Esther12
Senior Member
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I thought I'd pull out a few recent quotes from Wessely about the absurdity of believing anyone would promote the view that CFS was 'all in the mind' - (what a straw-man!), and place the quotes from his 1997 discussion with Shorter afterwards, in which they themselves use the term unironically.
Strangely, Wessely doesn't condemn Shorter's absurd quackery, but instead, seems more concerned of the dangers of speaking openly about accepting it. Shorter is a historian, but is heavily involved in the CFS quackfest. He wrote the opening chapter for Peter White's book on biopsychosocial medicine, which included another discussion with Wessely and others. When you read Wessely's earlier stuff on the danger of ME support groups etc, it clearly fits very well with Shorter's view of CFS as a manifestation of social hysteria, even if Wessely doesn't use the H word.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7190703/mind-the-gap.thtml
http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/83/1/4.full
1997:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-more-morality-and-philosophy-than-cfs.13045/
Anyway... there are so many better reasons for criticising Wessely than that. It's pretty irritating that so much of the coverage around the anger patients feel towards Wessely simply parrots his own misleading claims on these matters though. It is possible to think that patients diagnosed with CFS have been poorly treated as a result of the work of Wessely and his colleagues, even if one does not despise all psychiatrists, think that mental health problems are not 'real' or fails to understand how mind and body can interact. If patients were all being lumped together and treated as if they were suffering from a retrovirus despite a lack of positive evidence that this is the case, that would be immoral quackery too.
Strangely, Wessely doesn't condemn Shorter's absurd quackery, but instead, seems more concerned of the dangers of speaking openly about accepting it. Shorter is a historian, but is heavily involved in the CFS quackfest. He wrote the opening chapter for Peter White's book on biopsychosocial medicine, which included another discussion with Wessely and others. When you read Wessely's earlier stuff on the danger of ME support groups etc, it clearly fits very well with Shorter's view of CFS as a manifestation of social hysteria, even if Wessely doesn't use the H word.
Trawl the internet, however, and you will find some who claim that I and other professionals are the architects of a vast conspiracy to cover up the real nature of the illness, that we portray CFS sufferers as malingering neurotics. They say we are denying its sufferers their treatment and benefits by falsely claiming that the condition is all in the mind, i.e. non-existent which has never been our view. The evidence is that, like most illnesses, CFS is a mixture of the physical and the psychological.
But the influence of Freud and his followers who did believe that many illnesses were all in the mind led to an increasing separation of the two disciplines.
This would rid us of the all in the mind slur, and let us get on with our jobs improving the treatment of patients and their illnesses
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7190703/mind-the-gap.thtml
It wasn't plain sailing though, since it was impossible to get rid of the stigma of being a psychiatrist, which transferred itself to the patients. I found, and still find, that hard to accept, but it was a fact of life, and I became identified with the all in the mind view of CFS, which was ironic since my interest in the condition was triggered by the fact that I did not think this was an imaginary or non-existent disorder, as many did at the time.
http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/83/1/4.full
1997:
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".
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-more-morality-and-philosophy-than-cfs.13045/
Anyway... there are so many better reasons for criticising Wessely than that. It's pretty irritating that so much of the coverage around the anger patients feel towards Wessely simply parrots his own misleading claims on these matters though. It is possible to think that patients diagnosed with CFS have been poorly treated as a result of the work of Wessely and his colleagues, even if one does not despise all psychiatrists, think that mental health problems are not 'real' or fails to understand how mind and body can interact. If patients were all being lumped together and treated as if they were suffering from a retrovirus despite a lack of positive evidence that this is the case, that would be immoral quackery too.
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