Psychiatry

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The problem with psychiatry and Autism is that psychiatry is based on a “disease” model and therapies are predicated on alleviating and eliminating symptoms. While this can have significant benefits it often overlooks the genetic and societal underpinning which create the maladaptive manifestations that psychiatry treats, while this approach is good for “job security” it is very ineffective system to allow those with genetic differentials to gain the skills to adapt to society to the extend they wish.

Yes the disease model is where alphabet soup diagnosis (NERDS syndrome) comes from.

Remember psychiatry is what brought us less self adaptive Aspies being medicated to comatose states and institutionalized in the early and mid 20th century, treatment of manifestations with strong medications without understanding and recommending therapies and accommodations for the underlying genetic differentials up to the current and intransigence to a diagnostic criteria which lack any scientific sophistication and accuracy. That is not to say that there are not a few psychiatrists out there who “get it” but most are for the most part totally incompetent when it comes to autism genetics.

bookwormde

Well that made me smile, but on a more serious note let us applie the ideas of Karl Popper to it, having a liking for falsification as a system of sceientific thought I would like to ask if the world of Psychiatry is dominated by those who think up a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis. I am very wary of induction, the thing about induction is that through weak induction it is possible to prove almost everything.

For instance I will prove that all women wear pinks shoes by induction.

1. I saw a woman wearing pink shoes
2. Person X is a woman

Therefore X wears pink shoes.

While what I have chosen to do is clearly nonsense it shows the folly of induction, the falsification system is self correcting and leads to far better science. I think we should judge the subject by the system of reasoning which is at its core.

How is it obviously false? It might be false it might be true.

Here is something to get your head round. The vast majority of psychiatry (and this encompassed all of the psychiatrist and fields out there) is complete pseudo-science.

Psychiatry does NOT apply the scientific method. It isn't from the scientist practitioner approach anyway, and they rarely claim it is (but are not actively proclaiming it isn’t either). You can't turn around and say you are apply scientific method if you practice doesn't have a real scientific methodology and your platform of knowledge entirely baseless. So they are making deductions, anyone can, their conclusion have no firm basis in anything. That is not the scientific method at all.

Not only that, it is questionable whether they should be licensed as doctors because some of them don't get enough general practice medicine IMO, but that is a separate matter. It is fair to say their authority is completely misplaced, and it is there for historical reasons and should have the same status as all the other quacks out there. They also don't take responsibility, which come with authority, rather preferring to hide from it/stonewall rather than tell a patient there don't know what they are talking about. A tenant in medicine is dialogue between patient and doctor. It is common ideology in psychiatry that this does not have to apply to them especially if they feel they know best.

Psychiatry is a religion of arbitrary checklists, it is simple as that. The key word is arbitrary. The requirements that are met are arbitrary, entirely so. That is what I call "cookie cutter" requirements.

One strange thing is they acknowledge spectral nature of things, yet almost none of what they do actually reflects that. There is an impartial approach that could work broadly speaking. It requires you to make few assumptions, but you have to record a lot of data and do it consistently. It may or may not be useful/viable for analysis at some point. You can't say that any two things are fixed, if it doesn’t allow for the full degrees of freedom between tests, than it is already too presumptuous. With their checklist they are already basing assumptions on assumptions (“assumption chaining”, which is another unscientific method that goes hand in hand with psychiatry). Then they get to something which they have to disregard, due to their belief system rather than methodology. As if it somehow makes everything more scientific all of a sudden. It doesn't work like that.

I stress, they are not problem solvers so don't go them with specific problems. What they are interested in if fitting you to preconceived pathology. They may view actually trying to solve real problems with contempt, a word of warning. If it becomes clear that they don't actually have anything of substance to offer, don't expect them to admit to that. They might put you on the back burner, anything to save face.


Psychiatrist are behaviourist, even the ones who claim to be functionists if you scratch under the surface they are behaviourist through and through. Functionalists are the antithesis of psychiatrists.

