Perhaps so if you are only talking of its practitioners. But I believe the science of psychology is quackery, not just its practitioners.
> There are many
> quacks in the counseling business, but that does not undercut
> empirical research in the field.
Who is doing pure science anymore? Those working their thesis? Everyone else must be funded and even the universities are not immune to producing results that its funders wish to see.
Unlike medical science, much of which can be viewed directly or analyzed from blood samples, psychology is all theory and opinion, based on questionable evidence. Psychotherapy is more religion than science with hundreds of different approaches, each claiming themselves superior to all others.
> Likewise, if
> you have something that resembles a symptom listed in DSM, it means
> that you merely have a chance of being a nutcase, not that you are
> one.
Have you read the ADD or hyperactivity lists recently in DSM? I'd be worried more about a kid who never did any of those things than I would about one who often did them. Maybe its just because I'm an old hippie, but I find it disturbing how so many of the symptoms are clearly about conformance to authority and station. When "normal" requires such unerring well-behaved cogs in the machine, I question that authority.
> It
> has been determined how they work - by inhibiting the reuptake of
> the neurotransmitter seratonin
Zoloft, the anti-depressant they tried to push on me, was a seratonin inhibitor. I tried their free samples, but no buzz, no nothing. Depressing... ;)
> That is
> enough to justify using those drugs in treating patients suffering
> from depression or bipolar disorder who avail themselves of that
> treatment. Withholding these drugs on the ground that their
> effects are "unproven" would be indeed barbaric.
Withholding needed medication was never my suggestion. My doctor visit had nothing to do with depression and still the pills were offered to me. By a medical doctor, not a shrink. These doctors must be getting kickbacks to push these pills. Also been way too many cases of parents being told their kids wouldn't be allowed in public school if they weren't dosed with Ritalin or anti-depressants. Where's the pressure coming from there? Heard the practice was outlawed recently, but was that only because of word getting out that the Columbine and Red Lake shooters were users? I don't watch TV, so I don't know, but I wonder if there is much reporting on the evidence that anti-depressants can cause suicidal or violent behavior. It's certainly all over the net. So why is this just swept under the rug?
I have 2 suggestions:
1. Expose DSM4 for the fraud it is and go back to DSM2
2. Start an antitrust investigation into the doctor-pharmaceutical connection
>Of course that does not mean that everyone can benefit from SSRIs or
> that there is no risk - but the cost-benefit assessment can usually
> be made by a patient and a physician (or perhaps several
> physicians). It is taking a chance, like with everything else in
> life.
I think its more about profit.
>But again, that is different from unscrupulous quacks who push pills
> for a profit. The existence of the latter does not undercut the
> medicinal value of medication.
That some people desperately need that medicine does not undercut that the medication process has gone way too far, to dosing people who don't need it. That evidence is all around us. I'm sure you know people who are popping these pills, as do I, as are kids in Columbine, Red Lake, and in every other school in this country. Why? Because some book called DSM4 has them believing that they are scientifically ADD or Hyperactive or both, yet there is no good science to back it up. This psychological "science" and its trumped up "diagnosis" as outlined in DSM4 is a fraud and it should be exposed as such.
>4. Nature vs nurture is a very blunt distinction - modern science
> can do much better than that. It is seldom either or, one or the
> other, but a combination of both.
To Nature and Nurture, James Hillman adds Soul, which I can easily accept. Science will be hard pressed to measure the first two and I'd like to see it try to measure the third.
--tully