taniaaust1
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That's the funniest hate piece Ive ever read about this illness.
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I'm sure that this article will eventually get pulled, because it exposes the points of view of a certain lobby group.
So I've made a PDF copy for our records. See attached PDF file.
I don't think they should pull this article. We need it in the public domain as evidence of what we have to put up with. It's unusual for this sort of thing to be said in full public view. Can anyone grab a copy of it before it's taken down?
Psychobabble is back!
Just when you thought a stake had been driven the heart of the psychobabblers, they come roaring back, propelled this time by Dr. Edward Shorter, a writer for Psychology Today. It's a column that the psychobabblers have roped, captured, and hogtied. How Psychology Today could have let itself in for this embarrassment is a mystery. Their report is valueless, junk science at its worst.
Psychobabble came out of that whole brew of toxic beliefs about physical symptoms being all in the patient's head that arose with Freud; it became crystallized with the diagnosis “psychosomatic disorder”. Finally, the wind went out of this particular sail in 2015 when it became apparent to the psychobabblers that nobody believed they had a provable scientific theory, with any real evidence to support it.
This process was described decades ago. Nothing has changed since then in scientific terms. There have been no convincing new studies, no breakthrough findings of psychosomatic origins, nothing.
And there never will be.
But this new Psychology Today report is driven by politics, not science. And politics means bringing psychobabblers on board. But bringing psychobabblers into such a discussion is equivalent to a committee of geographers that includes members of the Flat Earth Society.
What drives this process? Psychobabblers hate seeing a diagnosis that they don't understand; they love the words, “Madame, it’s all in your head.” So, many psychobabblers moved on to other delusional illness attributions, some involving other physical diseases such as Gulf War Syndrome since they had no idea what an “immune systems" was.
But since the 1970s the psychobabblers has been clamoring for recognition as a legitimate profession. The remarkable thing is that they were able to capture this column, and capture they did: the column abounds with sexism, hate, malice and spite. The author's book is given prominent mention, while the writings of the many critics, such as all the legitimate researchers who have been working tirelessly for decades to find the cause and treatment of this illness, are not cited at all.
Another bugbear for this column is evidence based medicine, and nothing evidence-based appears in the column, filled as it is with completely unverifiable comments about delusions and somatization. But, rather than delusional somatization, what these patients have is a true physical illness, along with the unshakeable, experiential knowledge that something is wrong with their bodies rather than their minds.
The author seems to have quite a bit of history
I just changed a few words in the article, left out a couple of paragraphs, and posted the rest as a comment:
I'm dropping a note to their editors suggesting they pull this piece. People like this need to be knocked off their podium.
http://www.royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/about/whatwedo
Should complaints about this hate piece by Psychiatrist Edward Shorter be made to the Royal College of Physicians and surgeons of Canada, to the University of Toronto where he is Professor, or is it just not worth it for an inimportant bigot?
"There have been no convincing new studies, no breakthrough findings of organicity, nothing.
And there never will be."
it speaks volume to the attitude of the author.There have been no convincing new studies, no breakthrough findings of organicity, nothing.
And there never will be.
Depression as a Role for Women?
This is totally unsurprising
By 15, the difference is dramatic. Many more girls are depressed than boys. The girls have pretty well learned the depressed role. In Hungary, fully 33 percent of the girls feel depressed by 15, as opposed to 4 percent in Austria, not because life in Hungary is so depressing for 15-year-old females but because there is something about Hungarian culture that says women are supposed to become “depressed.” These 15 year olds are merely learning the role.
His graph shows that by 15, girls are becoming young women. They understand what female behavior is all about, and one aspect of adult femininity is constant battling with “depression.
What so many young women have is a diffuse kind of non-melancholia in which they are characteristically anxious, tired much of the time, report all kinds of bodily symptoms, and tend to obsess about it. It was once called “hysteria.” Also “nerves.”
But their basic problem is not that they have a clinical affective illness but that they have learned a certain role.
Yes, that's what I was thinking... It's so bad that it seems like a parody... But it's real!That piece is so bad it is a caricature.