Simon Wessely's latest

[starryeyes]

Thank you Jace. This thread contains valuable info that I was trying to recall as we're working on the letter to suspend Wessely.

 

[jace]

You are welcome. I had recently come across the source myself, and found the thread through the search engine, so I cannot claim psychic powers

 

[Gerwyn]

narcisistic personality disorder

OMG! He feels like a victim! And, he has insufficient insight to understand what he is saying. How astonishing!



I continue to be astonished at his total lack of insight! Is this paranoia? It's perilously close.



Please, someone diagnose this guy! What kind of personality disorder causes this kind of distorted thinking and speaking?

What's wrong with him?!

Ohhmmmmmmmmm

He has all the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder Extreme anxiety at being wrong to point of denial,grandiosity need for approval from peers dominate subordinates attention fear of imperfection manipulative unconcerned about the feelings of others etc I,ll look up the rest and post later -my cat is demanding food in her own unique manner!

 

[oerganix]

Simon Wessely's diagnosis

Thanks to Marco and Gerwyn for the comic relief. I have another diagnosis to add, based on the following, found a the end of one his writings for the insurance industry giant, Umum:

At the end of 2006, Unum protected almost 2 million lives through more than 18,600 schemes. During 2006 we paid total benefit claims of 285 million of which more than 191 million related to income protection claims.

Our US parent company, Unum Group, traces its history back to 1848 and is today the market leader of group and individual income protection insurance in the United States. Premium income for Unum Group and its subsidiaries exceeded $7.9 billion in the year ended 31 December 2006. Total assets were $52.8 billion at 31 December 2006. For more information visit www.unum.co.uk.

And he dwells on procedures involving the colon (surgical removal as cure for mental illness, and colonics as cure for everything).

So, my diagnosis:
Malignant GREED, with comobidity of Anal Retention.

 

[MEKoan]

Hi Robin,

I'm sorry that I did not see your post until now. I'm afraid I lose track very easily!

Sorry to hear that your brother has had to deal with such a painful mental illness. There is mental illness in my family, too. One of my stepkids has severe, treatment resistant anorexia nervosa with OCD, for instance. There are others who suffer in the family but this particular condition is potentially fatal so it will suffice to let you know that I do understand the pain of mental illness in the sufferer and the family. We look to psychiatry for help and treatment. I am not about to throw out any babies with the bathwater.

Nevertheless, psychopharmacology which has done so much for your brother is a distinct specialty within psychiatry. Most psychiatrists know little about pharmachology or knew little in the past. With the emphasis on drug therapy now, I'm sure that is changing. I have grave concerns about the overuse of psychotropic med.s, though. It seems that everyone is on SSRIs these days despite the fact that one of the known side effects of this class of drug is suicidal ideation and suicide. I know that those with insufficient serotonin have been helped and that's wonderful but those with sufficient serotonin have been badly damaged and that's not so wonderful.

There can be a dangerous tendency to a kind of blinkered orthodoxy in this profession. For instance, I know a young man who has a long standing diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He does well on anti-psychotic medication. However, he began seeing a new psychiatrist who had been trained with an emphasis on personality disorders and his diagnosis was changed to Borderline and he was advised to discontinue, after a taper, his medication. He as spent the last several years on and off anti-psychotic medication and in and out of a psychotic state because his psychiatrist, as a result of his training, sees personality disorders everywhere he looks.

In psychiatry, more so than in any other branch of medicine, we really are at the mercy of the beliefs of the practitioner. I'm so glad your brother, and others with bipolar disorder, are able to be treated successfully for their illness now. I hope my child may enjoy the same relief one day. I look forward to the day when psychiatric illnesses are better understood so that they may be treated with more science and less dogma. Until that time, I hope all are treated with care, compassion and humility.

All the best to you and yours,
Koan

 

[Gerwyn]

Koan, I must respectfully disagree with you.

