Talk:Psychodynamics

No merge needed

The related Category:Psychodynamic psychotherapy has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for Discussion page.

• Comment: It should properly be moved to Category:Psychodynamics and the related terms such as regression (psychology), psychic energy, drive theory, id, ego, and super-ego, entropy (psychology), and probably at least a dozen others that could stand to be written, should be added there as well. Here’s a quick description to psychodynamic psychotherapy that I just found. From the books I have read and own, psychodynamics, i.e. psycho (mind) + dynamics (thermodynamics), is the theory, found in many forms (most of which derive from Freud and Jung), and psychodynamic psychotherapy is the application of the theory used in clinical practice by many psychologists in many forms. I have a good-sized bookshelf on these topics and will be glad to back up any disagreements with refs. --Sadi Carnot 05:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Just because one editor thinks the proposed merger isn't warranted doesn't justify the same editor closing the discussion by removing the merger template from the respective article pages. I have consequently reinstated the merger tags. The same goes for discussion to delete category. It is my opinion that Category:Psychodynamics is (almost) as unjustified as Category:Psychodynamic psychotherapy, and if User:Sadi Carnot insists on solving the dispute by renaming the category, I shall nominate also the second category for deletion. __meco 08:41, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Meco, please explain to me why you think a merge is needed? Also, explain to which article you feel should be merged into which and why? Thank you: --Sadi Carnot 09:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Also threats are not welcome conceptions in Wikipedia, thusly go ahead and please nominate category:psychodynamics for deletion. --Sadi Carnot 09:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Spurious establishment of thermodynamics parentage

I find the connection between Psychodynamics and thermodynamics incidental, and I find the insertions of references to thermodynamics in several places in the current article to be arbitrary conjecture on the part of one editor and not adequately supported by references. Just as Category:Jungian psychology (which User:Sadi Carnot has used as corroboration for this linkage) isn't shown as a sub-category of Category:Thermodynamics, nor should Psychodynamics be put in such a formal direct relation. This relation is professed to be based foremost on the application of the principle of entropy, indeed on the entropy page there is a link to Psychological entropy which in fact redirects to the current article. I assert nevertheless that this does not constitute an adequate rationale for establishing Psychodynamics as a sub-category to Category:Thermodynamics.

I find it noteworthy that before User:Sadi Carnot started the current article in March of 2006, only the Psychodynamic psychotherapy article existed, and it at no mention of thermodynamics whatsoever. In the Sigmund Freud article the connection between the physicists Helmholtz and von Brucke is discussed only in respect to Freud's early career, i.e. medical school. I can not see that the connection between these disciplines (thermodynamics and psychodynamic psychology) has been developed in any other way than its extension through the Jungian school's application of thermodynamic metaphors. __meco 09:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

And what is your point? Everything in all the related articles is sourced? --Sadi Carnot 09:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

History lesson for misinformed meco

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)

Is anything at all about this article reliable?

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)

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)

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)