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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.sci,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Contempt prior to investigation
Message-ID: <12390@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 20:18:59 EST
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Posted: Fri Mar 14 20:18:59 1986
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In article <256@uvacs.UUCP> rwl@uvacs.UUCP (Ray Lubinsky) writes:
>> >Clinical and Applied Psychology.
>> 
>> I wish this were more of a "taboo" than it is.  Studies show that as many
>> people are hurt as are helped by therapy.
>
>I don't what study you're talking about, but I have heard that most (70% or
>more) of people who have attended therapy/councilling found it beneficial.
>Therapy is much maligned by people who have no personal experience with it
>-- in fact, by otherwise rational and intelligent people.

Heard from where?  Psychiatrists themselves?  I've read several indictments
of psychiatry, no numbers, listing case after case where misdiagnosis of
physical diseases with weird symptoms were dismissed as "hysteria", while
the actual disease was allowed to linger untreated.  See I Cooper's _The
Victim is Always the Same_ and O Sacks' _Awakenings_ for some examples.

Or consider the case of Charles Darwin, for example, who became chronically
invalid in his mid thirties, and was diagnosed as hypochondriac, much to
Darwin's distress.  Fifty years later he would have diagnosed as neurotic
instead.  (Indeed he has been so diagnosed by psychohistorians.)  But the
true cause seems to have been that he suffered Chagas' disease, picked up
one night in Argentina, when he was bitten by a huge blood-sucker of a bug
now known to carry the disease.  See Sir G de Beer's biography of Darwin
for more details.

And how many more cases are unknown because the victim was not famous?

>Perhaps you should keep an open mind about topics in which you are less
>qualified than others to pass judgment -- even personal judgment.  I've been
>involved in therapy and found it to be very helpful.

Well good for you.

To be fair, I agree that clinical psychology in general does more good than
harm like medicine in general, but psychology suffers from having one all too
convenient and sometimes dangerous diagnosis: it's the patient's own fault, etc.

But to be counter fair, I think the original complaint is against Freudianism,
Jungianism, etc, which are really big time pseudoscience, charging $50/hour
for so much "expert" happy talk.

So don't be so quick to slam certain assertions as closed-mindedness.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720