What also strikes me in my experience is they tend to be critical of everyone else except themselves, and this undercurrent of rivalry can be disruptive. They lack that critical thinking that is required of rigorous science. That and their misplaced authority means something needs to be done. This view is not completely alien in the medical community, I understand. There are some doctors, beginning to ask question and speak out. Doctors are critical but it is taking a little time, for enough of them to be willing to publicly speak out.

One flawed argument for something is “well we need something to fill that gap, so it might as well be that”. This is very bad precedent. You can’t operate in total ignorance.

Also this does not just apply to psychiatry, but general good advice: Never, ever take reputation a face value, whether it is an individual or an institution. This is not an area where anyone can claim to be expert.

The OP wasn’t about psychology but I will cover that tomorrow.

Psychiatry is a religion and nothing other than that. All they want is to drug you or brainwash you so that you become convenient to the society.

The people who implement the data are not the same as the people who unveil the data. To make the claim that psychiatry is a complete pseudo-science you must find fault with the scientific method being employed by the people who are unveiling the data. I'm sure you'll find some dodgy studies, but you'll also find many good ones, you'll find a similar pattern in every single science. I've never tried to claim that psychiatry is a pure-science, no science can live upto such a claim.

Examples of pseudoscience within psychiatry would be neuro-linguistic programming and EMDR. I've already given examples of science in psychiatry.

I have already stated that psychiatry does not employ the scientist-practitioner model in the first place therefore those who 'unveil' that data are not employing the scientific method. What you are saying doesn't apply to psychiatry. The ethos is not from that background. Besides those who unveil are also often practitioners and do so on a whim.

define 'scientific method', because at the moment, your argument sounds like a complete strawman fabrication filled with half-truths and vague handwaving BS.

It is defined well enough here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Ask a psychiatrist whether the profession comes from a scientist-practitioner approach and then ask them to justify their claims. Psychiatry is not is not from this approach, and didn’t start out as a scientific field and has not since been reconciled with science although it likes to marry up to associate profession that are more that ilk.

The arbitrary checklist in diagnostic manuals are not proven, they are not even justified as per their significance. They are just used as a basis to carry out work. If they were using the scientific method the most you could say is they have diagnostic manual almost entirely based on hypothesis and conjecture. Not to mention the problem with assumption chaining which is actively employed in creating new ones. Sometimes diagnostic requirement are used to justify mutually exclusive or other types of relationships, which a have never been proven and are seemly there for the convenience of the diagnostician rather than having basis in reality.

There isn’t any real reasoning as to justify what requirements are in or out, it is arbitrary.

that's funny, becuase a friend of mine is studying for a Biochemestry PhD says that it can be reconciled.

I quote:







Ah, so you are saying that all the criteria for diagnosing mental illnesses that have been formed as established principles, based on evidence gathered from every psychiatric patient in the history, is both unscientific and unfounded. wow, it's surprising that such a charlatan's medical speciality could fun so successfully for, oh a century.


They are just used as a basis to carry out work.

You clearly don't understand how the human brain works.

I like to think of them as being similar to computers (i know, bleedingly obvious metaphor, so sue me)

If you have a simple word processor, designed for one function, then there is less to go wrong than with a PC, because it has more complex function. imagine a computer with a 500 yottahertz processor or something equally unfathomable, there are millions of things that could go wrong. the brain is probably more advanced than even that we can only begin to understand its complexity. do you have some sort of scientific alternative to understanding mental illnesses? You, who has already been diagnosed with Asperger's? doesn't that make you a bit of a hypocrite?



Isn't all scientific research and discovery based on hypothesis and conjecture? it sounds like you're throwing around big words and terms without backing up your statements.



I'm sorry, what?



I take it you've had some bad experiences that have became jaded towards psychologsts? it certainyl sounds like it.



Ah yes, Arbitraryness, the enemy of all things aspie. bechase the world has to conform to logic, let alone dare to think that there may be any form of irrationality or spontenaity in the world.


Also PSychiatry is technically a Medical Specialty rather than a science.

