Deeper Psychological Meaning?

Sounds like he has his own self worth issues, so he has to make others feel bad about themselves to boost his ego. I have never heard of analyzing someone through their food habits. If so, someone would have a field day with my food issues (food can’t touch, eat one thing at a time, etc). Welcome to fluther.

Psychodynamic psychology, the classical Freudian idea that we are motivated by unconscious inner conflicts whic are revealed through dreams and slips and our responses to ambiguous stimuli (such as the figures in a Rorschach Test) has largely fallen by the wayside in most large colleges and universities, having been supplanted by cognitive-behavioral theory, which is more amenable to empirical proofs.

It sounds to me as though you just had the misfortune of being involved with a manipulative man, and he just happened to use psychology as his weapon because that is what he was familiar with.

I am willing to go out on a limb and state that he had no special access to your inner motivations and thought processes. At least no more than the average manipulative fortune teller at a carnival.

I’ve heard of it as part of those “pickup artist” schemes for fast seduction. It was something along the lines of “ask an open ended question, whose answer has some unconscious stuff going on, and then ally yourself with/against the happiness/fear it reveals.”

There is a related concept that might be worth further research to you: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a legit psychology theory/practice that the seduction community has grabbed as a way of trying to establish fast trust and go all head-games-y on women.

@Lovethebeach so do you think he was going to throw your answer back in your face and call you fat or something? I’ve been in a couple of abusive realtionships in my youth.

These people seem to do this because of something they themselves are lacking. They seem to feel if they can put someone else down, it elevates them somehow. I don’t think even they undrstand fully why they do it, otherwise they would stop inflicting pain on others. I“m glad you recognized a potentially harmful relationship and got yourself out of it.

I agree with @aphilotus: this man’s trying quackery on you. Something in him wants company to manipulate and if he’s not getting the positives he wants, he’s getting off on getting the negatives, all at your expense. Run.

@aphilotus Just checked the wikipedia article: actually, NLP has been looked upon by the real psychiatry community as creepy quackery for 20+ years. So Pickup artists are like double-quacks.

@aphilotus If NLP is legit, then it must be self-legitimizing. Kinda like Scientology.

@pdworkin see my self-correction just above your post.

Oops! Didn’t realize that was you, since you spoke in the third person.

You’re trippin’ boo

@pdworkin psychodynamic psychotherapy still holds sway in some circles, and also is not mutually exclusive to cognitive-behavioral methods. Interestingly, research shows that it’s the relationship between the therapist and the client that promotes healing – regardless of the therapist’s school of thought or the method(s) he or she employs.

@Lovethebeach: Psychiatric/psychological interviews do not, as a matter of routine, contain questions about your food preferences. I agree with those above (and with your gut instinct) that you happened upon a manipulative and unhappy individual. Anyone who asks seemingly innocuous questions and then tries to “psychoanalyze” them – while on a date, no less – is someone with whom you do not want to get involved…

@littlewesternwoman Where, other than New York, is psychoanalysis still taught as a viable treatment modality in the United States? Where is it reimbursable under normative health care insurance policies? Where are the objective tests documenting any component of psychodynamic theory as being definitive?

I agree that if you had Carl Rogers or Albert Ellis as a therapist you would likely have had an ameliorative experience, but how do you account for the damage that Otto Kernberg has done as opposed to the benefits that Marsha Linnehan has achieved with patients suffering from the same personality disorder?

i want to thank all of you for your wonderful input. I was starting to get down on myself .like are there any good men out there? I am in California for 10 days so this will be good to get back in touch with myself and go back East with a new attitude.