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Psychology Today Opinion piece regarding the IOM release

Dx Revision Watch

Suzy Chapman Owner of Dx Revision Watch
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3,061
Location
UK
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1,446
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So, SEID. No longer Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and no longer a Neurological disease.
 
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melamine

Senior Member
Messages
341
Location
Upstate NY
‘In our experience, most of us, to one degree or another, are fugitives from guilt—whether our guilt evasion takes an hysterical, a psychosomatic, or some other psychopathological form. We cling to the de-moralizing discourses that we fabricate for ourselves, sometimes with the help of de-moralizing therapists, and the de-moralizing discourses offered by our postmodern culture, in a desperate attempt to believe we are victims of mysterious afflictions rather than moral agents afflicting ourselves with suffering for our real or imagined crimes. And we do this because we refuse the burden of moral agency: the need either to consciously bear guilt or consciously confront and modify the accusing superego.

Projection. Caused by detachment from the moral injury he inflicts as part of his professional modus operandi. In other words, a refusal to assume "the burden of moral agency."
 

Aurator

Senior Member
Messages
625
When psychobabble becomes such an egregious parody of itself it rises to the level of an art form. Reading stuff like this makes it tempting to view the whole history of hysteria as little more than a lurid collection of writings written by people suffering from hysteria.
 
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I don't think that things like this get me angry. I know what to expect from people like Shorter, and just see it as good to have another example of it out in the open. Personally, I prefer Shorter's stuff to that from Wessely, Moss-Morris and so on. (Maybe that's not saying much).

I almost felt the same with the Hanlon piece - good to have something like that in the file. It is a bit painful that he got paid for it, but it's good that he showed his colours.
 
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1,446
@Esther12 wrote:
"I almost felt the same with the Hanlon piece - good to have something like that in the file. It is a bit painful that he got paid for it, but it's good that he showed his colours."


Oh yes. Its really great that millions of people who are clueless about ME and who have been reading misinformation about ME for decades could read Hanlon's rotten article and take it seriously. Just because we can see through it don't think that the general public can.
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13,774
Just because we can see through it don't think that the general public can.
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I don't know. I think that more would see through the Hanlon piece than most of the other pieces of media propaganda we've seen. I didn't think he did a good job of it.
 
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Sean

Senior Member
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7,378
One thing that really hacks me off in all this is that it is so often left to patients and carers to counter the type of totally unacceptable content that Dr Shorter has published. Why do so many clinicians, researchers and patient organizations sit back and leave this to patients to deal with?
Seriously angers me that we are first left to defend ourselves, and then when we do (having no choice about it) we get accused of being activists and partisan players.

Catch-22 hypocrisy much?

:grumpy:
 

awkwardlymodern

Forcing the past to blend with the future
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52
OK...wow :vomit: I'm getting nauseous here. I'm new to the community, but not the disease. I somewhat believed, until reading this, that there was something personal in the way doctors (and, unfortunately, also people "close" to me) have treated me.

I initially received a diagnosis of "conversion disorder" from a neurologist, and my then boyfriend talked me into thinking the diagnosis made sense (I had no idea of its association with hysteria and was way too cognitively impaired to even check it). I then went and told everyone "I'm not crazy, I have a real neurological disorder, conversion disorder!" :bang-head:

This thread explains a lot...

I always knew that there was controversy, of course, but not to this extent, not this raw hatred and bigotry like Shorter, Wessely and others are spewing. I'm doing a lot of googling now, Freud? Surgery? Doctors in his time, I see, were quite brutal against patients, especially women, in general :eek: (Warning: very disturbing link) as this sickening 19th-century practice attests.

It's all making sense now, in a scary way...antisocial, narcissistic and/or sadistic personalities who know that medicine in 2015 is supposed to be about the patient, are attracted to the primary field in which this behavior is most tolerated: psychiatry (um, and apparently history of medicine). If they refuse to believe us after objective physical evidence is presented, why should we believe in their good intentions? I'd hazard a guess that Shorter doesn't understand the "consensual" part of the sexual practices he writes about. Maybe I'm being unfair but hey, if he can psychoanalyze us, we can psychoanalyze him.

