'Anyone who goes to a
psychiatrist ought to have their head examined'
Samuel Goldwyn
Within the corporate-controlled "medical" discipline of psychiatry, the raw experience, termed "mental illness", is quickly appropriated on scarcely concealed disciplinary grounds and its "reality" is demarcated within a pseudoscientific neurological framework for the purposes of creating a captive market of life-time subscribers for its pharmaceutical products. The resultant commercial exchanges are facilitated and conducted under the legitimating veneer of the modalities of the doctor-patient relationship; the former now being in the position of the expert 'supposed to know'. Yet, just what it is it precisely that this "expert" purportedly knows?
To my mind the irrational narratives of corporate sponsored biochemical reductionism have all the logic of a hypothetical traffic corps in la-la land pulling over the driver of a speeding car and concluding that the cause of the excessive velocity is to be found in a depressed accelerator. Instead of actually confronting the person behind the wheel the matter is then, wholly illogically, passed on to technical specialists who after further analysis compile an impressive report detailing ignition timing, fuel to air ratios and combustion cycles. These findings are then questioned by a rival team of specialists who declare that insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the intake manifold, while yet another team point to the centrality of the manifold vacuum, and all this was before the input of the carburettor team and the piston crew. No single body of research held the day, arguments remained inconclusive yet all agreed that their time was not wasted, valuable contributions had been made to our overall understanding of engine capability. The research was then, as usual, sold to one of the big car manufacturers and just before the case was declared closed one nave young observer asked whether we should not perhaps ask the driver of the car why he thought he was speeding.
To which came the reply; "Dont be absurd. Do you honestly believe he has any insight into the complex mechanisms that are under discussion here. What on earth would his opinion contribute to the discussion at hand. Besides, the answer would be much less informative from a scientific standpoint, you understand." - Yes, but if you wish to prevent him from speeding in the future, would it not be wise to ask him why he was doing it on this occasion. Perhaps he had a valid reason. "Listen, the precautions taken consist of the adjustments we have made to the vehicle. In the future it will impossible for him to speed. He will no longer be a danger to himself or to others."
Psychiatry participates in a grotesque erasure of an individual's personhood. There is an almost palpable denial of active volition or conscious agency on the part of the "experient" and the immediate social circumstances in which s/he is a participant that have contributed to the formation of the "symptoms". The seemingly impeccable credentials of the biological reductionist argument (the touchstone of psychiatry) are vaunted disproportionately because of the supposedly scientific nature of its explanation yet the science has taken over at the onset from a falsely deduced point of causation. Carl Jung raised the same concern almost a hundred years ago and may be said to have predicted psychiatry's present over emphasis on neurobiological causation;
Psychiatry has been charged with gross materialism. And quite rightly, for it is on the road to putting the organ, the instrument, above the function - or rather, it has long been doing so. Function has become the appendage of its organ, the psyche an appendage of the brain. In modern psychiatry the psyche has come off very badly. .... Modern psychiatry behaves like someone who thinks he can decipher the meaning and purpose of a building by a mineralogical analysis of its stones.'
This is the type of analogy which has been used by many in an attempt to critique this bewildering conflation between internal mechanisms and our subjective experiences and its appreciation is absolutely critical in grasping the nature of the psychiatric enterprise. When we see the hairs rise upwards on the back of a cat who has taken fright our response is not to investigate the properties of follicular verticality but instead we attempt to assuage the creature that his fears are misplaced. For it is a fact that is too little remarked upon that each of us everyday, through the normal business of social interaction are the unwitting dispensers of active mood altering agents.