Not meaning to outright denigrate you and your profession, but I have had exceedingly lousy experiences with psychiatrists in the lower end of the profession who seemed more interested in collecting insurance money and government subsidy in the form of services not rendered, or badly rendered.

Before Asperger's Syndrome was even considered a valid diagnosis in the US, I was deemed 'problematic' in school due to repeated outbursts, and was given council, which came back with an unresolved diagnosis, though the people that had councilled me were familiar with my behaviour, as they had seen it before. --They just didn't have a name for it.

Other Doctors that I was referred to told my parents that I was partially unaware of my surroundings, and unaware of how to interact on an appropriate social with my peer group. I was given partial class time away from my 5th grade class and spent this in the SpEd classroom, where nothing was actually taught. --I was as they put it, 'In my own little world'.

Because of the fact that I couldn't interact appropriately with 'my peer group', (as they put it) I was essentially rejected, sometimes quite violently. I could, however inform the librarian at the local public library exactly how the engine of his car worked, replete with fairly accurate self drawn diagrams. The effect of this was yet more anger and depression to the point that I felt trapped enough to resort to any means of pandering to 'my peer group' for acceptance. I soon started hanging out with 'the wrong crowd' in school, as well as some older kids who were in Junior high. Paradoxically enough, I could converse quite readily with adults and able to inform them on technical matters. During summer vaction away from school, I got into trouble due to the fact that I didn't spend time with other kids that I was unable to process with on social and emotive levels, and wound up instead hanging around the diesel mechanics at a local truck dealership, as well as with the mechanics at a few local motorcycle shops. --Mechanical information was something that I could process.

As I resorted to hanging out with 'the wrong crowd', I was given yet more councilling, (of a religious nature with a catholic priest) because of the fact that they seemed to feel that part of my problems were caused by me being from divorced parents. --The priest thought that perhaps that I should start calling my stepmother 'mom' instead of using her given name to facilitate familial integration.

This had no effect on my failing to interact with other schoolkids on 'an appropriate level', and I started staying away from home, once getting caught with the wrong crowd at near midnight one night, and another time hanging out at a truckstop at 2AM. --Because of this , it was apparently suggested that I be given a psych evaluation at the state hospital.

My parents took me to the state hospital, where I was given a tour and admitted. During the course of my initial 3 month stay there, I really recieved no treatment or testing, other than a routing physical/bloodtest, and a very short interview with the adolescent unit board of directors, and a few short meetings with the residential psychiatrist for the adolescent unit.

Nothing else was said, nothing else was given, other than to beinformed one night before bed time by the head adolescent unit nurse that my evaluation period was over and that I was now at the State Hospital for 'treatment'. Shortly after I was placed on Thorazine to control my outbursts. The Thorazine did negate the outburts, though at the cost of making it quite difficult for me to breathe. My parents had me taken off the drug, and aside from a week long field trip and a weekend leave, I essentially spent that summer locked up in the State Hospital, only to be discharged as fit, (somewhat conveniently) just in time to go back to the school that I was having all the social integration problems at in time to begin 6th grade.

Whilst I was at the State Hospital, I encountered Autistic kids for the first time, and found them to be quite baffling, as they were locked into their behaviour patterns and were unable to communicate verbally. Although it seemed apparent that there were none there at the time, one of the staff members informed me that there were autistic people who were fully capable of speaking. After release, I looked up the subject of autism at a local junior college, and found out that according to the information given, (paraphrased from memory):

Autism was considered a very rare condition that affected about 1 out of every 2,000 people, most often with mental retardation, and the inability to communicate more than a few words, or phrases. Autistics usually seemed quite normal as babies until they regressed, and started to focus away from their parents, as well give and take of emotional reciprocity with simple games such as 'peek-a-boo', and rigidly fixate their attention upon inanimate and quite often mechanical objects such as trains, motors and engines.

Although I was obviously not ret*d, and instead quite intelligent though socially inept, I fgured that I couldn't possibly have the condition, because of this. However , some parts of the description with the definition of autism, namely the fact that I posessed quite accurate memories of my early childhood, and hated 'peek-a-boo' and other similar games such as this, and hated to be touched to the point that I would get angry anf throw tantrums to get my parents and other adults to stop. --Needless to say, there were some things that I noted that I had in common with autism, even though I did not fit the other criteria. --I could communicate (via both speech and written word), and was quite obviously not ret*d.

My social integration problems still persisted to the point where I became depressed with my situation at school and my abusive home life with my parents to the point where it seemed that physically removing myself from the situation seemed to be the only viable solution. Between 6th and 7th grade, I started running away from home, and furthering my fascination with trains. Once I was picked up very early in the morning at the end of a local railroad yard after a 5 day abscence from home. Another time I was arrested several states away as a runaway after a 7 day abscence from home.

As I entered 7th grade, my problems with 'fitting in socially' in Junior High School were markedly more pronounced, as were my home problems to the point that I was now running away nearly every chance that I got, once being picked up a state away, and on another occaision about 100 miles away from Chicago, (I lived in North Dakota).

Because of my habitual running away, I was was deemed an 'unruly child' by the juvenile justice system in North Dakota, and sent back to the State Hospital for court ordered evaluation. Because of the fact that I no longer trusted the fact that the adults around me didn't have my best interests at heart, I remained uncooperative, and figured that it would be best to be as deceptive as possible with the adults in my life. I was also given a 400+ question psych test, Which I felt compelled to bodge, partly due to the fact that I felt wronged and therefore should remain as uncooperative as possible, and partly due to the fact that the test was quite large and boring; someting to be completed as quickly as possible without regard to giving correct answers.

I was not given my diagnosis, but was still held again for 'treatment', where therapy consisted of being held on a locked ward with time out for on site schooling and occaisional forays to the on site gym. There was also two 'leaves' where I went home to be with my family, once for my first Christmas there, and another about seven months later, the last of which I promptly left from, and was picked up a few days later a state away.

During the time that I was at the State Hospital, it became apparent that I was there for the simple reason that no other programs in the sate would take me because of the fact that I ran away, and because of the fact that I was not a criminal, I was also unfit for the state's Juvenile Justice facility. --I essentially remained at the State Hospital for over a year and a half because there was no other program that would take me.

The only reason why I got out, was due to the intervention of my mom and stepdad and my dad and stepmom's refusal to follow through a court decision 6 years previously that stipulated that both my dad and my mom were to have joint custody of me. After my mom won a court judgement in North Dakota that essentially stated that because my dad had flouted the previous court order, (by a Maine court) for shared custody, as well as my then current situation, (warehoused at the ND State Hospital, no real reason given by the Adoloscent Unit Psychiatrist who was present with me at the hearing) my custody was trasnferred to my mom, who gained my release from the State Hospital two days after the judgement was rendered.

My life in Maine was also fraught with social problems, though I did learn enough to more or less be a somewhat functional member of society by the time that I turned 18.

It is said that the first impressions of a given situation sets the 'tone' of further experiences with similar situations, and my initial experiences with the psyciatric preffesion as well as hospital bureaucracy have generally instilled in my person the desire to avoid the profession altogeather.

Even though I have had some positive experiences with psychiatrists after all of the above transpired, previous events have engendered in me a general feeling of distrust towards the profession. Further research into a lot of other people in my socioeconomic group has also show similar patterns of neglect and medication/overmedication as 'treatment'. --I once asked a psychiatrist about this, to which he responded that because of the fact that because a government agency was paying for his services, and that the government agency would only spend a set amount for his services, he was compelled to give only the therapy/counciling that was being paid for. In this case simple diagnosis after a few short interviews. --This essentially caused me to lose interest in further sessions, he was only there for initial diagnosis, not any real form of treatment/ therapy.

So because of this and further research into the low end, (IE publicly funded) of the psych profession, It appears as if the Psychiatrists who are employed thusly are more often than not compelled to produce results for the agencies that pay them, no matter how scant or preliminary the research they put into getting their results. --This of course often leads to wrong, false, and 'garbage pail' diagnoses.

