Psychology / Psychiatry: Science? Pseudoscience? Quackery?

[stu neville]

Is it? I thought facts were just facts... largely immutable (unless new scientific data becomes available).

With you now - yes, I define facts as cardinally indisputable data. Truth is the objective synthesis of that information and personal experience. There are those, however (as we well know) who will dispute facts as they contradict their own belief.

 

[Nosmo King]

As to your question about CBT, you first need to know a little about my background with respect to doctors. ... So, CBT replaces truth with lies. It disables people’s ability to communicate. In fact, what CBT reminds me of is those inspirational speakers so common in the US.

Having briefly recieved CBT for my depression (personally it didnt work for me) i can say with confidence that you are wrong about how CBT works, you admit that you have never recieved it so your comments are just your opinion of what you think its about or anecdotal opinions from other people, in my own experience, CBT is about exploring why you are feeling the way you are feeling, why a particular emotion is present in a particular situation, then encouraging you to explore why that is the case and whether those emotions are appropriate, to look at other reasons you may feel the way you feel in a certain situation.

Using your example of being snubbed by a parent, you may be asked why it made you angry, what was it about being snubbed that made you feel that way, they may try to explore what it is about people only being freindly to you when they have a vested interest in speaking to you, that makes you angry as oppose to disappointed or hurt, they give you options on how you can look at situations differently and understand situations from another perspective, i wasnt once told to replace my feelings with false feelings, only to look at why i was feeling that way and to try and rationalise my feelings.

Anger is an umbrella emotion, it is a result of other more subtle emotions, maybe you were embarrassed or hurt by someones actions toward you, maybe you were jealous of something or someone, maybe you were disappionted in yourself or someone else, all of these examples can lead to feelings of anger but anger is the result of these emotions. CBT can help to narrow down what is the root cause of any anger emotion and find out the best way for you to deal with it. As you said, sometimes being angry is a natural reaction, its not a bad thing, it is all about how you deal with that emotion.

 

[littlebrowndragon]

No. It was the CBT.

You said earlier that CBT was your route to sobriety. There must have been a cause for your alcoholism. People do not become alcoholic for no reason at all.

When my sister became schizophrenic (from which she has since recovered) no one in the medical profession e.g. doctors, psychiatrists etc, enquired into the possible reasons or causes for her becoming schizophrenic.

Another case in point happened to a former colleague of mine. At the time she became ill, she was in her early 40s and, as well as having a husband who had such problems with his mental health that he was incapable of employment, she had a severely autistic son of around 8 years, and a year-old baby. (By severely autistic I mean that the glass in the windows of her cottage had all had to be replaced by Perspex because the boy routinely got out of control and smashed/threw furniture around etc.) Nonetheless, in the search for promotion, she up-staked from a reasonably comfortable, easy and secure environment to seek promotion in a much more difficult environment. Within a few months of relocating and starting her new job, she had a mental breakdown. Yet when she went to a doctor, all she was given was heart pills. (Incidentally, realizing that her health would likely suffer, I advised her not to relocate.)

Did your therapist explore your pre-alcoholic background particularly? Did your therapist attempt in any way to find out why you had succumbed to alcoholism?

Finally, if you are cured of alcoholism, then you can drink freely. If you must stay off alcohol for fear of the condition recurring, then you have not been cured. Has your therapist given you a prognosis about your possible future consumption of alcohol?

(As an aside, my colleague, at the time of her relocation, was having recurring dreams in which she was being swept along in a raging torrent. Just before my sister became schizophrenic, she had dreams in which she was being overwhelmed by a tsunami. In dreams, water represents the emotions. These dreams - the raging torrent, the tsunami - indicated severe emotional trauma. They were predicting that the dreamer was likely to crack up, as both dreamers ultimately did.)

 

[stu neville]

ou said earlier that CBT was your route to sobriety. There must have been a cause for your alcoholism. People do not become alcoholic for no reason at all.

No, they don't.

Did your therapist explore your pre-alcoholic background particularly? Did your therapist attempt in any way to find out why you had succumbed to alcoholism?

You know what, they did. What with being a qualified professional and everything.

Finally, if you are cured of alcoholism, then you can drink freely. If you must stay off alcohol for fear of the condition recurring, then you have not been cured. Has your therapist given you a prognosis about your possible future consumption of alcohol?

I could if I wished. However, the physical toll has been quite marked, and as a result continued sobriety is better for my physical health. My choice.

That is as far as I will engage with you on my own dealings with CBT. Beyond this is private, and I wish to keep it that way.

 

[littlebrowndragon]

But that doesn't change why you were "snubbed". As I have said I think you were right, you were no longer useful to those people who had previously held you in some esteem.

We all know when we are being snubbed.

You became angry at this as you thought, (rightly so you were/are a teacher), that you were no longer given the respect you thought you deserved.

You suffered from the "fallacy of fairness" until you realized that these people were selfish and probably not worth your time either.

I absolutely don't think there was malice involved. Some people are just manipulative and probably moved on to the next teacher. This isn't a reflection on you it's a reflection on people. People can be shallow.

You use the word respect. Respect is extremely important in this context. And you are right, being snubbed dis-respected me. Yet this had nothing to do with my expectations as a teacher. Had I been a shopworker, a miner, a schoolchild, a farmer – it would not have mattered - being snubbed dis-respected me. Being snubbed would dis-respect you too. The person doing the snubbing is behaving badly. She is disrespecting both herself and the person she is snubbing. What person with any self-respect would make a habit of fawning on other people to manipulate them?

With the benefit of hindsight and greater maturity, I also know that when the parent was being “friendly”, was fawning on me, was currying favour, that it was also dis-respectful. And again, you are right. The parent was being manipulative. She was currying favour with me to get into my good graces so that I would be biased toward her child in class. Had I been older and wiser at the time, I would have recognized that she was not being in the least friendly, that she was lying to me, in fact, and also have sensed that correctly.

And I did sense that correctly in another context because I was older and wiser. When I was promoted to middle-management, I became “boss”, among others, to a younger female teacher. Before I became her boss, she was chatty and often cheeky to me. This didn’t bother me. However, when I became her boss, her manner towards me transformed. She grovelled. This was so pronounced that I mentally likened her to the Dickens’ character, Uriah Heep. Her manner could only be described as unctuous, obsequious and palpably insincere. And my senses told me this in no uncertain terms. While this behaviour may have flattered other, less savvy bosses (as intended), it irritated me greatly. When I resigned from my promoted post, when I was no longer her boss, her behaviour instantly reverted to its former self. What person with any pride, with any self-respect at all, could behave like that? In Uriah Heep, Dickens’ drew a character that he knew people would dislike, and correctly so. At the very least, my obsequious colleague was lying to me. Who could ever trust someone that behaved in such a manner?

As to people who habitually dis-respect others, a traveller’s tale:

I understand all too well the difficulties one can get into if one misinterprets what is being communicated or makes an innocent blunder oneself, most especially in foreign cultures. These “difficulties” include having had knives drawn on me. Had I and my travelling companion not been able to understand why our actions had caused offence – we had been unintentionally dis-respectful – and had we then not been able to modify our behaviour appropriately, we would have been flown home in coffins.

I will add here that the way we behaved in the above instance had worked for us before in different cultures and had not caused offence. Attempting to fob off one of the many street sellers in this unfamiliar culture, we therefore adopted the same behaviour. As I said above, in this culture our behaviour was interpreted as disrespectful. Furthermore, the advice in the well-respected guide book (re fobbing off street sellers) was also wrong – it advised behaving in the same way as we had initially done - and anyone who followed its extremely bad advice would likely have come to harm as we nearly did.

Good behaviour is no trivial matter. Understanding the difference between good and bad behaviour could cost a person their life. And, frankly, therapists know s**t about good/bad behaviour. I mean "fallacy of fairness"? Oh, p-lease!

 

[Mikefule]

Psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy are three different areas, and each is divided into a number of different disciplines and approaches.

Asking if psychology and psychiatry is "scientific" is like asking if herbal medicine and household remedies "work". Herbal medicine and household remedies are two different things, and some examples of each appear to work, and some examples of each appear to be nonsense.

It is an old adage that humans in large numbers behave predictably, but individuals seldom do. I would draw an analogy with chemistry or physics. It is easy to predict what will happen to pressure, volume or temperature if you manipulate a gas. This is caused by the interactions of billions of molecules. The behaviour of the gas is predictable, but the behaviour of each individual molecule is not.

All approaches to dealing with the mind non-invasively (i.e. no drugs or surgery) rely on models and metaphors. Is this "unscientific"?

The model of the atom has developed in my life time from something similar to the solar system, to shells of energy levels and probability. I can remember the solar-system version from school. My description of the latter version is based on my dim understanding of what my son says; he's doing a PhD in it, so most of it is above my head.

No one says that chemistry or physics are unscientific because their descriptive models include analogies and metaphors. My son still talks of electrons "wanting to" or "trying to" do something. This doesn't mean that he ascribes consciousness and will to them, but only that it is an accessible way to explain something more complex.

My test for whether anything is scientific is in three parts:

1. Does it enable you to predict what you will find or what will happen if you follow a course of action, at least in terms of probability?
2. Are the results repeatable and reasonably consistent?
3. Is the model subject to constant revision and improvement in the light of new observations?

On this basis, I think there is some justification for calling parts of all three areas (-ology, -iatry and -therapy) "scientific".

However, as individual humans are never completely predictable, and even the best professional can never accurately know all of the initial conditions before engaging with a patient or subject, these three disciplines could also legitimately be called "arts". They rely on judgement and experience as well as on theory and experiment.

That some significant historical individuals cheated, behaved badly, or made mistakes is irrelevant. We don't dismiss genetics as a science because Mendel may have "adjusted" his results before reporting them.