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sudrin
I was talking to sudrin about this Tom Cruise psychiatry business the other day. Specifically, I was defending his statement that psychiatry is a "pseudo science" in that they utilize best guesses and reasonable theories rather than actual scientific fact. After all, the human mind is still far too complex and stunning for the average human's mind to wrap it's wee little noggin around...if that is circular enough for ya!
There used to be an assertion in psychiatry that if you follow doctors orders, you will get "well" and mental illness would no longer afflict you. Of course following docs orders could mean anything from remouncing homosexuality, to taking intense medications, submitting to horriffic things like OTC (eletro-shock) or hypnosis and the like. And "well" meant something closer to "no longer poses a threat to society".
Today though, the assertion seems to be that most people can be helped to varying degrees through a combination of talk therapy, behavior modification, and drugs. Not the fun kind of drugs, mind you, but ones that you have to stay on all the time. They may impair or increase your ability to sleep, to wake up properly, to have sex, to deal with work or other human beings. They may give you acne, nausea, dizzyness, wieght gain or loss, and any number of other annoying things.
And really, what is "better"? I hammer to the foot is better than a hammer to the head. But who the hell wants that? Sometimes the best you can hope for is not to hurt anyone and to be kind of happy sometimes. So anything with the ultimate goal of making a crazy person kind of happy sometimes, is probably not a hard science. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw, notwithstanding the fact that Crusie's religion was invented by a Sci Fi writer. Maybe he'll join MY religion once I start one.
That said, I only found out recently that Tom also said there is "no such thing as a chemical imbalance". And THAT, my friends, is pure poppycock!
sudrin about this Tom Cruise psychiatry business the other day. Specifically, I was defending his statement that psychiatry is a "pseudo science" in that they utilize best guesses and reasonable theories rather than actual scientific fact. After all, the human mind is still far too complex and stunning for the average human's mind to wrap it's wee little noggin around...if that is circular enough for ya!There used to be an assertion in psychiatry that if you follow doctors orders, you will get "well" and mental illness would no longer afflict you. Of course following docs orders could mean anything from remouncing homosexuality, to taking intense medications, submitting to horriffic things like OTC (eletro-shock) or hypnosis and the like. And "well" meant something closer to "no longer poses a threat to society".
Today though, the assertion seems to be that most people can be helped to varying degrees through a combination of talk therapy, behavior modification, and drugs. Not the fun kind of drugs, mind you, but ones that you have to stay on all the time. They may impair or increase your ability to sleep, to wake up properly, to have sex, to deal with work or other human beings. They may give you acne, nausea, dizzyness, wieght gain or loss, and any number of other annoying things.
And really, what is "better"? I hammer to the foot is better than a hammer to the head. But who the hell wants that? Sometimes the best you can hope for is not to hurt anyone and to be kind of happy sometimes. So anything with the ultimate goal of making a crazy person kind of happy sometimes, is probably not a hard science. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw, notwithstanding the fact that Crusie's religion was invented by a Sci Fi writer. Maybe he'll join MY religion once I start one.
That said, I only found out recently that Tom also said there is "no such thing as a chemical imbalance". And THAT, my friends, is pure poppycock!