• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Psychology Today Opinion piece regarding the IOM release

Sherpa

Ex-workaholic adrenaline junkie
Messages
699
Location
USA
The best part of his article is this:

"I described this sometime ago in my book, From Paralysis to Fatigue: Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (Free Press, 1992). Nothing has changed since then in scientific terms. There have been no convincing new studies, no breakthrough findings of organicity, nothing."

Yep, nothing new has been discovered by nutritional, genetic or clinical science since 1992. :rolleyes:

Nothing at all. Nothing! Nine!

No genetic mutations has been discovered, no new supplements have been developed or tested, no studies involving fatigue been preformed (except for by MLM distributors).

Got it?

:)
 
Last edited:
Messages
13,774
No wonder Shorter is annoyed... he thought that the fine work he and colleagues had done promoting psychosocial views of CFS in the 90s would lead to patients abandoning their excuse for illness. Instead, it does not seem to have been as beneficial as he expected.

Wessely. Professor Shorter-it is fascinating to hear you
talk on psychology, but can I take you back to history?
You said two things-first, that you have learned that the
essential way of dealing with these problems clinically is
to take them seriously, emphasize their genuine nature and
so on. That is clinical skill and clinical judgement.
But you also said that the way in which these syndromes
finally go is when the word gets out that they are
really "all in the mind" and not to be taken seriously. There
is a clear irony and contradiction between what is good
clinical practice for the individual, and what you propose
would ultimately alter the disease attributions. How are we
to resolve this irony?

Shorter. I do not see a contradiction here at all. The physi-
cian has a whole bag of psychological tricks for dealing
with chronic psychosomatic illness, chronic somatization.
It is very important not to legitimate these toxic diagnoses,
and there is no doubt that multiple chemical sensitivity and
chronic fatigue syndrome are toxic diagnoses, because they
cause the patients to become fixated upon their symptoms
and to dig in even further so that they acquire a sense of
hopelessness.
Now, you do not have to endorse the patient's illness
representations in order to treat the patient in a humane and
serious way in the patient-doctor relationship. You do not
have to contradict the patient. You can diplomatically slide
over the illness attributions in silence, at the same time
taking the patient's symptoms seriously in other ways.

Wessely. Suppose a transcript of the proceedings here was
circulated among a group of patients who believe they
have toxic dental amalgam or suffer from multiple chemi-
cal sensitivity, it would be clear that the clinicians in this
audience would no longer get any patients. Once it was
known that they had presumably endorsed the views they
had heard at this symposium, that would be the end of their
clinical practice. They would no longer be able to do the
good things that you have said. So there is a fundamental
tension between the public good, and the clinical necessity
of treating patients, and it's one that is hard to resolve.

Shorter, The tension is between the need to be effective
health care educators and the need to have patients. This is
clearly a moral choice, and I am sure everybody in this
room would opt for the side of the good guys saying, "Our
role as physicians is to educate the vast public, which
consists of millions and millions of people, that we are
dealing with hocum here, rather than to cling to these few
extra patients. We have plenty of patients after all who
have plenty of other problems".

Whole piece is worth reading (if you want to try to understand these unpleasant people) and discussed:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-more-morality-and-philosophy-than-cfs.13045/

Shorter is just an immoral human being, whose misguided sense of his own superiority leads to him happily promoting the mistreatment of others:

SHORTER: Yes, it was once very common for doctors to prescribe a placebo, and that went on for decades and decades to the benefit of patients, I might add, because placebo remedies really do work. You destroy their effectiveness when you tell a patient, "I'm prescribing baking soda." I have a lot of problems with a particular version of bioethics we have today that says it's unethical to lie to patients. If we can help patients by lying to them, then by all means, lie to them.

This interview with Shorter is now off-line, but archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20130723...emagazine.org/archives/21/edward_shorter.html
 

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
SHORTER: Yes, it was once very common for doctors to prescribe a placebo, and that went on for decades and decades to the benefit of patients, I might add, because placebo remedies really do work. You destroy their effectiveness when you tell a patient, "I'm prescribing baking soda." I have a lot of problems with a particular version of bioethics we have today that says it's unethical to lie to patients. If we can help patients by lying to them, then by all means, lie to them
ok he is really a mind over matter guy..

I have a lot of problems with a particular version of bioethics we have today that says it's unethical to lie to patients. If we can help patients by lying to them, then by all means, lie to them.

I am not sure if he understands what he is suggesting? Healthcare based on lies and deception?
 

anciendaze

Senior Member
Messages
1,841
He's a historian, not an MD.
He is in a very strange position, since he does not have a medical degree, yet is a full professor on the faculty teaching psychiatry, which requires a medical degree. An interview reveals that he never had an interest in quantitative science, yet did attend 2 years of medical school, where he seems to have picked up jargon and prejudices.
 
Messages
35
Did you get a message saying your post has been flagged as spam when trying to reply to the piece?
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Did you get a message saying your post has been flagged as spam when trying to reply to the piece?
No. There are many reasons this might have happened, and possibly others might elaborate. Sometimes a lot of spam might have been originating from your ISP and it gets flagged. Sometimes your post might match a pattern stored in their spam filter. This happened to me once, somewhere else.Or you might be using a vpn, which increases the chanced your IP will match a spam source.
 

Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
archived https://archive.today/j8QN0

I would like to see it stay up in public though, and I wonder what the IOM would make of being told that they are nothing more than our lackeys and puppets.

