That post is the kind of thing that psychologists waste their time on while the biomedical research is quietly going on in the background. It is evidence, if evidence were needed, of just how useless these people are in the face of serious organic illness. His review wasn't much better, since he posted it without paragraphs, so it was a big block of psychological obsfucation and a use of terminology intended to give respectable status to the contents of the book he was reviewing. I see he reformatted it today.
In his outline of the author's book, he mentions the idea that patients derive benefits from illness and behaviours around illness - of course, this rather avoids the more uncomfortable truth that it's psychiatrists, psychologists and other professionals who derive benefit, economic and professional, from their own behaviour around illness. The patients do not derive any benefits from misdiagnosis and lack of treatment. It's psychological abuse to suggest illness, especially in the current climate, is something advantageous.
He also says some of the low star reviewers have an axe to grind regarding the aetiology of the illness. I think he means the science they've been quoting. Which he fails to deal with. Great, let's call science an axe.
Then there's this:
"Speaking of CFS, Dr O'Sullivan takes what I believe to be a brave and honest stance, stating clearly her reasons for taking CFS to be equivalent to ME, why it is an extremely debilitating condition, why it demands serious and caring attention, and why it is best understood psychologically (the not uncommon alexithymia (diminished recognition of one's own emotions) and the frequent difficulty shown in accepting the possibility of psychological origin and maintenance (compare those who suffer with epilepsy or other debilitating conditions who are often far more ready to accept the possible impact of stress) being two of the main such reasons)."
Yes, it's the patients who are in denial. Totally. Not the reviewer and the author who are in denial about the organic cause of ME.
I'd like to shine a brave and honest light into the amount of money being made in the psychosomatic illness field. I'd also like to know what the fallout, professionally speaking, is when the likes of MS is reclassified, and sexual orientation conversion therapy abandoned. Presumably anyone affected by the closing down of 'specialities' like these don't just retire. Do they just move on to another area without retraining? Is there ever a post mortem on all the things these professions got wrong? I feel lessons are not being learned. The bandwagon moves on looking for another group of people to classify and deconstruct. And so it goes on.