Merely by validating the presence of another, by listening to what is being said do we initiate a positive functional chemical change in the brain. Likewise, when we undermine an individual's sense of 'being in the world' through all those stratagems that most healthy adults are, unfortunately, thoroughly versed in, do we by the same token, also initiate functional chemical changes in the brain; though this time of the deleterious sort. In other words, by positively affirming a person's sense of being in the world however this may be initially presented and construed by us to be, it is vital that it is at least validated. And what in practice is the effect of this thoroughly slovenly approach if not a drugs, drugs and more drugs regime that seeks to functionally alter a 'chemical imbalance' that one's aloof attitude is in contrary fashion only exacerbating anyhow. How many clinical trials have been conducted to date that monitor the positive effects of a daily fifteen minute conversation with someone who listens, affirms, validates, is non-judgemental and does not seek to pigeonhole your difficulties into a pre-prepared smorgasbord derived from either developmental psychology, psychoanalysis or neurobiological reductionism?
Theory necessarily informs practice but it is essentially an artifice erected to keep our minds attuned to certain recurring problematics; the real issues revolve around the therapists' encounters with the patient as another human being. In this regard I am reminded of an extraordinary exchange between R.D. Laing and a clearly ambitious young graduate student in clinical psychology:
Graduate Student: "Dr. Laing, I still don't understand the theoretical basis of your therapeutic approach to schizophrenia. Could you please explain it?"
R.D. Laing: "Certainly. The basis is love. I don't see how you or I can be of any help to our clients in a visionary state unless we are capable of experiencing a feeling of love for them. Therapy, as opposed to mere treatment, requires that we have a capacity for loving kindness and compassion."
Graduate Student (perplexed): "But Dr. Laing, what is your clinical methodology for developing this approach?"
I mean??
Laing was unfortunately a rare breed among practitioners and would often go to great lengths to procure the confidence and trust of a patient, reportedly spending hours in some cases sitting in silence with them showing by his presence alone that his thoughts were with them. In a similar vein, psychiatrist Al Siebert has written about how he reformed his own 'interview technique' by stumbling upon the apparently outlandish notion of actually empathising with his patient;
"When I was a staff psychologist at a neuropsychiatric institute in 1965, I conducted an experimental interview with an 18-year-old woman diagnosed as "acute paranoid schizophrenic." I'd been influenced by the writings of Carl Jung, Thomas Szasz, and Ayn Rand, and was puzzled about methods for training psychiatric residents that are unreported in the literature. I prepared for the interview by asking myself questions. I wondered what would happen if I listened to the woman as a friend, avoided letting my mind diagnose her, and questioned her to see if there was a link between events in her life and her feelings of self-esteem. My interview with her was followed by her quick remission."
That this perfectly obvious 'intuition' of Siebert's caused such an excitement that he felt prompted to commit his thoughts to paper sums up I think the woeful inadequacy of psychiatric training in general. When has it ever been revelatory for a physician to conclude that by actually listening to a patient 'as a friend' that some progress may in fact be made? Because the medical model's aim is to delegitimise the ideational content of an emotionally traumatic event by dismissing it as an illness the recovering patient is left with a uniquely perplexing dilemna. How do I properly renegotiate my identity? How do I portray myself to the world bearing in mind that in the light of the best scientific evidence my emotional crisis which involved the entirety of my being has been deemed to be the index of an underlying illness?
It is astounding that among the supposed building blocks, the literature helpfully provided to explain to people what has happened to them during what is often a crucial period of identity reconstruction, that this literature makes mention of such thoroughly depressing scientific 'truths' as 'chemical imbalances', 'white matter shrinkage', 'larger ventricles' and so on. Apart from being preposterous fabrications designed to induce drug dependence these are quite often the only concepts with which the neophyte psyche has to make sense of their experience. The most basic precepts to be observed when someone is undergoing emotional distress is to highlight the positives and banish the negatives. So fundamental a reaction is this and so commonly found in normal everyday life we may well characterise it as an instinctive human response.
For this reason alone the institution of psychiatry has become something of an abomination and if we were to seek further clarification for rising suicide rates in Ireland we may look no further than the unholy alliance it has formed with the pharmaceutical industry. This is not we may add because of the preponderance of any malevolent intent on the part of practitioners but rather arises from both institution's insistent promotion of 'hard science' as the solution to conditions whose roots evidently lie in the emotional domain.
