Let's try again to get some clarity.
Example: My father suffered from multi-infarct dementia -- the gradual destruction of the brain by continual small strokes (brought on by his overuse of the anti-migraine medication cafergot). About 6 months to a year before the loss of brain function became so serious as to cut off all responses to the world, he suddenly began to view my daughter and her husband as engaged in plots against him, and several times threatened physical violence agaisnt her. That was a *psychotic symptom*. In this case, multi-infarct dementia could be described accurately as a "psychotic disorder." It would be ignorant however for someone to call it a psychosis.
Example that everyone knows: LSD and other drugs bring on psychotic symptoms. But LSD hardly constitutes a psychosis.
Example: There is a club in Japan which exists for the sake of annual camping trips high on a mountainside. There exposure to cold, hunger, thirst, and other forms of sensory deprivation give them the same results you can get froim schizophrenia or LSD -- psychotic symptoms. It would again be willed ignorance or the desperation of the beleagured sectarian to call them psychotics or their condition psychosis.
As I mentioned before, in victims of schizophrenia (but *not* in victims of schizoid affective disorder or bipolar with psychotic symptoms) there has recently been discovered a difference in gross brain anatomy. Anyone who reads the DSM's use of "psychotic" as even remotely similar to Ken's religious ravings needs to take a remedial reading course.
There has been a good deal of squawking and jeering on lbo over time at people who have not read this or that bit of this or that current thinker. It seems that many of those same squawkers are utterly innocent of the tremendous advances made in just the last 10 years in neuroscience. And if there is one solid bit of knowledge in that area as of now it is that WE DO NOT KNOW -- we don't have a clue to -- the causes of schizophrenia (the major source of psychotic symptoms). But within this safe circle of sublime ignorance of brain science, some grad student in theology can confidently declare that HE knows exactly what schizophrenia is -- and that is what any claim to understanding that mythical beastie, psychosis, must be claiming to understand.
Doug misread one of my posts last week as claiming that depression could be reduced to brain mechanics, when I had said precisely that such was not possible. But it is as certain as any medical knowledge we have that schizophrenia can be explained strictly in physiological terms. And it is *only* in reports of current research in neuroscience that this proposition can be affirmed or doubted. This rather rigidly physiological basis of schizophrenia helps explain the phenomenon Ted noticed -- his mother's perfect "sanity" when she was not immediately experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Let me repeat my original charge, which not one response has cast the least doubt on. When Ken describes "psychosis" in psychological terms he is commiting exactly the same kind of destructive fraud (I will not dignify it with the label of intellectual error) that Bettelheim commited when he blamed autism on mother's giving their children inadequate love. He is actively hurting people and throwing up barriers to the decent treatment of the mentally ill. Perhaps he should consider his responsibility as an untrained person meddling in the lives of others.
I invite the clods who think this topic trivial to discuss it with Marta.
Carrol
Dace wrote:
> >Just a note on this: nobody has "psychoses" anymore. It's not in the
> >DSM-IV; it's considered an obsolete term by most practicing clinicians
> >nowadays (kinda like "melancholy" or "hysteria"). If a clinician
> >wants to get reimbursed by HMOs for their work, they do not diagnose
> >a person with a "psychotic condition". --Whether this is a good thing
> >or a bad thing depends mostly on what you think of psychodynamic theory.
> >
> >Miles
>
> I don't know about the baneful effect of HMO's on psychiatric diagnosis, but
> psychosis is very much alive and well in the DSM-IV. The term used is
> "psychotic condition." The basic definition is "delusions or prominent
> hallucinations." The narrower definition is that the afflicted individual
> doesn't realize the voices are hallucinations. The broader definition
> includes disorganized speech and behavior as well as catatonia. The DSM-IV
> also offers a "conceptual" definition of psychosis: "A loss of ego
> boundaries or a gross impairment in reality testing." Sounds like Ken's
> definition. But when Ken uses the term to refer to people who believe in
> God and country, that's a misuse of the term. It's not enough to believe
> God is telling you what to do. You have to actually hear his "voice." Most
> people who follow the word of God have perfectly clear ego boundaries and do
> not hallucinate. Yet these people are clearly nuts. Their impairment in
> reality testing is not "gross" but simple and commonplace. Psychosis is
> special. And that's what makes it a poor term to use the way Ken is using
> it. [SNIP]
>