My brother suffers from bipolar disorder with a tendency toward psychosis. He describes visual and auditory hallucinations with a tendency toward paranoia. My grandfather had similar symptoms, and that time, the medications and treatments available weren't sufficient to keep him healthy and productive. He spent a great deal of time in psychiatric wards and eventually died of suicide. My brother, on the other hand, is able to maintain a full time job and raise his children because of advances in treatment, specifically anti-psychotic medication. A psychologist would not be able to treat my brother. In fact, any one that wants to try is welcome to be alone with him in a locked room when he's off his meds. He's 6' and weighs over 200 pounds.

There are a lot of theories of causation in regard to psychiatric illness, Koan, and the advances in psycotropic medications have helped millions of people. I'm confused as to why you would point to a lack of "cure" as a failure of psychiatry; there is no cure for cancer yet oncology is not a failure, there is not cure for diabetes but endocrinology is not a failure, what about AIDS?

Psychiatry is a very important medical discipline, but it is not appropriate on for treating CFS, just like psychiatry is not appropriate to treat cancer. Simon Wessely is an idiot, but not all psychiatrist are idiots (just like not all dogs are poodles.)

Some people do benefit from psychotropic drugs but a great many do not.In any event psychiatrists did not develop them. There have been no advances in this discipline for 30 years.They lump depression as one illness whereas in fact there are many aetiologies.i question the importance of labelling and medicating just for the sake of it with no notice taken of neuropsychological advances which are some way into developing causative frameworks for many of these labelled and falsely characterised conditions.Neural networks mental representations and so on provide an alternative conception which is based on neuroscience and not on custom and practice.I would submitt that the medical model has largely failed to explain the origin of so called psychiatric disorders or provide cures---palliative treatment is not a cure.If cancer drugs cure you the cancer goes away -not so with psychotropics

 

[MEKoan]

You make some really excellent points, Gerwyn, and you make them exceedingly well.

 

[Countrygirl]

((((((((((((Marco))))))))))

Thank you for the laugh!! It has made my evening - no!, my day!

C.G.

 

[MEKoan]

Marco,

 

[xanadu]

Psychiatrist's humiliating public self-analysis

http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/staff/profile/?go=10206

Simon Wessely started at Cambridge, and read Art for his Part 2, developing an abiding love for Vassily Kandinsky and equal hatred for the work of Marc Chagall.

Loves: squares, lines, circles, blobs.
Hates: women, flowers, donkeys, love.

 

[MEKoan]

Loves: squares, lines, circles, blobs.
Hates: women, flowers, donkeys, love.

:tear: :tear:

I would just add, hates: fiddles, flying and rooftops

ETA Why on earth would anyone bother to "hate" Chagall? It disturbs me that someone who would set out to be a shrink could "hate", in an "abiding" fashion, Chagall. What kind of judgmental nature holds onto hatred for a artist who is so very benign? And, who includes this little nugget of information in their CV?! He is a very, very odd duck, that Wessely, a very odd duck, indeed!

 

[Gerwyn]

:tear: :tear:

I would just add, hates: fiddles, flying and rooftops

ETA Why on earth would anyone bother to "hate" Chagall? It disturbs me that someone who would set out to be a shrink could "hate", in an "abiding" fashion, Chagall. What kind of judgmental nature holds onto hatred for a artist who is so very benign? And, who includes this little nugget of information in their CV?! He is a very, very odd duck, that Wessely, a very odd duck, indeed!

stop insulting the duck I wonder who or what chagal represents for him feels like a countertransference-----perhaps we should profile him any early relational history benign ineffectual father emotionally distant focus elsewhere etc

 

[MEKoan]

I would suppose that someone who "loves" Kandinsky and "hates" Chagall, sees in himself the possibilities of both the esoteric modernism of one and the accessible folksiness of the other.