Also, I have observed on the fact that quite often a lot of people who are diagnosed are quite often over medicated, or inappropriately medicated as per their diagnoses;

--Ex, I know a lady who was diagnosed with 'Borderline Personality Disorder' after going through a violent robbery at her job, where it seems quite clear to a lay person myself that she instead suffered from PTSD from this episode. The course of treatment that was given to her via dosages of Seroquel sufficient enough to cause her to die from Liver/Kidney failure.

--Further Ex, I know another person who suffers from Bipolar Disorder who was also given Seroquel by the public pysch clinic to treat his condition. Sadly, like quite a few people who have Bipolar Disorder, he would take the medication according to his mood, which could possibly be indicative of the fact that this was an inappropriate medication for him, until his Rx for the drug was finally shut off from the medication after having a surgical procedure performed upon his person.

When people helping him told him to ask about the inappropriateness his previous Seroquel Rx when he tried to reestablish support with a public psych program for his Bipolar Treatment, he was essentially told that he would be prescribed Seroquel, or nothing at all, in spite of the possibility that perhaps Seroquel is an innaproriate pharmacological choice for him. --He remains untreated to this day.

--Further Ex , I know another girl who thoughout spending years in school for an unnamed 'learning disability was finally given a diagnosis of OCD, and PTSD that progressed to Bipolar disorder due to years of abuse by her parents. For this, she was prescribed Risperedal, and Seroquel. She may or may not have have Bipolar Disorder, even though she claims to have angry outbursts. Secondly, she also claims to find it very difficult to concentrate on tasks like work or education, and , possibly due to the PTSD, possibly due to the Bipolar Disorder, and quite possibly due to undiagnosed ADD, or Perhaps Asperger's Syndrome.

Her 'Unnamed Learning Disabilty' was diagnosed in 1988, well before Asperger's Disorder was a listed disorder in DSM IV. Although I am very much a lay person in this, The OCD diagnosis as well what could be an undiagnosed case of ADD could point to an actual case of undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome due to the fact that people that I know who have Aspergers were diagnosed OCD with ADD/ADHD comorbid back before Aspergers became an actual diagnostic prognosis with the advent of DSM IV.

I personally do not judge you as 'The Enemy', as you have not done anything against me. I will take at face value that you are a good psychiatrist who is probably more intelligent, as well as most likely more ethical ( Your Harvard education, after all ,:smile:) than others.

However I, as well as apparently quite a few other people on this are prone to see Psychiatrists as being less than benevolent people given the standards of care that we have recieved from them.

*Not only am I posting this message in the forum, but I am also sending an exact duplicate to you via PM, should you take the time to come back to these forums after claiming to leave to ensure that you understand more fully what we have had to endure at the hands of psychiatrists.

"average 92% improved/back to normal"

Loss of credibility in one stroke.

Seemed to have opened up a can of words just because i haven't met a psychiatrist that helped me and listened to what i was saying doesn't mean they are all bad,Perhaps Harvard guy is a good psychiatrist because of his as.Everyone is due equal respect i feel for the ones that didn't make it lets hope we can learn as a race to treat each other humanely after all without each other what have we got?Ps Normal what does that mean?

And?



That isn't actually an accurate description at all. There has been very little work done where they have collected data from tens of thousands of profiles in a consistent, impartial and comparable manner. Such work is quite recent. That is the key point, in reality psychiatry has been formed on the subjective opinion and experiences of individual psychiatrists, without the use of a large data pool, and this is predominately what psychiatry is to this day. There are other fields that do things much better. Psychiatry isn’t set up for objective data collection, nor measuring success rates. Psychiatry has always been more art or “scholar” focussed, never based on scientist practitioner approach in reality.




Is this intended to be patronising? I know as much as anybody, we know very little indeed. However the people who are studying the function of the brain are called functionists/functionalists.

