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I'm glad we got to spend a little time talking about Freud and psychoanalysis on Monday.  As Dr. Grobstein pointed out, the man and his thoughts are such a huge influence on pretty much everything we talk about in class every week.  

I had a professor in undergrad who always referred to Freud as Sigmund "Fraud," and who was fond of saying, "Now, now, its not true that Freud did enough cocaine to kill a small horse. (pause) No, Freud did enough cocaine to kill a large elephant."  Although this was somewhat funny, it never really sat right with me.  I know a lot of Freud's theories (Oedipal complex) have fallen out of style, but a lot of them are still valid and in use today (defense mechanisms).  So, calling it a social nuisance (Marty's third quote) is not doing justice to the pioneering Freud did.  

 As far as a comparison between CBT and psychoanalysis, I don't see much difference in the end goal - to develop a new story.  It seems like CBT just gives you a more concrete method for doing this.  More tools...  It seems empowering to me.  

With that in mind, I disagree with Yona and Katy's final quote.  If you were blaming the victim, then I suppose that would not be constructive, but that was never my impression of CBT.  To me, it seemed like the patient was made aware of harmful cognitions, but not blamed for them.   

Lastly, I've been thinking about Adi's question about the usefulness of sadness in a spiritual context.  Considering the content of our discussions this semester, I'm hesitant to assign any significance or purpose to sadness as helping move along a spiritual path because it would follow that there is an end to that path or a final goal we are working towards.  I still feel like there is no external greater meaning to things beyond the meaning that is assigned by our storytellers.  

However, I was reading about physics (astronauts in particular) and I started thinking about this again.  When astronauts are in space, one of the dangers that they have to worry about is the fact that there is no gravity in their space shuttle.  As a result, their muscles atrophy.  If we took away sadness, using medications or any other means, then there is little doubt in my mind that some part of us would atrophy.  I just hesitate to say whether this is "good or bad."