schwartz as particularly charismatic, not compared to like osho for example. but i am pretty sure he does believe very very strongly in IFS and that does come through
1
4
Show replies
Parts work comes from hypnosis, so this makes sense to me. I think of IFS as more of an interface/process than a claim about underlying reality. You just kinda go with it and it works.
2
4
Parts hypnotherapy in deeper trance is interesting because the client is basically in a waking dream. Parts are just dream figures. A mind organized into a story that you can interact with. Its cool to watch cause parts will be even weirder and more dreamlike than I see in IFS
1
6
Show replies
Richard Schwartz doing IFS is weird. A part pops up and he's like "could you ask that part to move to the side" and it just does. When I facilitate, I do a lot more of emphasizing with the part, checking its goal etc. before asking it to move, but somehow he can just skip a lot.
3
10
Maybe this is just an indication of me doing unnecessary steps but I've also seen/had other experienced facilitators do IFS and it feels like their style is closer to mine.
1
7
Show replies