Well, maybe it's a definition problem. Mental illness as reaction may possibly be treated by changing whatever the cause of the reaction is. But I think of mental illness as a condition, and as such in itself, not addressable through any social analysis. Not to dismiss it entirely; social analysis as consideration of the community, writ in whatever way is relevant, may influence for example treatment options. But if a fellow's brain chemistry is messed up, I do not see how a visit to the town zoning commission might help him.You don't seem willing to entertain a social analysis, and at the same time seem reluctant to actually say what you mean. — unenlightened
psychiatrists by comparison are more in the way of witch doctors — tim wood
psychiatrists by comparison are more in the way of witch doctors — tim wood
My take on psychiatry, in sum, is that while most doctors are akin to mechanics in the sense of dealing with the more-or-less, and mostly more, known, psychiatrists by comparison are more in the way of witch doctors. — tim wood
At which point one can ask "how does your society fuck you up, and what are your coping strategies/self-medication?" — unenlightened
This is a pretty conventional view these days and was a thesis articulated rather well by a famous psychiatrist called E Fuller Tory in his 1980's best seller Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists: — Tom Storm
My understanding of the medical model is inherited from those who don't like it. And it amounts to this: if you go to the doctor you are by definition and understanding a patient and thereby something must be wrong, and it is the doctor's business to find something wrong - that he or she can treat.We agree thus far at least, so I might be able to convince you to consider that the medical model may be somewhat at fault.... One of the difficulties of the medical model — unenlightened
the best resolutions are not found in medication, but in meaning. Hence the emphasis on the psychosocial. — Tom Storm
My criticism being of those who represent the "witchcraft" as knowledge. — tim wood
Yes, but always psychological reform, never social reform, because ... actually, the medical model still informs the social structure that is psychiatry - one goes to the doctor, not the politician/lawyer. — unenlightened
is to some extent the one which informs them."how does your society fuck you up, and what are your coping strategies/self-medication?" — unenlightened
Back to the question then, in different form: what exactly does psychiatry know, and what does it know about it? My own best guess for an answer is that they know about behaviors - they have observed them. And have made observations that are essentially statistical in nature - no doubt it's not quite that simple - thus being able to make "educated" guesses by looking at the data. Not to be confused with knowledge. And not a criticism but a critique; that is, a fact, or so I think.Then you seem to be arguing that psychiatry is not knowledge. — Tom Storm
My own best guess for an answer is that they know about behaviors - they have observed them. And have made observations that are essentially statistical in nature - no doubt it's not quite that simple - thus being able to make "educated" guesses by looking at the data. Not to be confused with knowledge. And not a criticism but a critique; that is, a fact, or so I think. — tim wood
For psychiatry, the ability to make knowledge-based categorical statements a luxury they usually do not enjoy. — tim wood
Ask a psychiatrist c. 1970 about a hebephrenic or a homosexual, and he will say they're sick. Except that in 2024 hebephrenia is not a thing and homosexuality not a sickness. And while that's a half-century ago, I don't think psychiatry has refined its understandings to qualify as knowledge. — tim wood
To argue that because positions change and therefore psychiatry does not hold knowledge seems to be like the religious fundamentalists who say that science is bunk because science changes its paradigms over time.
