Twit Follows: @AChrisHeathMD — The Splits Archive

@AChrisHeathMD is... um... interesting <strokes beard, jots notes>.

He's a psychoanalyst who's active on Twitter and YouTube spreading the word about the glory of Freud.

And he's terrific.

Most people think of psychoanalysis as something that happens in a private room at a time strictly agreed between patient and therapist. As such, internet psychoanalysis is a contradiction in terms.

@AChrisHeathMD defies that and makes Freudian ideas accessible to anybody browsing the internet at work or late at night. He does this with his benignly barmy, oddly soothing vlogs at Freudalicious Mind on YouTube. Topics include procrastination, guilt tripping, mass hysteria and surviving family holidays.

A declaration - I'm a fan of the unconscious. I think it’s a horror writer's greatest resource. I also think a better public understanding of the unconscious could solve broader societal ones - I'd love Trump to go on the couch, for all our sakes, or if not his voters.

But talking cures are expensive and time consuming. The theory has the reputation of being complex and unfathomable. Unless you've got a lot of money and confidence behind you psychoanalysis basically irrelevant. This is a huge flaw in the Freudian project.

Freud knew this was a problem and he set up clinics in Vienna offering free treatment to people who would not otherwise be able to access it.

Today this has to mean coming out of the consulting room and academies, on to the internet. And not with enigmatic teasers, but with material that's actually useful to people, even if this means losing some of the magic of the process. You've got to start somewhere.

That's why @AChrisHeathMD is cool, in my opinion. He democratises Freud and and the great thinkers that came after Freud, like Melanie Klein. This is absolutely true to the original spirit of the practice - that it's for everybody, not an elite.

High five @AChrisHeathMD. An essential follow.