The author seems to have quite a bit of history as one of the pro-somatisation crowd. His bio on psych today tells us a lot too

"Edward Shorter, Ph.D., author of How Everyone Became Depressed (Oxford 2013), is a social historian of medicine at the University of Toronto who has published histories of obstetrics and gynecology (Women’s Bodies), the doctor-patient relationship (Doctors and Their Patients), psychosomatic illness (From Paralysis to Fatigue), and sexuality (Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire). In 1991 he was appointed to the Faculty of Medicine as the Jason A. Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine. Since then Shorter has emerged as an internationally recognized historian of psychiatry and psychopharmacology. His publications in this evolving field include A History of Psychiatry; A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry; and Before Prozac. In addition, his recent work includes Partnership for Excellence: Medicine at the University of Toronto and Academic Hospitals, a major history of the Faculty and its hospital affiliates (University of Toronto Press)."

This looks like the resume of someone applying for a job with UNUM and/or the psych lobby. Maybe he wants to become a professor at one of the Psychosomatic "Medicine" colleges like the one started and funded at Kings college by UNUM. It should earn him a bonus added to his next paycheck. (Extra points for continuing to make a fool of himself despite all the real scientific evidence of biomedical disease. It's a technique the tobacco lobby used for decades to claim smoking wasn't harmful: just keep chanting the same old BS; if people hear it often enough, some will assume it must be true.)
 

Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
I tried to comment but was flagged as spam. I tried to reply to the poster who gives Shorter credit for being a graduate of Harvard, the "citing authority" argument as a reason to respect his opinion.

I tried to post this:

I guess you didn't notice that he's NOT a medical doctor or a psychologist and has NO QUALIFICATIONS to be writing as if he were.

He got his degree in HISTORY. Harvard produces PhDs in many different fields but they did not educate this man as a medical doctor. I would suggest it's easier to get a PhD in HISTORY, without knowing anything about science, than it is to get a degree as a medical doctor - anywhere.

But while we're throwing out prestigious schools, maybe you should google Dr. Montoya of Stanford, certainly as well respected as Harvard, and Dr. Montoya is a real doctor and has been researching ME/CFS for years.

Or go to you tube and watch the videos Stanford has, by Dr. Montoya on CFS.

Over a million people have this devastating disease in the US alone and over 20 million worldwide. It has been acknowledged and researched as a biological disease for over 30 years.

There's no room for "opinion" when the scientific facts are so clear. No, truth is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty may be, but not truth. Our understanding of the truth may change with more evidence, but Shorter does not even take the evidence into consideration before writing his opinion in a childishly hateful way.
 

Never Give Up

Collecting improvements, until there's a cure.
Messages
971
Shorter now has 64 replies to his ME/CFS/SEID post. His other recent posts have 0-6 replies.

His written acting out is clearly attention seeking behavior designed to help him cope with the poor potty training techniques his mother employed long ago which has led to his utter failure to stay relevant. Give the man a diaper, please.
 

GracieJ

Senior Member
Messages
772
Location
Utah
Seriously? It truly reads as satire, and is quite funny that way. I agree with a previous poster, this is actually a favor to us.

These words are going through my head after reading through the blog and the comments:

Tenure. Knighthood. Authority. Responsibility. Credibility. History.

Among others, of course. Although I would never wish this disease on anyone, I am a bit miffed that certain individuals in this drama will never know the stark terror of trying to survive in a world that does not recognize that people are sick and need care.

Even if they are ever asked to step down, I imagine they would step down with a pension or stipend or something, allowing them to live quietly the rest of their years. Even if knighthood and tenure were stripped, it would never make it up to the patients.

Silencing them is a great start, though...
 
Last edited:

Aurator

Senior Member
Messages
625
A liitle probing into Mr Shorter's background seems to suggest that his primary motivation for choosing psychiatry as his field of activity is not to help sick and vulnerable people get better, but to ensure that certain groups of people he feels an antipathy to remain traduced, marginalised and oppressed.
It's a sad fact of life that whilst many people who have obtained positions of influence are nobly actuated by ambitions to do good in the world, others, regrettably, are actuated by negative ambitions to harm and suppress people they are ideologically predisposed to dislike, and they will dedicate considerable energy to pursuing this ignoble goal.
 

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
Messages
3,061
Location
UK
Did you get a message saying your post has been flagged as spam when trying to reply to the piece?

No, but I got told my email address was invalid and blocked. Maybe a glitch.


https://www.psychologytoday.com/terms-use

Terms of Use


(...)

2) Rules of Conduct. We are the sole interpreter of the Site rules of conduct described in these Terms of Use. Users who violate these rules may have their access and use of the Site suspended or terminated at our discretion. We may at any time take any action with regard to user materials that we deem in our sole discretion to be necessary or appropriate.

a) Posting Rules.

i) Materials you post to the Site may not contain: (1) URLs or links to web sites that compete with the Site; (2) copyrighted material (unless you own the copyright or have the owner's permission to post the copyrighted material); (3) trade secrets (unless you own them or have the owner's permission to post them); (4) material that infringes on or misappropriates any other intellectual property rights, or violates the privacy or publicity rights of others; (5) anything that is sexually explicit, obscene, libelous, defamatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, or hateful; or (6) anything that is embarrassing or offensive to another person, group or entity.

(...)

These ToU presumably also apply to the individuals who have blogs hosted by Psychology Today.