Jeez. According to the logic of modern pyschology, I'm suffering from "Christianity" but that doesn't stop people from asking questions on a skeptic board does it?
I think you know this is crap. There's no "logic of modern psychology" that says you're suffering from Christianity.
You and Dancing Dave and others make it sound like I have no experience in these matters. I'm married to a psychologist. I've worked as a chaplain in mental institutions-- in fact, I did my residency at one. And I have a member of my family who has been homeless for 8 years, who has been determined to have "bi-polar disorder."
You seem to believe that because I made a free choice to question something with no empirical evidence, that somehow I am a cruel person.
Because it sounds ignorant, and we're used to this approach with other issues. eg: people who have never cracked a science textbook are the rank and file of evolution-denial.
Question: do you tell your wife her career is meaningless, or is there common-ground somewhere?
I also find it interesting that the people this issue seems to matter most to are the ones either a) suffering from, or b) working in the subject matter.
ie: Stakeholders? Experts? Is this unexpected? Again, we see this with evolution-deniers: "The only people defending evolution are these
scientitsts - what's with that,
hmmm?"
Question: do you have perhaps a vested interest in dismissing psychiatric interpretations, as it obviously competes with ministry? Is it a coincidence that the publication you suggested is a religious screed (from the Church of Scientology, which also competes economically with psychiatrists?)
Do you want to perhaps steer the conversation away from ad hominem attacks and get on with a real debate?
I'm also a little confused sometimes with your approach:
Mood disorders are real, but as I said above-- "a real what?" I think they are a real social construction.
versus:
There is no difference between mood and mood disorder. They are both just moods. That we treat the bad ones as an objective entity while simultaneously treating the good ones as "pie in the sky" crazy talk is not logical.
It's hard to actually understand what you're saying, and mount a debate strategy.
However, to address the two statements above: they're actually different questions, both relevant to other scientific pursuits.
The first question is one of
reification. Gould approaches this in great detail in
Mismeasure of Man. He asks: is there such a thing as intelligence? We seem to know that there is, but is it a real thing? This is an
ontological question that science handles downstream from metaphysics. Is there such a thing as species? There's no scientific definition of species, yet we're pretty sure that cats and dogs are different species.
The second question has already been addressed, and you seem to have conceded, then reversed your view. This is the fallacy of the corrupt continuum. Just because there isn't a clear distinction between moods and mood disorders (extreme moods) doesn't mean that there is no distinction. There is no clear distinction between child and adolescent, adolescent and adult, but we have no reservation about saying that children shouldn't drive on the freeway. It's a little blendy in the middle, but denying that they're different things is a logical fallacy.
What I'm saying is that this argument is itself
unscientific, yet it's central to your claim that psychiatry is not scientific. Thus, my confusion.
This is also part of what other participants have identified as a strange focus: other sciences are even flakier: we don't know how statins work, but we prescribe them to address an arbitrary metric ("high" blood pressure - levels chosen for unscientific reasons, which vary from country to country). In any case, we prescribe them because we believe they will reduce suffering and/or extend life expectancy. Well, where's the scientific 'fact' that we need to do this? It's a social choice (and a choice that some communities do not make, incidentally.) It's still valid medicine.
There is a third problem with the assertion that because there is a cultural input to the definitions (and we're all aware that 50 years ago, 'homosexual' was a diagnoseable disorder) that they are useless. This is also a logical fallacy related to corrupt continuum, but is caused by the erroneous belief that cultures are entirely random. One thing we have learned is that cultural concepts of mental illness, moods, and so on, are very consistent - it is their attitude toward treatment of these sufferers which varies.
And you believe what you've posted here? You've worked in a mental institution(s) as a chaplain, representing God to people who are hugely troubled .....I"m speechless and unable to write anymore.