A substantial part of what we know about the brain is related to dysfunction, brain injuries, etc. it is not rocket science how it works. Through a process of elimination you can get closer to finding out what that part of the brain does if a part of the brain is missing or damaged. Nowadays they use technologies such as fMRI to study real time activity.



The idea of assumption chain is simple. I could come up with theory X and then another theory Y, which requires theory X to be true. You can have layer apron layer of assumptions.


Does this disqualify me from drawing rational conclusions? The anti-psychiatry movement is not filled with whack jobs there is some good common sense to it, and those that are whack jobs are not that dissimilar the physiatrist themselves in their methodology or lack thereof. Those involved in the anti psychiatry movement are also professionals like neurologists. Opinions differ of course. My position is not completely anti-drugs. You can’t blame it all on drugs. It is actually the methology that is lacking.

It isn’t a specific psychiatrist, they have all be equally useless over the years, and I have given them the benefit of the doubt and appealed to them as individuals for any problem solving abilities they might have. I have serious cognitive dysfunctions. They have be consistently been shown in testing over a pronged period, my cognitive profile is very scattered and have several indications in the extremely low range (despite my apparent coherence, which is very misleading). Something does not add up. Psychiatrists who have little to do with this and use buzz words like “executive dysfunction” without having a clue what they actually means, have given me the most BS baseless explanations for this, much of the time contradicting themselves, not to mention the conclusions of the functional tests. The ideas that are hinted on have been widely criticised and unfounded and contrary to available evidence which actually shows the opposite. It is link to ideas mainly based on PTSD, even though this is completely unrelated to me. Beside there has never been any induction that cognitive problems as persistent and unyielding as mine has ever been a presentation in anyone, where have been show to be caused by such harebrained nonsense, and most other people involved have said it highly unlikely. Then when giving them a chance to test their theories in an objective way however spurious, they always whittle out of it because they know they are talking out of their arses. The people who do standardised test are much more objective. What they do is not perfect but it doesn’t pretend to be, but they are functionalists. The data psychiatrist uses pales in comparison to what these standardise test provide. These tests are much more scientific that psychiatrist would ever be. In fact I did experience some of the psychiatrists cognitive test (though most of what they do is based on secondary behavioural stuff), very inexact and subjective, embarrassing so really.

Standardised test are not a gage of intellect contrary to popular belief. What they can do is provide a good way to indentify relative deficit, and are effective at it. They are also based on quite a large body of data.

Psychiatrists are interested in their own crackpot theories, and not real life problems. Championship cherry pickers would be an understatement, they suit themselves. Remember what I said about reputation. I really mean it. I was seen by the Maudsley Behavioural Genetics “Team” (I’m using the word loosely for good reason). What was apparent what how disconnected each stage was. It became patiently obvious as time when on that none of it was set up to even attempt to treat anything, or even investigate problems. Instead they harassed me for research at every stage, and provided nothing of benefit to me. I should point out this was a care program not a research based program. Had it been a research based program I could hardly complain. But they are using the program for their research and not for the benefit of patients. This is considered by some the leading hospital in this field in UK.


Questionable. Not all doctors agree.

Wow, that's a really insightful reply.




I smell another strawman argument. Sources please.



If you find Art to be objectively inferior to science, I hope, as an artist, that we never meet.

besides, more people now Shakespeare than Oppenheimer.




Oh? are you a neurologist? and a Biochemist? And a Neurochemist? And an endocrinologist? And a psychiatrist on top of that? hell, do you know about all the subtypes of Psychiatry? Biological, forensic, community, cross-cultural? if so, you must have quite the CV. If not, I suggest you don't make baseless claims.



Again, sources please. from my brief research, functionalism sounds more like a philosophy than a science.



How very aspie, regarding the brain as a machine to be studied and considered nothing more than a biological motor engine. Why don't you drop the functionalist moniker and jsut call them "brain mechanics", heaven forbid you cease objectifying it and consider the workings of the person it belongs to.



