[But as an adult, you have free will. You can make conscious choices about your behavior and thought patterns, regardless of your childhood experiences. That’s why I’ve never put much stock in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis.
We have the potential to do this - make a conscious choice to move away from previous modes of thinking or override learned behaviour - but many people find they can't. To actually turn that potential to reality can be difficult, hence the therapy, which often teaches people to do just that (if they so desire). There are psychological and spiritual complications that can get in the way of conscious re-creation, to say nothing of the fact that not everyone is comfortable with change, particularly to their basic conceptions of self and the world around them. Having the potential ability to use the mind in a certain way doesn't mean it comes easily. And part of psychotherapy, etc, is helping a person understand what it is they want - what's harmful or detrimental to them and what they want to change, or what they wish to come to terms with, move beyond or accept.
People might have problems finding enough motivation or strength to enforce any conscious decisions, because those decisions fly in the face of beliefs, behavioural patterns and assumptions they learnt during childhood. Saying that the conscious mind can just blithely override childhood understandings is not (for most people) any use, because the foundation of their psyche is that very same mass of childhood experience. The adult mind has capacities the young mind doesn't, but that doesn't mean the adult mind does or should replace the young mind - it's a matter of the mind learning new means of coping with itself and the world it experiences, growing organically. Most people can't just neatly segregate their childhood and adolescence from their current self and take their mind in totally new directions, leaving half of it behind. If a person
can do that, and thinks it proper, then I suppose that's good for them and, yes, they'll likely have no need or desire for any assistance with mental health. But not everyone can, or thinks it wise to do so. And some people will need to resolve conflicts between their desire to outgrow prior modes of thinking and a need to incorporate youthful experiences into their psyche in a manner that brings stability and acceptance.
If I may reveal my personal biases here, I'm very wary of people who think or claim that they operate primarily on the basis of conscious decision, because I just don't see that as possible. The mind works on many levels simultaneously and I don't believe that one level can ever actually claim full control (whether that's conscious reason, emotion, instinct, etc - they're all in it together). And the mind needs monitoring - all of it, with self-awareness having to expand
into all of it. Limiting your self-awareness to what you've consciously created is, in my mind, a little dangerous, because it will only tell you part of the story.
And I'm not comfortable myself with discarding childhood patterns or refusing to incorporate into the current psyche the lessons learnt in youth; it seems self-diminishing, essentially splitting yourself in two and insisting part of you - or the you who came before - is insufficient, less than worthy. There's quite a disjuncture in my mind already between my childhood self and who I now am - I don't want to lose myself further by refusing to incorporate any part of me into my sense of self (and, yes, I'm being somewhat hyopcritical here given the anger isue, but then again, haven't many of our fellows been advising me that trying to consciously discard it rather than integrate it is a poor decision? The people of this board are wise
)
So I just don't think it's as easy as you seem to be claiming, at least not for many of us.
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