Samuel Goldwyn
Within the corporate-controlled "medical" discipline of psychiatry, the raw experience, termed "mental illness", is quickly appropriated on scarcely concealed disciplinary grounds and its "reality" is demarcated within a pseudoscientific neurological framework for the purposes of creating a captive market of life-time subscribers for its pharmaceutical products. The resultant commercial exchanges are facilitated and conducted under the legitimating veneer of the modalities of the doctor-patient relationship; the former now being in the position of the expert 'supposed to know'. Yet, just what it is it precisely that this "expert" purportedly knows?
To my mind the irrational narratives of corporate sponsored biochemical reductionism have all the logic of a hypothetical traffic corps in la-la land pulling over the driver of a speeding car and concluding that the cause of the excessive velocity is to be found in a depressed accelerator. Instead of actually confronting the person behind the wheel the matter is then, wholly illogically, passed on to technical specialists who after further analysis compile an impressive report detailing ignition timing, fuel to air ratios and combustion cycles. These findings are then questioned by a rival team of specialists who declare that insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the intake manifold, while yet another team point to the centrality of the manifold vacuum, and all this was before the input of the carburettor team and the piston crew. No single body of research held the day, arguments remained inconclusive yet all agreed that their time was not wasted, valuable contributions had been made to our overall understanding of engine capability. The research was then, as usual, sold to one of the big car manufacturers and just before the case was declared closed one nave young observer asked whether we should not perhaps ask the driver of the car why he thought he was speeding.
To which came the reply; "Dont be absurd. Do you honestly believe he has any insight into the complex mechanisms that are under discussion here. What on earth would his opinion contribute to the discussion at hand. Besides, the answer would be much less informative from a scientific standpoint, you understand." - Yes, but if you wish to prevent him from speeding in the future, would it not be wise to ask him why he was doing it on this occasion. Perhaps he had a valid reason. "Listen, the precautions taken consist of the adjustments we have made to the vehicle. In the future it will impossible for him to speed. He will no longer be a danger to himself or to others."
Psychiatry participates in a grotesque erasure of an individual's personhood. There is an almost palpable denial of active volition or conscious agency on the part of the "experient" and the immediate social circumstances in which s/he is a participant that have contributed to the formation of the "symptoms". The seemingly impeccable credentials of the biological reductionist argument (the touchstone of psychiatry) are vaunted disproportionately because of the supposedly scientific nature of its explanation yet the science has taken over at the onset from a falsely deduced point of causation. Carl Jung raised the same concern almost a hundred years ago and may be said to have predicted psychiatry's present over emphasis on neurobiological causation;
Psychiatry has been charged with gross materialism. And quite rightly, for it is on the road to putting the organ, the instrument, above the function - or rather, it has long been doing so. Function has become the appendage of its organ, the psyche an appendage of the brain. In modern psychiatry the psyche has come off very badly. .... Modern psychiatry behaves like someone who thinks he can decipher the meaning and purpose of a building by a mineralogical analysis of its stones.'
This is the type of analogy which has been used by many in an attempt to critique this bewildering conflation between internal mechanisms and our subjective experiences and its appreciation is absolutely critical in grasping the nature of the psychiatric enterprise. When we see the hairs rise upwards on the back of a cat who has taken fright our response is not to investigate the properties of follicular verticality but instead we attempt to assuage the creature that his fears are misplaced. For it is a fact that is too little remarked upon that each of us everyday, through the normal business of social interaction are the unwitting dispensers of active mood altering agents.