I agree, no more tolerance for this. I can't believe I put up with it myself for so many years. I also imagine there are many others going through the same suffering I did, internalizing the abuse and thinking they are personally defective or alone, because they don't know the bigger picture. At least for me I'm done being quiet about this!
 
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Very annoying. His objection to "disease" centers around the lack of an objective test being used in diagnosis. But he fails to mention (or understand?) that the current diagnostic tests (2-day CPET and TTT) can make us much sicker, sometimes permanently so.

And the stupid site only allows doctors to make comments, even if they're a bunch of ignorant morons regarding the subject matter, and "unqualified" patients are the ones who can explain it. That entire site is a great illustration of what's wrong with psychiatry in general.
 

CantThink

Senior Member
Messages
800
Location
England, UK
I also imagine there are many others going through the same suffering I did, internalizing the abuse and thinking they are personally defective or alone...

That's how I was. I carried this burden for years and never told anyone. It's only more recently that I've opened up about it - but only to other ill people. I feel as if I suppressed a lot of feelings around it.
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
I also imagine there are many others going through the same suffering I did, internalizing the abuse and thinking they are personally defective or alone, because they don't know the bigger picture.

I think it was the reason I became suicidally depressed a few years into the illness. "Mental health" attention can be extremely toxic and harmful. Fortunately I managed to distance myself from these views, and family has mostly become supportive after acknowledging that I'm sick and not just misbehaving. Ever since I hardly have any problems with depression.

These behaviorist explanations legitimize cruel abuse that a normal person would never be capable of doing otherwise.
 
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Roy S

former DC ME/CFS lobbyist
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1,376
Location
Illinois, USA
Dr. Speedy wrote an exceptionally elucidating intellectual dissertation upon the subject:
 
"Prof Edward Shorter and the psychic epidemic of ignoring clinical evidence
 
A phenomenon well familiar to historians of medicine is the psychic epidemic of ignoring clinical evidence by psychiatrists and medical historians, a belief that spreads epidemically, until the evidence become so overwhelming that it becomes clear that these people have been telling porkies for decades, and then their nonsense is forgotten."
 
more at --
 
http://niceguidelines.blogspot.com/2015/02/prof-edward-shorter-and-psychic.html
 

Never Give Up

Collecting improvements, until there's a cure.
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971
On a related note:

World's Oldest Psychiatric Hospital Opens New Museum

The world's oldest psychiatric institution, the Bethlem Royal Hospital outside London, this week opened a new museum and art gallery charting the evolution in the treatment of mental disorders.

The original hospital was founded in 1247 in what is now central London and the name spawned the English word "bedlam" meaning chaos and madness. In the 18th century visitors could pay to gawk at the hospital's patients and, three centuries later, stereotypes about mental illness still abound.
"The museum is to do with challenging the stigma around mental health and one of the main ways you can do that is actually get people to walk onto the site and realise that this is not a frightening, threatening and dark place,"
Victoria Northwood, head of the Archives and Museum, told AFP.
The bleak period in the history of mental treatment is addressed but not dwelled upon in the museum.
Iron and leather shackles used until the mid-19th century to restrain patients are displayed behind a wall of mirrors so they cannot be seen directly.

A padded cell is deconstructed and supplemented with audio of a patient describing what is was like to be locked inside.

Not black and white

The exhibition is full of interactive exhibits, including a video where the visitor is challenged to decide whether to commit a young woman, in denial about the dangers of her anorexia, to hospital against her will.
The decision is surprisingly difficult and it shows the complexity in diagnosing ailments linked to the brain, which we still know comparatively little.

"We are just getting across that this is not a black and white issue. It is not very easy. Human beings aren't very easy," Northwood said.

