Oh, I'm FAR from being out of arguments - simply pointing out your trend in being inaccurate in your presentation of this wild idea of yours. Point being, if someone will not even pay attention to small details, how could anyone be expected to trust them on more important ones???
Mental illness and parapsychology.
- Thread starter Bebelina
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Oh, I'm FAR from being out of arguments - simply pointing out your trend in being inaccurate in your presentation of this wild idea of yours. Point being, if someone will not even pay attention to small details, how could anyone be expected to trust them on more important ones???
That's precisely what a politician would say - and what a scientist would NEVER say! So - are you a politician?
She has a good point Read-Only. More important issues are in fact more important.
Heh-heh! Yeah - except for someone with a scientific mind and approach to something. Then, there is no such thing as an insignificant detail - *everything* involved has to closely examined and accounted for.
Remember, she claims to have patients, so that means she's claiming to a doctor of some sort. Would you want to rely on a sloppy doctor who didn't pay any attention to "small details?" Not me!!
Heh-heh! Yeah - except for someone with a scientific mind and approach to something. Then, there is no such thing as an insignificant detail - *everything* involved has to closely examined and accounted for.
Remember, she claims to have patients, so that means she's claiming to a doctor of some sort. Would you want to rely on a sloppy doctor who didn't pay any attention to "small details?" Not me!!
If cluelusshusband was a doctor I'd give him a chance.
Heh-heh! Yeah - except for someone with a scientific mind and approach to something. Then, there is no such thing as an insignificant detail - *everything* involved has BE to closely examined and accounted for.
Remember, she claims to have patients, so that means she's claiming to BE a doctor of some sort. Would you want to rely on a sloppy doctor who didn't pay any attention to "small details?" Not me!!
I'm sure you meant it that way too.
Of course I meant it that way - I mean everything I say.
And I don't claim to be either a doctor or scientist. I'm a retired researcher, though I did *considerable* scientific work before retiring 20 years ago.
heliocentric
Registered Senior Member
It's probably worth exersing alittle skepticism towards DSM mental health categories like schizophrenia, and schizoid-type personality disorder. Many psychiatrist (from the mid-20th century onwards) have infact staunchly rejected such categories as pinpointing no measurable physiological characteristics, and being chronically ineffective in aiding people back to 'health'. People like Szasz and R.D.Laing have probably been the most vocal critics against psychiatric categories - preferring instead to refer to 'problems in living' and addressing those, rather than obsessively inventing more and more pseudo-ontological categories.
Ian Hacking went as far as to say that psychiatric categories are potentially counter-productive because they create a 'looping effect' whereby people start 'acting out' the traits of their ascribed mental disorder.
Possibly all irrelevant thou, since most people here are using the term 'mental illness' in the tricksy sociological sense - stigmatising* an undesirable social group for the sole purpose of discrediting their experience and views.
*Erving Goffman has written some interesting stuff on this topic.
Ian Hacking went as far as to say that psychiatric categories are potentially counter-productive because they create a 'looping effect' whereby people start 'acting out' the traits of their ascribed mental disorder.
Possibly all irrelevant thou, since most people here are using the term 'mental illness' in the tricksy sociological sense - stigmatising* an undesirable social group for the sole purpose of discrediting their experience and views.
*Erving Goffman has written some interesting stuff on this topic.
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There are many problems with the DSM - we are up to number 5, I believe. One issue you did not mention is the implicit - and philosophically weak - notions of cause that are implicit in the way individuals get pathologized. IOW issues that might be much better looked at as public health issues or (within the range of) normal responses to damaging environments are isolated from their environments and the individuals are seen as 'having' a mental illness. Wonderfully, and yes I am quite sure coincidentally, these illnesses are hazy and create enormous customer bases for the pharmaceutical companies. A couple of recent books that partially come in from this angle is
Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders
and
The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry (Social Problems and Social Issues) (Paperback)
a classic focusing most on one drug is
Talking Back to Prozac, Peter Breggin
There was also a wonderful, very funny (ultimately) book in which a woman psychologist laid out her proposal for a new diagnostic category, which she submitted to the DSM committee. This disorder basically described the psychiatric attitude. Her point was that a number of the categories in the DSM pathologize women and use a very specific group of primarily men's norms for social activity and emotional expression as the guide to making categories that end up being filled mainly with women.
Her proposal, presented exactly as other categories in the DSM with symptoms, differential diagnosis, etc., was expertly written and most people, frankly, would never have thought it out of place in the book, except perhaps the psychiatrists - a sociological category - both male and female who might catch on they fit the bill.
I wish I could remember the title of that book.
Your going to have a tough time with that. Centuries ago maybe it would have had some interest but there are just too many instances where it is just a mental problem and never really saw any proof of paranormal abilities only proof of the other.
The human mind is very powerful though...tbh, after watching a prison documentary i can only reach the conclusion of mental illness, sometimes severe. I do love the 'paranormal' but its just a hobby.
Acting out ascribed mental disorders is normal behavior?
heliocentric
Registered Senior Member
So many of the psychiatric categories are ultimately cultured-bound and relative to a specific time and place. Most good psychiatrists are aware of this i think and use psychiatric categories as no more than a useful 'shorthand' (which i dont particularly have a problem with) while the more dangerous ones believe that psychiatric categories are literally 'diseases of the mind'. Something which Szasz always railed against metaphysically indefensible - "how does a non-physical substance 'get ill' exactly?" You could of course side-step the problem by taking up the physicalist position and say that the mind simply = the brain, but then you'll have to explain why your psychiatric category cant be correlated with some physical abnormality of the brain (which they almost never can).
*A good example of this would be the 'blunted effect' of the schizoid personality; which virtually disappears when you place such a person in a highly regimented/family-oriented society - i.e. like Japan.
heliocentric
Registered Senior Member
Id say suggestibility is a universal trait; could be wrong thou.
it is a very common trait. They studied this a lot with school children. If you create groups of children with the exact same academic potentials - as determined by grades and standardized tests and then tell their teachers that some, randomly chosen, are smart and some are not so smart, the children will perform, after a while along the expected lines. Note: it is not simply that the teachers perceive them to be different and grade them this way - which would also be relevent to psychiatry - but the kids who are supposed to be not so good perform less well on tests. Similar experiments have been done with adults with both performance/skills levels and character evaluations. Those expected to be less skilled or 'trouble' tend to become that.
I find I am quite susceptible to this kind of thing. I perform really well if I am expected to, less well if I'm not. Same goes for character traits.
And, of course, when they do find brain differences, these are often said to be causal. As if the person were in isolation and all his or her behavior and mental states were self-caused. I am quite sure that MRI of afroamerican slaves would have shown patterns that could have been called signs of mental illness. Or you could say they were reacting normally to their environment. If we assume that everyone thrives in exactly the same conditions AND there are normal conditions, then I suppose one could make judgments like this. But a diverse society that claims to accept diversity must realize that societal trends and microenvironments are going to feel worse for some people. Saying they are diseased is truly offensive. It is also, likely, often blaming the canaries in the coal mine for what the more oblivious miners are all about to suffer.
Interesting!
I agree that an illness of the brain is quite different than one of the mind. That is why one usually sees those pertaining to the mind as disorders. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder whereas schizoid behavior refers to a personality disorder. I like the word disorder in this particular instance because it suggests that there is a normal thought process and several that are not.
Now it could be said that someone afflicted with a schizoid personality is normal and everyone else who thinks otherwise is not. This is what I'm thinking the thread has been about, one person's normal is another's disorder, or something like that.