The idea of assumption chain is simple. I could come up with theory X and then another theory Y, which requires theory X to be true. You can have layer apron layer of assumptions.

Sounds more like 'cause and effect' to me. Oh, and just about every hypothesis ever made.

Does this disqualify me from drawing rational conclusions?

Rational? oh dear, it's worse than I thought.



So, the ones who lock schizophrenics an a house and tell them to 'get over it' aren't whack jobs? Speaking as a sufferer myself, I can say that that's bollocks.



Look at my above statement. A psychairtist would perscribe drugs to help, those who are mentally ill, not beat them up for suffering from 'social constructs.'

I see you didn't reply to my comment about beign a hypocrite for bearing a D/X of asperger's yet hating psychologists. did you chose it from a pick and mix of mental disorders?



that's funny, because I found this on wikipedia:

"While the medical specialty of psychiatry utilizes research in the field of neuroscience, psychology, medicine, biology, biochemistry, and pharmacology, it has generally been considered a middle ground between neurology and psychology."



Is that like Methodology?



Now, why don't you turn that scientific method on yourself and maybe you'll come to the conclusion that maybe it isn't the Psychiatrists at fault, but, *gasp*, you might be the one at fault?



To be bluntly honest, I could be more coherent typing with my feet. You use terms and phrases that seem comepltly out of place, your sentence structure is elongated and poorly punctuated, etc.
I have a brazilian friend who types english more fluidly, and you live in the next borough to mine.



If you keep seeing psychiatrists and they don't diagnose you with what you want them to diagnosie you with, maybe you shoudl be telling them how to do their job.



Maybe you're hearing, but you're not listening.



links please


Links. Please.


Translation: Look at me, I'm special!



Oh god.

Objectivity.

I loathe Objectivity.

everythign has to be empirical to you, doesn't it? if it's subjective, it's worthless. How BORING! what sort of life is it to be ruled by straight lines and numbers? what about spontenaity, or irrationality, or individualism? or free will?




Oh, so treating the brain like a calculator is better than trying to understand the workings of the human psyche? No thanks.



Proof or strawman is nothing.



Oh god, you really don't understand the human mind, do you? EVERYBODY is subjective! everybody is DIFFERENT!

Psychiatry is about painting a landscape of a person's psyche, how they 'function' in your viewpoint. there are recurring symbols that people react to, but they do so in different ways. everyone has a psychological relationship with thier father, but it will be subjective.

you scientists need to learn to have a bit of chaos in your all-too-rational minds.



PROOF?

Lemme tell you about my experiences with mental health professionals.

I started seeing a bereavement counsellor when I was 12. since then, I've seen CPNs, Cognative beavior therapists, psychologists, youth workers, anxiety specialists, psychosis specialists, and psychiatists.

they have all helped me to learn and progress as a human being. they helped me through the darkest times of my life.
and you're calling them fauds? shame on you.



remember what I said about handwaving BS? I really mean it too.



Behavioral Genetics?



Sorry, but i wouldn't have called that a wise move.

I believe that a lot of things are written into our genes, but specific behaviours are not, I think.

Genes may give us our drives; it's how we act on them that gives us our behaviour.

Oh my god, I laughed so hard. :lol::lol:


Where would pseudo science be on all this?

Sure, Psychiatry is flawed, but I'm not going so far as to call it pseudoscience.

The Scientific Method argument doesn't do it for me I'm afraid. Though there are critical points are embodied in the method, it can easily be misinterpreted as completely linear. Pull a problem out, fire in an observation, mix in a few questions, dash on a hypothesis, put the whole mixture into an experiment and two hours later you'll be pulling a conclusion out of the oven. Science is too complex and cannot be reduced so easily. There is no single method that can be blindly followed and the process of science should remain flexible and may take many possible paths.

Psychiatry may also have a shameful past and in some ways an equally shameful present, but today, if anything, I blame drug companies for most of the mistreatment of patients within the system.

Hell, at least mental illness isn't thought to be caused by evil spirits and treated by shamans anymore. Though the medication age is an ugly one.