i think it kinda is.
no, but several psychatrists are pseudobozos
-Imp
There have been some books that have compared modern psychiatry to the Spanish Inquisition or the witch hunts.
Thomas Stephen Szasz has written more than one book on this topic. He is a trained psychiatrist.
His bio from wikipedia is here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sza … _arguments
Of course he is sympathetic to the claims of Scientology against psychiatry, but is not a Scientologist himself. Szasz is an atheist.
With Scientology, Szasz co-founded The Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
The major complaints have been about obvious things like lobotomy or ECT, but there are other things, not so obvious, that are still pretty despictable though. The over use of SSRIs and drugs like ritalin are good examples.
But I think I read how some authorities have used mental illness labels to basically keep people in line. I mean that giving someone a label of having a mental health problem in this country can make that person feel llike they are disabled and destined to a life of either institutional care or living on the streets. That kind of attitude serves no one but the people who want to keep people from expressing themselves and being who they are.
I think being labeled as mentally ill has been abused by some and it may be hard to say who is at fault for that; but the pyschiatry profession as a whole has not been so upstanding in a lot of other ways, so it may fall on the profession to take the blame for perhaps the criminal justice systems abuse of these labels. I think institutionalizing people 40 years ago was probably not done fairly and that may be part of the charges against the profession. Obviously some wrongs have been changed since the days of locking people away and giving them brain damage to treat their problems, or just numbing them out on serious medications.
Some have even said that certain labels have been used to make people feel like they are less than normal. Even today the word schizophrenia can cause a certain reaction in a lot of people. And some people blame the tactics of the psychiatry profession over the years for some of these labels having that strong of an influence on how people view mental illness in general, and some specific diseases like schizophrenia in particular.
There is one reviewer on amazon that basically was against Szasz’s book (Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America) because of his own struggle with mental illness. Why someone’s own mental health problems makes an argument against Szasz’s claims is not clear to me. I wonder why that person did not get treated sooner and went on to struggle for so many years. How does that person’s experience make a case FOR psychiatry is beyond me. Of course this review does NOT say anything about the book but only explains about his own mental health problems which is not, in my opinion, what a book review should be about. You can’t tell if the person even read the book from that review. That reviewer is too close to the subject to be objective.
veoh.com/videoDetails.html?v=e130186wHwf73xQ
Interesting short clip on psychiatry as a fraud. An interesting critcism of psychiatry as a study of mind disorder, a strong note on the dangers of constructing mental illness.
Thanks for the clip Colinsign! Very interesting.
It verifies feelings I’ve had towards the bs of “chemical imbalances” in the brain as an explanation of mental “illness.”
I think Psychologists are more pseudo than Psychiatrists.
Because the only psyche on this board (that I am aware of) has been banned, I can presently wax poetic on how their practice is an absolute mockary of science.
Psuedo-science? Pffff. That is giving it far too much credit!
Tommy and I agree, it is quackery of the highest form!
I’ll admit that they aren’t very thorough with their diagnoses and their treatments are questionable but it’s not like they’re conning the public. They’re not out to gain anything, well maybe money but who isn’t nowadays? It’s the best form of treatment we have at this point.
I would imagine that psychology is only as good as the relationship between the psychologist and the client.
If the psychologist is somewhat untalented/unskilled or the client isn’t in the mood, psychology is probably worthless.
Otherwise I would expect that therapy can work “micro-surgical” wonders that may improve the client’s life without her ever becoming the wiser.
But with regard to psychiatry, I’ve yet to envy a single penis, so Freud can shove it up his id.
Psychology, of course, comes from psyche, which means soul, so the original idea of “psychology” is a lot different than the “scientific” outlook we have now.
Current psychology, of course, shadows current science, but, as that video shows above, it doesn’t always work out. They have a theory, but the theory is completely bogus, it is just based off something “scientific.”
It may be the best we have right now, in terms of the general population (of course when you consider specific types of people, with specific goals in life, there are more appropriate alternatives to meet those specifc criteria), but all it really has to compete with is religion that has failed to evolve to properly integrate with the modern world (which isn’t the religion’s failure… it’s the inability of individuals to properly integrate the two into a useful map showing how one should act).
Since science cannot tell people what they should do with their lives, it doesn’t discuss an ultimate purpose, a “scientific” psychology focuses on making a person adaptable to a situation that the therapist believes is the real world, by accepting certain views of the therapist’s reality that are necessary in order to take part in certain “fit” behaviors without experiencing cognitive dissonance in the process.
The subject has to become convinced that the therapist, in a religious sense, speaks for “God.”
As Sabrina says, the treatment depends on the skill of the psychologist.
The psychologist has to be integrated (He has to have joined the masculine and feminine of his nature, the yin and the yang) so that he understands himself well enough that he won’t project himself onto others (Freud’s ultimate flaw).
Since just about all psychologists are trained according to an unenlightened university, which focuses on the scientific, the masculine, most psychologists are merely pressuring their patients to act a certain way, rather than getting at the actual problem (which the psychologists don’t know themselves).
For psychology to really work (as in, resulting in a healthy “soul”, a healthy consciousness) the psychologist has to be able to truly understand what makes the patient unique (not what makes the patient like other people, which doctors do when they diagnose someone), and what kind of environment the person should make for themself in order to thrive (do their best work, which will come natural to them, keeping them interested, focused, and happy).
And, of course, there needs to be a world in which the patients creative energies can be put to use. Where they can attain a line of work that they take joy in. Otherwise, they are merely slaves being forced to work in order to survive.
When I spoke with my psychiatrist on monday he said “I’d like to discuss philosophy with you but I do’nt wanna”. Psychiatrists>Pscychologists,obviously.Pschologists days should be numbered,but of course they are not. Guattari maybe right Psychologists= the new priests,with our parents replacing god,as the entity we can never appease,(at least until our money runs out).
Clinical psychology can totally be seen as pseudoscience. To me, clinical psychologists are hardly psychologists. People seem to think that clinical psychology (talk therapy) is the only branch of psychology, but in fact, it is one of many. Psychology is concerned with so much more (language acquisition, neuropsychological basis of sensation & perception, etc) than just helping people resolve internal conflicts via talk therapy.
Psychiatry that treats psychological disorders as biological disorders through administration of psychopharmaceuticals is far, far from being a pseudoscience.
Posting a music video in a serious forum might be a “no no” but I couldn’t help but think of “Frontier Psychiatrist” a track brought out six years ago by a local band (and went to number one).
It’s about a kid who gets expelled after getting a psychiatric report and was in response to the fashion that every kid had to be ‘suffering’ from something. These were the days when new disorders where popping up faster than they could invent acronyms or cures they could sell.
So, as silly as this clip is, it was a response to the madness of diagnosing everything and everyone with a ‘condition’. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid … 7494085702
(nice link, Colinsign)
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You can’t go wrong sampling John Waters.