What is "insight"?

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Earthcircle

Well-known member
I had many years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with several different therapists. I never really knew what the point was, although I did my bit by free-associating about early childhood traumas. It was depressing, but I figured it would eventually relieve something. Unfortunately, it never relieved anything -- not even my curiosity as to why therapy would consist of me free-associating about my early childhood traumas.

Then the internet was invented. I could google "psychodynamic," "psychoanalytic," and similar words and phrases. For the first time, I could get some sense as to what all that apparently pointless nonsense was supposed to have been about. It turns out that psychoanalytic therapy is "insight oriented," which means that, in the process of free-associating about early childhood trauma, unconscious "material" will become conscious. A piece of newly conscious material is known as an "insight," and it will be countered with something called, appropriately enough, "resistance." In all honesty, nothing in my psychoanalytic psychotherapeutic experience really fit that description. Nothing unconscious became conscious. Given that I had this sort of therapy for many years, I am rather amazed.

Here is my question. Can anyone give an illustration of an insight? I don't want a definition. I don't understand psychoanalytic definitions, so a definition probably won't work. I want an example. If someone could give me an example, then maybe I would finally have some idea as to what an insight is. What's really remarkable is, even after many years of free association, I didn't experience anything that seems to fit the word "insight."
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
In the next few days, I'm going to get my hands on Karen Horney's book Self-Analysis. Surely, there will be an illustration of insight in there, presumably several. I will keep you posted, because I am sure that some people on this forum are interested in this.
 
Pacific_Loner

Pacific_Loner

Pirate from the North Pole
Isn't it something like...

I grew up with my mother telling me that I should avoid working in groups
Because since I'm good at nothing, I bring them down.
Insight: Oh, WAIT, is it why I avoid people??

... Or am I being too simple?
 
SoScared

SoScared

Well-known member
google Vipassana (insight) Guided Meditation. From there you will find mindfullness. Mindfullness is the route to Nirvana.
 
I

ImNotMyIllness

Well-known member
Pacific_Loner said:
Isn't it something like...

I grew up with my mother telling me that I should avoid working in groups
Because since I'm good at nothing, I bring them down.
Insight: Oh, WAIT, is it why I avoid people??

... Or am I being too simple?
Click to expand...

That's horrible. :( I think that would play a huge role into why you avoid people.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
Pacific_Loner said:
Isn't it something like...

I grew up with my mother telling me that I should avoid working in groups
Because since I'm good at nothing, I bring them down.
Insight: Oh, WAIT, is it why I avoid people??

... Or am I being too simple?
Click to expand...

My father was blatantly sadistic, and I would often wonder in therapy "Am I here to realize that my father scares me because I have vivid recollections of him being mean to me?" The only pertinent "insight" seemed to be something dead obvious. But no therapist ever suggested that it was too obvious for me not to be in therapy.
 
E

Earthcircle

Well-known member
Pacific_Loner said:
Isn't it something like...

I grew up with my mother telling me that I should avoid working in groups
Because since I'm good at nothing, I bring them down.
Insight: Oh, WAIT, is it why I avoid people??

... Or am I being too simple?
Click to expand...

It seems to me like that's the sort of thing one would already know. Are you saying that you actually didn't know this, but it dawned on you in therapy? The source of my problems has always been blatantly obvious. The point of free association eludes me.
 
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Pacific_Loner

Pacific_Loner

Pirate from the North Pole
Earthcircle said:
It seems to me like that's the sort of thing one would already know. Are you saying that you actually didn't know this, but it dawned on you in therapy? The source of my problems has always been blatantly obvious. The point of free association eludes me.
Click to expand...

Well maybe it's a stupid example. I never went to therapy. I didn't already know that because I didn't remember, it's while talking to someone who knew me when I was a kid that the memories came back.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
Pacific_Loner said:
Well maybe it's a stupid example. I never went to therapy. I didn't already know that because I didn't remember, it's while talking to someone who knew me when I was a kid that the memories came back.
Click to expand...

You had the experience of memories coming back? I never experienced that. So that really happens?
 
Pacific_Loner

Pacific_Loner

Pirate from the North Pole
Earthcircle said:
You had the experience of memories coming back? I never experienced that. So that really happens?
Click to expand...

Well I don't think we are talking about the same thing, I mean I didn't forget that my father killed my mother in front of my eyes or stuff like that, you know. I think it's pretty common to forget things from childhood. And then you witness an event that brings back a memory that you completely forgot, or someone tells you "I remember when we were 8 and blah blah blah"... and you go "what are you talking ab... OH MY GOD" :p No? I have a crappy memory though, so maybe it's just me.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
Lea said:
Insight is realizing, that psychoanalytic psychotherapy is crap.
Click to expand...

It does seem strange that rehearsing bad memories over and over and over again for years, especially in the absence of any really informative feedback, is supposed to make a person feel better. Always made me feel worse. But there are meta-analyses which supposedly show that this stuff actually works. It seems like it only works for the other guy, not me. But maybe that's because I never had an insight.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
Looking back on my life, it's remarkable to me how little I've achieved and how precarious my life is now. I blame this on therapy. I squandered huge amounts of time, energy, and money thinking that I was helping myself. In hindsight, I was not helping myself at all. I was just creating the illusion of helping myself according to a cultural myth.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
I found a passage in Karen Horney's book "Self-Analysis," starting on page 111, which gives examples of psychoanalytic insights. The following dissertation contains a paraphrase of Horney's discussion, beginning on page 252. Does anyone have thoughts about how this may relate to social anxiety? Any other thoughts on insight?

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5100/1/5100_2553.PDF
 
E

Earthcircle

Well-known member
Pacific_Loner said:
Isn't it something like...

I grew up with my mother telling me that I should avoid working in groups
Because since I'm good at nothing, I bring them down.
Insight: Oh, WAIT, is it why I avoid people??

... Or am I being too simple?
Click to expand...

Based on what I read in Horney, this could be an insight.
 
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Earthcircle

Well-known member
Has anyone here had an insight which reduced their SA? Does anyone here know how someone could have years of psychoanalysis while failing to have a single insight? If insights reduce SA , is it possible that many of us would actually have many of the same insights?
 
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