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Even if what they're doing is moronic. **Sigh**Don't forget fear. Publish or perish. Academics have to show they are doing something or lose their positions.
This reminds me of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode where a psych had a very suggestible patient he could hypnotize and the patient would exhibit any illness, or even robust health. He pushed it to include death and 'forgot' the knocking sequence to reverse the condition, and the man's fiance found out and went to his crypt and did the knocking sequence... cue the screeching violins...
Point being the psych was suggesting that this proved all illness could be cured by psych/hypnosis means etc... Sound familiar?
Even if what they're doing is moronic. **Sigh**
This reminds me of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode where a psych had a very suggestible patient he could hypnotize and the patient would exhibit any illness, or even robust health. He pushed it to include death and 'forgot' the knocking sequence to reverse the condition, and the man's fiance found out and went to his crypt and did the knocking sequence... cue the screeching violins...
Point being the psych was suggesting that this proved all illness could be cured by psych/hypnosis means etc... Sound familiar?
So why don't these psychologists apply their above conclusion to psychotherapy as well, which after all, involves elaborative talking to a therapist about one's life problems and mental symptoms. Their above conclusion would suggest that elaboration of personal problems and mental symptoms during psychotherapy is harmful, and therefore that psychotherapy or similar psychological talk therapies are harmful.
Talk about a particular slant taken by the researcher how obvious can you get!
Perfect example of filtered perception!
The study itself is almost comical its so biased. Its not comical however that some would take it seriously.
Normally I ignore rubbish studies but this one is so bad it deserves a special mention.
Brief report: Writing about chronic fatigue increases somatic complaints
Marko Jelicic ; Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Mincke Frederix ; Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Harald Merckelbach ; Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Abstracts
Participants were instructed to imagine that either they or a friend were suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and were asked to fabricate a story about how CFS affected their own or their friend's daily functioning. Control participants were not given an imagination exercise but were asked to write about their study choice. After the writing exercise, all participants completed the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90). Participants who had written a story about how CFS symptoms affected daily life (either their own life or that of a friend) had higher scores on the Somatization subscale of the SCL-90 than controls. This finding resembles the misinformation effect documented by memory research, and suggests that elaborative writing about illness, through its symptom-escalating power, has iatrogenic potential [harm].
The most striking feature of this study is that it doesn't feature any CFS patients, instead using a bunch of psychology undergrads (who may, co-incidentally, have strong views on CFS).
All this shows is that imagining life with CFS affects how healthy people answer a questionnaire taken immediately after that bit of writing - a 'priming' effect that is well-known is pyschology.
There is no comparison group either. They may have had similar findings if they had used MS as the illness instead, but I doubt they would have suggested in that case that the writing was causing 'harm'. The Discussion section speculates:
I haven't read fully, and don't intend to but the full text is available for masochists.
And if writing causes harm, just imagine the effect of talking about symptoms to a consultant for an hour could have. Surely better to have not medical attention at all...
I'd like to sentence these psychoquacks to watching this video twice a day for a year: