This post is part 1 of a series.
Psychiatric The symptoms are just that –symptoms– or expressions of some psychological, emotional, spiritualityphilosophical or sometimes physiological or neurological condition, conflict, imbalance, wrong attitude or distorted core beliefs. Most popular psychotherapies today tend to be symptom-focused, meaning they take the symptom, e.g anxiety, depression, maniaor addictionat face value and try to suppress or eliminate it. It can sometimes feel like a futile effort.
Hercules and the Hydra
In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a hideous snake-like creature with nine venomous heads, one of which was immortal. The legendary hero Hercules was used by the gods as punishment to perform 12 labors, one of which was the terrible Hydra. Hercules skillfully pulled it from its nest, every time he cut off one of the Hydra’s heads, the two heads immediately returned to their place. Preventing their return required more invasive intervention. With the help of his cousin, he burned the cut wounds with fire and prevented the poisoned heads from regenerating. However, even then, Hercules was unable to completely slay the Hydra and eventually buried its immortal head under a rock.
Change characters
In psychotherapythis myth may be related to a controversial phenomenon known as “symptom substitution”: the idea that simply treating and eliminating one of a patient’s presenting symptoms or signs can cause it to reappear in another form or cause others to suddenly take their place. In fact, attempts to psychologically or pharmacologically eliminate, erase, or cut off certain symptoms may in some cases produce more complex and potentially dangerous symptoms, e.g. psychosisdepression or mania. These are potential dangers of a strictly symptom-oriented approach, as is the case with most psychotherapies today. But is the so-called character swap a real thing?
The main difference between those psychotherapists today who accept or reject the phenomenon of symptom substitution is the acceptance or rejection of traditional methods. psychoanalytical concept of “unconscious.” Specialists in usually short-term, symptom-focused treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapist, problem solving therapy, injury– focused treatment, desensitization and eye movement processing, hypnosisand behavioral therapy, referring to various scientific studies carried out over the decades, for which the psychoanalytic concept of symptom switching has been rejected once and for all, possibly proving that symptom switching does not only occur clinically, and that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of this phenomenon. (For example, see Kazdin, 1982; Tryon, 2008.)
Critics of this controversial theory argue that the patient’s psychological symptom is the problem itself and does not necessarily originate in or represent a deep unconscious conflict. As such, they claim to target and relieve specific symptoms such as panic attacks, manic or depressive episodes, obsessions, or compulsive behavioror addiction directly during treatment. But this conclusion is based on an extremely dogmatic, rigid and literal interpretation of what transposition really is and what it actually entails. Changing characters is nothing always, inevitably and automatically it happens in every situation and when it happens it may not necessarily manifest as we expected. Although I am not aware of any legitimate research studies that have disproved this possibility, there is currently, to my knowledge, no research that strongly supports the existence of sign switching. But in any case, this can be a controversial phenomenon due to the complexities and complexities of quantitative or qualitative research. (This could be a good dissertation topic for the psychology students out there.)