Merely by validating the presence of another, by listening to what is being said do we initiate a positive functional chemical change in the brain. Likewise, when we undermine an individual's sense of 'being in the world' through all those stratagems that most healthy adults are, unfortunately, thoroughly versed in, do we by the same token, also initiate functional chemical changes in the brain; though this time of the deleterious sort. In other words, by positively affirming a person's sense of being in the world however this may be initially presented and construed by us to be, it is vital that it is at least validated. And what in practice is the effect of this thoroughly slovenly approach if not a drugs, drugs and more drugs regime that seeks to functionally alter a 'chemical imbalance' that one's aloof attitude is in contrary fashion only exacerbating anyhow. How many clinical trials have been conducted to date that monitor the positive effects of a daily fifteen minute conversation with someone who listens, affirms, validates, is non-judgemental and does not seek to pigeonhole your difficulties into a pre-prepared smorgasbord derived from either developmental psychology, psychoanalysis or neurobiological reductionism?
Theory necessarily informs practice but it is essentially an artifice erected to keep our minds attuned to certain recurring problematics; the real issues revolve around the therapists' encounters with the patient as another human being. In this regard I am reminded of an extraordinary exchange between R.D. Laing and a clearly ambitious young graduate student in clinical psychology:
Graduate Student: "Dr. Laing, I still don't understand the theoretical basis of your therapeutic approach to schizophrenia. Could you please explain it?"
R.D. Laing: "Certainly. The basis is love. I don't see how you or I can be of any help to our clients in a visionary state unless we are capable of experiencing a feeling of love for them. Therapy, as opposed to mere treatment, requires that we have a capacity for loving kindness and compassion."
Graduate Student (perplexed): "But Dr. Laing, what is your clinical methodology for developing this approach?"
I mean??
Laing was unfortunately a rare breed among practitioners and would often go to great lengths to procure the confidence and trust of a patient, reportedly spending hours in some cases sitting in silence with them showing by his presence alone that his thoughts were with them. In a similar vein, psychiatrist Al Siebert has written about how he reformed his own 'interview technique' by stumbling upon the apparently outlandish notion of actually empathising with his patient;
"When I was a staff psychologist at a neuropsychiatric institute in 1965, I conducted an experimental interview with an 18-year-old woman diagnosed as "acute paranoid schizophrenic." I'd been influenced by the writings of Carl Jung, Thomas Szasz, and Ayn Rand, and was puzzled about methods for training psychiatric residents that are unreported in the literature. I prepared for the interview by asking myself questions. I wondered what would happen if I listened to the woman as a friend, avoided letting my mind diagnose her, and questioned her to see if there was a link between events in her life and her feelings of self-esteem. My interview with her was followed by her quick remission."
That this perfectly obvious 'intuition' of Siebert's caused such an excitement that he felt prompted to commit his thoughts to paper sums up I think the woeful inadequacy of psychiatric training in general. When has it ever been revelatory for a physician to conclude that by actually listening to a patient 'as a friend' that some progress may in fact be made? Because the medical model's aim is to delegitimise the ideational content of an emotionally traumatic event by dismissing it as an illness the recovering patient is left with a uniquely perplexing dilemna. How do I properly renegotiate my identity? How do I portray myself to the world bearing in mind that in the light of the best scientific evidence my emotional crisis which involved the entirety of my being has been deemed to be the index of an underlying illness?
It is astounding that among the supposed building blocks, the literature helpfully provided to explain to people what has happened to them during what is often a crucial period of identity reconstruction, that this literature makes mention of such thoroughly depressing scientific 'truths' as 'chemical imbalances', 'white matter shrinkage', 'larger ventricles' and so on. Apart from being preposterous fabrications designed to induce drug dependence these are quite often the only concepts with which the neophyte psyche has to make sense of their experience. The most basic precepts to be observed when someone is undergoing emotional distress is to highlight the positives and banish the negatives. So fundamental a reaction is this and so commonly found in normal everyday life we may well characterise it as an instinctive human response.
For this reason alone the institution of psychiatry has become something of an abomination and if we were to seek further clarification for rising suicide rates in Ireland we may look no further than the unholy alliance it has formed with the pharmaceutical industry. This is not we may add because of the preponderance of any malevolent intent on the part of practitioners but rather arises from both institution's insistent promotion of 'hard science' as the solution to conditions whose roots evidently lie in the emotional domain.
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