Honest Book Reviews

Psychoanalysis as a Replacement of Stimulants that are used as Treatment for ADHD The purpose of this essay is to explore whether stimulant drugs should still be used to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) in children. In addition, if the answer to the previous question is no, then what would be the best alternative form of treatment for children with ADD? Methylphenidate is the most common medication used to treat attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD Treatment, n. d.). Since it is the most used stimulant, methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, will be the drug that is going to be compared to therapy, specifically psychoanalysis. Its main mechanism of action is to increase dopamine in the central nervous system. The increased presence of dopamine will adumbrate the abuse potential of the drug, however, this will be discussed later. Cocaine and amphetamines have certain similarities and differences when compared to the main treatment for ADHD. A difference...

 Zizek, UBI, and the American election With the upcoming American presidential election, it is increasingly evident how change , as a concept, is interwoven in the political landscape. On one hand, to return to the political environment of the pre-Trump era, voters can choose to elect Vice President Joe Biden, but wasn’t this the exact climate that gave us Trump in the first place? On the other hand, voters have the option to re-elect Donald Trump, who needs no introduction to his list of defects. This can take us back to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s quip about Stalin: “back in the late 1920s, Stalin was asked by a journalist which deviation is worse, the Rightist one (Bukharin & company) or the Leftist one (Trotsky & company), and he snapped back: ‘They are both worse!’” Isn’t that the case with the options of Trump or Biden? “They are both worse!” But if both are worse, is there a “better” option? Just like the main character in the movie The Matrix , we are ...

The psychoanalysts’ couch has gone out of favor for more short forms of treatment. With the upcoming primaries in the Democratic Party in the U. S., it is important to not only look at how each candidate's policies would affect the health care industry, but the practice of psychoanalysts as a whole. This leads us to the premise of this essay, which is that Medicare for All is beneficial for psychoanalysis. A couple of questions arise that will be each answered in a small section. For the voter unfamiliar with the field, the question is whether psychoanalysis is effective. For the voter unfamiliar with how insurance companies operate, the question is on what grounds insurance companies cover short vs long-term treatments. And finally, for the non-Bernie supporter, the question is how Medicare for All could be payed and how it would affect psychoanalysis. Is Psychoanalysis effective? - The symptoms Not only in popular culture did the conversation shift from “who is your psy...

Movies and Psychoanalysis (This analysis is based on one version of the script, which is slightly different from the movie, and the film itself).      Psychoanalysis can, sometimes, be seen as a great tool used in a variety of fields. For individuals unfamiliar with its purpose and methods, psychoanalysis tends to be recognized as a form of therapy that deals with dream interpretation. However, psychoanalysis can be so much more and this is evident in the range of book titles that use it as a means of investigation (i. e. Psychoanalysis and feminism , Psychoanalysis and religion , Psychoanalysis and art , etc.). This plethora of combinations leads us to question the purpose of psychoanalysis.      Well, the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association, Mark Solms, hits the nail on the head with his answer. He stated during an interview, "I think what psych...

This essay is divided into three sections. The first one describes the process in which science progresses and why, based on the rules of this model, there has been a shift from psychoanalysis to behaviorism and from that school of thought to neuroscience. The second section compares the treatments derived from these three perspectives in terms of effect size, relapse, and long-term outcomes. The last division proposes a new paradigm shift, grounded in the pros and cons of each field, towards neuropsychoanalysis. As mentioned before, the first focus of this paper will be to describe the cycles, which elucidate how science develops throughout time, proposed by the physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn. He made a notable contribution in philosophy of science when he introduced the concept of paradigm shifts in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This notion could be summarized as a cycle that science goes through composed of five steps: normal science, model drift, m...