UTMC

Rolly actually posted this up on Bookface, but I figured someone should post in here as well. The article is somewhat long-ish, but it's well worth the read.

http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why ... tally-ill/

OK, so how many folks on this board read this and nodded the whole fucking way through?

--Jaeger

Oh joy, a chinese-wall of text that I'm actually interested in. I don't suppose there is a summing up?

Offhand, after reading the first paragraph, I can tell you that, apparently, at least a quarter of the population must be anti-authoritarian. Working in customer service, I'd estimate that at least one in four callers would challenge my authority in regards to telling them how much their phone bill was, how much services cost and wether or not they should get a technician to plug something into the electrical socket for them for free. Yes, I'm not joking, a matter off daily discussion, whether or not putting a plug into a socket (the manual had pictures!!) requires special training.

Yup, lots familiar there. Fortunately anti-authoritarianism runs in my family. I came home from a session with a shrink in junior high and told my grandmother I didn't want to go back to him because I thought he was an idiot who didn't know what he was doing. Fortunately she backed me on that one.

I'm not flat against the mental health professionals, I've gained some great insight and tools for dealing with the world from some of them, but there is a non trivial percentage that seem to have entered the field just to deal with their own shit, and are failing.

Ken Kesey basically said it all 50 years ago but what's interesting about this piece is that it comes from the other side of the couch.

That I've never thrown a shrink out a window is amazing.
It did come pretty close a couple of times.

On the point about anxiety/depression going hand in hand with being broke/unemployed, there is a snake eating it's own tail. I could go on ad nauseum about this one but I'll sum it up by telling you that one time I was so depressed about being broke and unemployed that I went to the County. or the State, or some Government office or another to try to get help, and I wound up owing them $280.

Do you know why it's illegal to put gasoline in a glass container?

"Some activists lament how few anti-authoritarians there appear to be in the United States. One reason could be that many natural anti-authoritarians are now psychopathologized and medicated before they achieve political consciousness of society’s most oppressive authorities."

Wait, what? This is the third paragrah.

Speaking as a former psych major (right before I quit college) I can say while he has some valid points, he has nothing to back up his statements but his own opinions and speculation. That comes from my English minor.
I think he has something interesting to say but before we all go believing it he should present some evidence.

piccini9 wrote: Do you know why it's illegal to put gasoline in a glass container?

Something something, molotov, something.

calamari kid wrote:

piccini9 wrote: Do you know why it's illegal to put gasoline in a glass container?

Something something, molotov, something.

Kids might mistake it for a beverage and raise a flamboyant toast to former Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and thus poison themselves to the death?

The author, Levione, seems to be using his own professional experience and expertise as the relevant "back up". This is somewhat legit as 'expert opinion' is generally considered more probable to have some merit than mere lay opinion (at least to other professionals).

Still, data would be nice but seems as tho it would be a nightmare trying to design a study to realize any.

There's no doubt in my mind that fostering mass docility is the number 1 goal of the american psychiatric establishment--nor that this goal arises through their natural obeisance to the ruling elites..

That's why psychology is a "soft" science. It's easily manipulated to suit.

I agree re; behavioral psychology, which is really wide open to all sorts of unscientific bias. However there are parts of psychology I'm familiar with (cognitive, ie. the human visual system for ex) that are actually quite scientific in practice. Broad brush and all that...

::Takes prozac, keeps head down::

I said years ago that we've reached the point of diagnosing personalities rather than "problems." While doing my psych 101 class in university, I sat there and matched up pretty much all my friends with one classification or another.

Yes, KitKat, I absolutely agree that modern psych has long since reached the limits of their understanding or ability to help. I'm not saying it's useless by any stretch, but there's just too much money to be made in prescribing "solutions" to manufactured problems.

To wit: how many of you know of kids (or were kids) who were diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and drugged? I knew and know lots. In 1980 my kindergarten teacher (at snooty private school) said I was hyper and my folks took me to the shrink -- thankfully the shrink was good and honest, and said basically "he's not hyper, he's bored. Give him something interesting and complicated to do."

Additionally, cognitive dissonance is so common in modern America (and understandably so) that it's no fucking wonder everybody's crazy. [Insert argument for Legalizing It to keep people from going batshit/drinking too much/becoming reliant on Big Pharm.]

Ah, what a delightful Brave New World in which we live...

--Jaeger