Art features strongly throughout the space, starting with the imposing 17th century statues "Raving Madness" and "Melancholy Madness" by Caius Gabriel Cibber, which used to stand at the entrance to the Bethlem hospital when it was in central London.
Also included are paintings by current or former patients, like Dan Duggan's haunting charcoal "Cipher" series of a man's elongated face—a testament to the 41-year-old's inner turmoil.
Duggan, who made several suicide attempts and was detained three times under the mental health act including at Bethlem, said art was an instrumental tool in his recovery.
"A lot of the time you spend in hospital, particularly a psychiatric hospital, is very prescribed.
"When you're engaged in a creative process, you're able to be free of all of that for a while and the power is back in your hands to do whatever you want to do," he said.
'A very powerful outlet'
Visual artist and dancer Liz Atkin grew up in an alcoholic household. She developed dermatillomania or Compulsive Skin Picking from the age of eight as a way to manage the stress.
"I could have ended things in a very different way," said Atkin, now aged 38.
Atkin received treatment and works with patients at the anxiety unit of Bethlem, which is now located in spacious grounds about one hour south of London.
She said the new museum and gallery is a unique space to encourage healing.
"Making artwork isn't a complete cure and I personally don't think that I'm cured, but I think it provides a very powerful outlet for some of those things that are hard to talk about."

Bolding added by me.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-02-world-oldest-psychiatric-hospital-museum.html

If you've got an horribly misunderstood, serious disease that some, like Shorter, wish to ascribe to mental illness, this place sounds like a nightmare, especially in places where locking one up could be considered being for the patient's own good!

I wonder if they have an exhibit of diseases previously treated there, like epilepsy, cancer, MS, etc.?
 

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
He is still freudian. he denies it and refers to psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience but he is still heavily into it.

Read the preface of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/From-Paralysis-Fatigue-History-Psychosomatic/dp/0029286670

..accordingly there is great pressure on the un-conscious mind to produce only legitimate symptoms.
This cultural pressure is the crux of the book.

The unconscious mind desires to be taken seriously and not be ridiculed.

It will therefore strive to present symptoms that alway seem, to the surrounding culture, legitimate
evidence of organic disease. this striving introduces a historical dimension.
as the culture changes its mind about what is legitimate and what not the pattern of psychosomatic illness changes.

for example, a sudden increase in the number of young women who are unjable to get out of bed because their legs are paralyzed may tell us something about how the surrounding culture views women and how it expects them to perform their roles.

psychosomatic illness is any illness in which physical symptoms, produced by action of unconscious mind are defined by the individual as evidence of organic disase and for which medical help is sought.

all freudian theories. to my best knowledge all discredited. the subconscious mind how freud described it does not exist. the mind doesn't operate like that.

here from a recent article that he wrote:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...201411/psychiatry-celebrates-its-top-ten-hits

3. The “decline and fall” of psychoanalysis. Roger there! It is astonishing how the entire medical field of psychiatry was bamboozled by psychoanalysis from about the 1920s to the 1970s. Psychiatrists actually asked patients about their toilet training when taking histories, and dreams were earnestly recounted. This is like introducing Tarot cards to cardiology.

I don't disagree with that point of view.
 
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Sidereal

Senior Member
Messages
4,856
..accordingly there is great pressure on the un-conscious mind to produce only legitimate symptoms.
This cultural pressure is the crux of the book.

The unconscious mind desires to be taken seriously and not be ridiculed.

Er, surely if that were true the unconscious mind would come up with a totally different set of symptoms since there is no medical condition in our culture considered more unserious and ridiculous than ME/CFS. To say you are fatigued and can't keep up with the constantly working capitalist society is tantamount to treason.
 

chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
Er, surely if that were true the unconscious mind would come up with a totally different set of symptoms since there is no medical condition in our culture considered more unserious and ridiculous than ME/CFS. To say you are fatigued and can't keep up with the constantly working capitalist society is tantamount to treason.

good point but they don't have a better model. there is no model that can make sense of hysteria.

that's the problem. they know that it is pseudoscience but if there is nothing else it's good enough for them.
 

Sidereal

Senior Member
Messages
4,856
good point but they don't have a better model. there is no model that can make sense of hysteria.

that's the problem. they know that it is pseudoscience but if there is nothing else it's good enough for them.

No worries, I'm sure there is a perfectly logical explanation for why our unconscious minds are coming up with ridiculous symptoms... the ego is plagued by the id's castration/humiliation fantasies.