Anyway, I'm going to leave this one here since there is no end to a debate like this and it's not really my role to defend psychiatry, which is an imperfect and evolving profession - and I am no expert. I simply know from decades of personal experince that psychiatrists can work scrupulously to provide extremely helpful life saving interventions for people. The profession is generally demonized and poorly understood. Which was my original observation. — Tom Storm
Not so easy! The discussion - I don't consider it a debate; what would we be debating? - is about knowledge. Your representation that psychiatrists have knowledge. Mine that to be sure they have some but with respect to their subject matter, not much knowledge. Again not itself a criticism. And I think that the disrepute psychiatry has had - I'm not sure of its status today - is not so much because of the practices of some bad apples, but because of the general claims and practices of psychiatry itself, still among them, though perhaps muted, claims to knowledge that isn't.a psychiatrist is a medical doctor with further specialist knowledge - so has all the knowledge of a GP and additionally has expert knowledge of mental illness.... Anyway, I'm going to leave this one here since there is no end to a debate like this and it's not really my role to defend psychiatry,... The profession is generally demonized and poorly understood. Which was my original observation. — Tom Storm
The same observations you’re making concerning psychiatry could be made with respect to philosophy. The only difference is that most philosophers don’t claim to be doing science. Underlying your analysis is what I detect to be an assumption concerning the nature of scientific objectivity and the difference between empiricalThe failure of any claim to knowledge is not just an "Oops" moment. Rather instead it is an indictment of the work that led to the claim and the system that supports the work. If nothing else, the evidence that psychiatry still needs work would be its still claiming knowledge it does not have, to the degree it still does so. My guess is that most professionals in their personal practices have taken the historical lesson and try not to make such claims. — tim wood
Some no doubt, but in terms of my argument, nonsense and non sequitur. Knowledge is a something. To claim to have it is a claim to have something. If it turns out you don't have and never did have it, then whence the claim? There's a piece of difficult forensic accounting to be done, the usual results of which not-so-honorable.The same observations you’re making concerning psychiatry could be made with respect to philosophy. — Joshs
My impression is that many psychiatrists have retreated from false claims to providing services that will foster trust: prescribing, managing certain kinds of care, and so forth — tim wood
or does all science operate on the basis of historically changing social constructions? — Joshs
or does all science operate on the basis of historically changing social constructions? — Joshs
The stretch from psychology to all science misses a rather important difference that is peculiar to the 'human' sciences. When one studies electrons, or planets, or plate tectonics, one can reasonably assume that right or wrong, one's hypothesis about phenomena will not materially affect the behaviour one is studying. But human behaviour is radically transformed by human understanding, so that as soon as a psychological theory has some measure of success, it alters human nature and the phenomena one is studying change. This explains why psychology appears more like the fashion industry than a science — unenlightened
To deny the existence of facts and truths about protons long before the term “photon” appeared in language leads to paradox. This is because it seems reasonable to infer as follows:
( l ) There were photons five million years ago.
(2) It was the case then that there were photons.
(3) It is true that it was the case then that there were photons.
(4) It was true then that there were photons.
It seems reasonable, but of course philosophers have, paradoxically, denied it. Heidegger notoriously said that “before Newton, Newton’s laws were neither true nor false
We should think of normativity, of the possibility of correctness and incorrectness, in terms of human beings’ answerability to one other. We can say everything we need to say about objectivity, about the possibility that any given judgment we make, no matter how unanimously, could be wrong, without ever talking about “answerability to the world” or “world-directedness.” This account of objectivity works just as well for mathematics as for physics. It is as applicable to literary criticism as to chemistry. The centrality of perception and of natural science to his treatment of the topic of answerability becomes explicit when John McDowell says:
“Even if we take it that answerability to how things are includes more than answerability to the empirical world, it nevertheless seems right to say this: since our cognitive predicament is that we confront the world by way of sensible intuition (to put it in Kantian terms), our reflection on the very idea of thought’s directedness at how things are must begin with answerability to the empirical
world.”
When discussing literature or politics, however, it is a bit strained to say that we are in a cognitive predicament. It is even more obviously strained to say that this predicament is caused by the need to confront the world by way of sensible intuition. McDowell’s choice of Kantian terms is a choice of visual metaphors, metaphors that Kant used to lament our lack of the faculty of intellectual intuition that Aristotle had described, overoptimistically, in DeAnima. It is also a choice of natural science as the paradigm of rational inquiry, a Kantian choice that Hegel explicitly repudiates. When one switches from Kant to Hegel, the philosopher whom Sellars described as “the great foe of immediacy,” these metaphors lose much of their appeal. So it is not surprising that it is among anglophone philosophers, who read far more Kant than they do Hegel, that these metaphors should remain most prevalent.
From a Sellarsian, Davidsonian, Brandomian, or Hegelian viewpoint, there is no clear need for what McDowell describes as ‘a minimal empiricism’: the idea that experience must constitute a tribunal, mediating the way our thinking is answerable to how things are, as it must be if we are to make sense of it as thinking at all. We are constantly interacting with things as well as with persons, and one of the ways in which we interact with both is through their effects on our sensory organs and other parts of our bodies. But we don’t need the notion of experience as a mediating tribunal. We can be content with an account of the world as exerting control on our inquiries in a merely causal way, rather than as exerting what McDowell calls “rational control”.
But we don’t need the notion of experience as a mediating tribunal. We can be content with an account of the world as exerting control on our inquiries in a merely causal way, rather than as exerting what McDowell calls “rational control”. — Rorty?
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