Psychiatry's Incurable Hubris

[TiredHorse]

A somewhat long read, and only a book review at that, but I believe very relevant for those of us with a mistrust of the psyciatric profession:

Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris

The biology of mental illness is still a mystery, but practitioners don’t want to admit it.

www.theatlantic.com

A quote:

"Harrington is right to sigh over what has too often proved to be a yelling match between equally deaf opponents—members of an ambitious profession convinced that psychiatry is making strides toward understanding mental illness, and critics who believe it is at best a misguided attempt to help suffering people and at worst a pseudoscience enabling social control at the expense of human dignity."

TH

 

[Walilamdzi]

I like the quote, I might read the rest later.

 

[Jean Améry]

A somewhat long read, and only a book review at that, but I believe very relevant for those of us with a mistrust of the psyciatric profession:

Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris

The biology of mental illness is still a mystery, but practitioners don’t want to admit it.

www.theatlantic.com

A quote:

"Harrington is right to sigh over what has too often proved to be a yelling match between equally deaf opponents—members of an ambitious profession convinced that psychiatry is making strides toward understanding mental illness, and critics who believe it is at best a misguided attempt to help suffering people and at worst a pseudoscience enabling social control at the expense of human dignity."

TH

Thanks for the link. Personally I'm leaning towards the view of psychiatry as a pseudoscience and a dangerous practice that objectifies people, damages them and robs them of their dignity. Not to mention often of their freedom aswell. Human rights simply don't exist for psychiatrists who think they are above such petty things as law and morality. Unfortunately society agrees.

 

[Your Own Ghost]

I think the pseudoscience of psychiatry operates in the power vacuum organized religion left behind. Instead of sitting in a small room and talking to a priest about our sins, we allow them to be pathologies and take them to the psychiatrist's small room. Instead of praying harder to the abstract deity, we take drugs for the abstract illness. When it doesn't get better, the goalpost is moved again and again.

And this is how science was supposed to shape the modern world, to explain away the mysticism and give reason to our actions, but psychiatry only met it as far as profit goes. A wolf in sheep's clothing that still targets the vulnerable above all and shifts blame away from the structure of society.

 

[Jodes]

sIt's an appealing link, thanks.

My View: I think most people under it are blind to the economic drivers at the very top. The businesses who are NOT there to help but to make money. And the people with the same intentions. The physicians and scientists might be dedicated more than anything , but it's the top managers that play the dirtiest tricks on everyone involved, maximizing revenue at any opportunity, lobbying governments with varying success.

It's why drugs have side effects as bad as the illnesses. It's why the latest critical life-saving cancer pill costs 1,000,000 times more to buy than to make. It's why top bosses earn 5,000 times that of the nurses. It's why only the symptoms are solved, not the problems in society that drive primarily the stress, but the generally the lack of support.

Most people are good. I think everyone's hubris in every field, anything - blinds us to the possibility that we're being duped. It's our greatest weakness to those who aren't good. We believe we can't be outsmarted, or have the wool pulled over our eyes. Our hubris is believing the systems we made with our technology is superior to tradition and can be let loose to replace it, driven by vast economic pressure.

And now people are so squeezed that they barely have breathing space to care for anyone BUT themselves. But it can't be excuse, the only option is to work together, save the fucking planet and ourselves. Will it happen? I'm pretty sure I'll have been squeezed to CTBing by then.

 

[TAW122]

Thanks for the link TiredHorse. I also like the quote, it makes a lot of sense.

Personally I'm leaning towards the view of psychiatry as a pseudoscience and a dangerous practice that objectifies people, damages them and robs them of their dignity. Not to mention often of their freedom aswell. Human rights simply don't exist for psychiatrists who think they are above such petty things as law and morality. Unfortunately society agrees.

Indeed, and there has to be something that holds these psychiatrists accountable for the damage that they do.

I think the pseudoscience of psychiatry operates in the power vacuum organized religion left behind. Instead of sitting in a small room and talking to a priest about our sins, we allow them to be pathologies and take them to the psychiatrist's small room. Instead of praying harder to the abstract deity, we take drugs for the abstract illness. When it doesn't get better, the goalpost is moved again and again.

And this is how science was supposed to shape the modern world, to explain away the mysticism and give reason to our actions, but psychiatry only met it as far as profit goes. A wolf in sheep's clothing that still targets the vulnerable above all and shifts blame away from the structure of society.

That's true and a good analogy. Sometimes, I like to think of psychiatry and religion two sides of the same coin.

sIt's an appealing link, thanks.

My View: I think most people under it are blind to the economic drivers at the very top. The businesses who are NOT there to help but to make money. And the people with the same intentions. The physicians and scientists might be dedicated more than anything , but it's the top managers that play the dirtiest tricks on everyone involved, maximizing revenue at any opportunity, lobbying governments with varying success.

It's why drugs have side effects as bad as the illnesses. It's why the latest critical life-saving cancer pill costs 1,000,000 times more to buy than to make. It's why top bosses earn 5,000 times that of the nurses. It's why only the symptoms are solved, not the problems in society that drive primarily the stress, but the generally the lack of support.

Most people are good. I think everyone's hubris in every field, anything - blinds us to the possibility that we're being duped. It's our greatest weakness to those who aren't good. We believe we can't be outsmarted, or have the wool pulled over our eyes. Our hubris is believing the systems we made with our technology is superior to tradition and can be let loose to replace it, driven by vast economic pressure.

And now people are so squeezed that they barely have breathing space to care for anyone BUT themselves. But it can't be excuse, the only option is to work together, save the fucking planet and ourselves. Will it happen? I'm pretty sure I'll have been squeezed to CTBing by then.

That is an interesting view that people at the very top are the ones pulling the strings. Speaking of our own short-comings as a species, I wished we had evolved to be more selfless and more intelligent, but we didn't. As far as people working together, some say it could happen (or couldn't depending on who you ask), but one of the fears is that by the time people do wake up (if they do wake up that is), it may very well be too late. I may also CTB before then, depending on my circumstances by then.