"Psychiatry: The Science of Lies"

[Potholer]

I'm jsut gonna have a mini-anger at this book I'm reading. It's whole premise is to say that something is "rotten" in "psychiatry". The guy says it isn't scientific, it's based on quakery and there's no such thing as "mental diseases". Mental disease is a delusion and not scientifically based.

This really really rubs me the wrong way. The book was published in 2007 or 2008. Plenty of time for the author to learn about brain-imaging techniques and the role of neurotransmitters in the brain, the presence of alpha waves, theta waves, fully scientific and quantifiable and disprovable.

All he's done so far is rip into Freud, an acknowledged quack (which I learned in first year psyc if I couldn't work it out for myself), and other psychologists/neurologists from over 100years ago when psychiatry and psychology was in its infancy. I quite agree with his critique of them, what I disagree with is that he somehow thinks this means that modern psychology is also quakery. Depression, schitzophrenia, bipolar....its all make-believe he says. OMG.

There's 2 reasons I keep reading.
1. I'm waiting for a critique of modern psychiatry/psychology
2. He has a really really interesting writing style, he's a good writer. When he isn't pissing me off, I'm enjoying what I reading.

But his arguments really aren't arguments at all. He proposes something and backs it up with quotes from other people, not actually evidence. He doesn't refute proof of mental illnesses, he merely prevaricates and says the same thing with metaphors and comparisons. At least that's what he's done so far.

I don't understand how he can make these claims and be a psychiatrist and not back them up!

Ok I'm done.

Grrr!

 

[Snowbaby]

no such thing as mental diseases? what a croc

 

[Potholer]

I KNOW. He gets all argumentative about the semantics. He just critiqued this experiment and the experiment says "they gain admission" to a mental institute and Szasz says "they didn't <i>gain admission. They told the hospital they were hearing voices" That sounds like they gained admission to me! And then later he quotes himself using the same phrase of gaining admission like there's nothing amiss. Just cos he chose the words, that makes it fine. Bah! He doesn't critique anything about the methodology or results or anything, just the semantics of the experimentor and insists it's based on deception. Social psyc experiments HAVE to be deceptive, that's why there are blind and double blind studies (double blind being acknowledged by Sasz, or at least it seemed to me, as being legit methods).

 

[Potholer]

Oh man, he quoted Wikipedia. WIKIPEDIA. In a published book. I wasn't allowed to do that in 2nd year uni! Also, I finished it. He ripped into a few people, kept making metaphors and similies and that was about it. No retort on any other experiments, I think. And "The Myth of Mental Illness" was written in the 60s so I don't know how well it'll go cos diagnosis equipment has improved sooo much since then. But I'll check it out, maybe it'll do better than this one...