I would further suppose that this hypothetical person felt it necessary to reject what he may have considered an unacceptable, perhaps even shameful, identification with the culturally rich but materially poor life of the pre-war European shtetl as depicted by Chagall. Identification with Kandinsky may have been seen as identification with a sophisticated aesthetic which would be more socially acceptible in post-war Britain.

Just musing.

 

[Gerwyn]

I would suppose that someone who "loves" Kandinsky and "hates" Chagall, sees in himself the possibilities of both the esoteric modernism of one and the accessible folksiness of the other.

I would further suppose that this hypothetical person felt it necessary to reject what he may have considered an unacceptable, perhaps even shameful, identification with the culturally rich but materially poor life of the pre-war European shtetl as depicted by Chagall. Identification with Kandinsky may have been seen as identification with a sophisticated aesthetic which would be more socially acceptible in post-war Britain.

Just musing.

I was thinking of good father bad father authority figures weak child etc need the historical narrative do do my attachment bit but yours sounds better

 

[MEKoan]

Good father, bad father works for me, too!

 

[Tammie]

just saw this thread, and have to add an additional diagnosis to Wessely....it's not actually in the DSM, but part of it is.....I say that in addition to having narcissistic personality disorder he also suffers from malingering by proxy....(malingerers lie about being sick to receive benefits - it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's basically it)....well he is lying about what is wrong with others ( CFS patients) in order to receive various benefits from it, so malingering by proxy

 

[boomer]

Chauvinist too

I imagine someone who is capable of claiming cfs as a psychiatric disorder has a personality disorder of some kind for sure. Hard to comprehend the selfishness and cruelty. Whatever he or she gains, whether it is money or fame etc., is enough for them to commit this crime.

And obviously, since authorities are not removing these people from their position(s) and setting the record staight, and since this is an illness that is predominately suffered by women, I would say that you probably live in a country that supports chauvinism. Shame on Britain for allowing this!

I am not saying Canada is any better. It turned its back on these people for three decades - not funding any research to find out what was going on.

Sure, neurotransmitters are low but so are digestive enzymes that interfere with absorption and so are natural killer cells and blood volume etc. Everything is off.

 

[Gerwyn]

I don't live in Britain. But as an outsider I imagine someone who is capable of claiming cfs as a psychiatric disorder has a personality disorder of some kind for sure. Hard to comprehend the selfishness and cruelty. Whatever he gains, whether it is money or fame etc., is enough for him to commit this crime.

And obviously, since other authorities are not removing him from his position and setting the record staight, and since this is an illness that is predominately suffered by women, I would say that you probably live in a chauvinist country. Shame on Britain for allowing this!!!

I am not saying Canada is any better. It turned its back on these people for three decades - not funding any research to find out what was going on.

Sure, neurotransmitters are low but so are digestive enzymes that interfere with absorption and so are natural killer cells and blood volume etc. Everything is off.

do you think we could play the sex descrimination angle

 

[Gerwyn]

just saw this thread, and have to add an additional diagnosis to Wessely....it's not actually in the DSM, but part of it is.....I say that in addition to having narcissistic personality disorder he also suffers from malingering by proxy....(malingerers lie about being sick to receive benefits - it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's basically it)....well he is lying about what is wrong with others ( CFS patients) in order to receive various benefits from it, so malingering by proxy

very interesting idea I wonder if this was his attachment style faking illness etc in order to avoid things criticism etc a sort of learned helplessness and this is triggereing his self disgust that he,s transferring

 

[Gerwyn]

just saw this thread, and have to add an additional diagnosis to Wessely....it's not actually in the DSM, but part of it is.....I say that in addition to having narcissistic personality disorder he also suffers from malingering by proxy....(malingerers lie about being sick to receive benefits - it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's basically it)....well he is lying about what is wrong with others ( CFS patients) in order to receive various benefits from it, so malingering by proxy

very interesting idea I wonder if this was his attachment style faking illness etc in order to avoid things criticism etc a sort of learned helplessness and this is triggereing his self disgust that he,s transferring