Well aware of it. Notice they didn't cite my original paper, from 1998, which showed there is no such thing as a biopsychosocial model. Engel talked about it and named it but never wrote it. The mainstream doesn't want to know this so they pretend my paper was never written.
If one could describe psychiatry in a way that did not tip off the average medical PhD that what was described was psychiatry, the PhD would quickly realize that what was being described was utter quackery. Unfortunately, because the marriage of psychiatry and Big Pharma is a multi billion dollar quackery, it just happens to be the best thing since sliced bread.
I didn’t finish the paper but I read most of it. I need to go to bed soon. It looks like very ivory tower academic stuff but you did a good job in explaining it in pretty average joe terms. I asked the PhD psychologist how important it was. He said it wasn’t that important. I asked the 4 year degree psychologist and he said it was very important. I think he said that they use it in diagnostics. I asked him if it was more than just a term. He said he would look into it.
The PhD is speaking for US psychiatry only, which is almost totally dominated by reductionist biological psychiatry. I have dealt with that in the forthcoming book. Outside the US, the so-called biopsychosocial model is held up as psychiatry's theoretical justification, which is BS. It doesn't exist. End of story. The rest is quackery.
Sleep well. Also send your email to me jockmclaren@gmail.com, I have some questions.
“It’s been said (and I like it): “It’s better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” That’s true for adults, but not for kids. Kids need to talk, to babble and feel part of the group so they can grow up feeling wanted and valued.”
At first I thought that that quote came from Proverbs in the Bible but after some investigation it appears that it may be an ancient concept. It appears hard to pin down the original author. I would often find myself talking to adults as a kid and not so much to those my age. Many of the kids in the religious private school were shallow and cruel. When I was in the 6th grade in public school I had some friendship with a girl in the 8th grade who had an interest in the paranormal. I liked Dr Suess books. Not so much for the easy reading but for the advanced concepts and Ideas. I loved Encyclopedia Brown stories. One of my favorite authors as a kid was Ronald Dahl. In some way I wanted to be like Matilda and I somehow identified with characters like her in Dahl’s books. As a kid I loved astronomy and science. I was fascinated with fractal art and would from time to time make symmetrical art. Computer programming fascinated me (especially programming the turtle in LOGO) but I never quite had the time to pursue it and the psych drugs forced my brain to take a different turn in thinking and problem solving.
For some reason, either I was born differently or something happened in my childhood that set me off to a very different path than that of my peers. There are a lot of things that seem to go unsaid that over the years I have had to just pick up on. Social norms can be confusing. It seems I’m often expected to just read between the lines of what people say. I spend a lot of time to myself. In a way it can make life easier but it can also pave the way to mood swings and psychosis (which I assume means not being in touch with reality). A very depressing aspect to all this is the idea that I am so totally screwed up that I can never escape the bizarre and hellish grip of antipsychotics. I know that I have to keep talking and searching for help. Sometimes the light out of the tunnel seems bright. Sometimes there is despair, confusion and darkness. Usually the quick fix looks the a trip to to the hospital but that is not at all the fix that looks very good. One of the hardest problems of “medication” madness is not knowing exactly what it is that is causing the problem. Psychiatrists (especially the ones in the hospital) seem to love the mostly blind game of playing with their mystery pills that somehow have some magical ability to solve all mental disturbances if they can just play and work their magic long enough. Does it ever occur to them that after years (in my case decades) of fooling around with neuroleptics that maybe, just maybe that reckless game might by chance traumatize the nervous system? Oh no, that can’t possibly be the case. The industry funded and persuaded studies that just by default have to be the God honest truth don’t seem to lead us in that direction. So there you have it folks, the Pharma influenced studies say it so it has got to be the gospel truth. It’s blue skies from now on. I’m not sure that the KOL’s can be really be reasoned with unless you happen to have a pretty sizable wallet. I think I read somewhere that the Pharmaceutical industry is about in the same place that the tobacco industry was 100 years ago (or maybe it was 50 years ago, I can’t remember very well). Compared to psych drugs, tobacco (although still not looking all that ideal) really doesn’t look that bad. Something tells me that the bad rap given to tobacco, alcohol, street drugs and in some ways even caffeine may be in large part the same reason Scientology attacks Big Pharma. It’s competition. Back when I was growing up I was taught to say no to drugs. I remember a commercial coming on repeatedly referring to a cracked egg sizzling in a pan as an illustration of what what drugs do to the brain ending with “any questions?” If only a commercial like that said “This is your brain. This is your brain on psych drugs. Any questions?” I’m sure a commercial like that could have saved many lives and much mental despair and suffering. Something tells me that Eli Lilly probably behind the scenes called up the right people to end that once famous commercial so that people didn’t ask too many concerned questions about Prozac.
I don’t remember seeing a psychoanalyst or psychologist when I was a kid before being in the hospital. There was probably some psychological testing that was done in my early years. I think I was too young to comprehend what was going on. The therapist in the mental hospital that I first went to as a kid played pretty rotten. I think in my teens, my mom tried to get me to see a therapist. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t have a good feeling about him. If the therapist/counselor is faith based, I don’t mind talking to them so much. If they are doing it for free, I really don’t mind at all. There is a retired psychologist here that I go and talk to sometimes to try to work things out. There is another guy here that I don’t mind talking to who claims to have a 4 year psychology degree and is looking to gain experience in counseling. He’s often too doped up to talk though. I like talking to students who are interested in or studying for a career in mental health. One time in the university affiliated mental hospital a student came to visit me and asked me questions. I think I remember him asking a question like “What is insanity like?” I think I responded “Uh, you don’t want to know.” There are mental states out there that are just not recommended to be experienced. Like when it comes to suicidal thoughts, don’t go there. Psych drugs cause states of mind that people should not have to experience. In one of the articles I provided written by Aftab, he refers to a hypothetical patient that is reluctant to take Wellbutrin. After one’s sanity is shoved through the meat grinder of psychiatric drugs there is a natural hesitancy to take more. Psychiatrists far too often have a hard time understanding this reality. Probably because in the vast majority of cases they’ve never taken the d-n s-t. Some people on psych drugs dogmatically defend them as miracle substances. I on the other hand tend to be sensitive to industrial chemicals. I think when I was a little kid things may have been different. It seems somewhere along the way, I became more sensitive to synthetic substances. As I grew older I (as I’m sure most everyone, if not everyone) changed.
I try to understand myself but I think it’s been a while since I’ve been psychoanalyzed to this degree. I once asked my parents if I could go to a psychoanalyst. They refused but I couldn’t seem to understand why. From what I understand, psychoanalysts try to understand the subconscious. What could possibly be wrong with that? Maybe they are scared that I might get filled with all kinds of Freudian ideas or maybe it looked too expensive. I already spend a lot of time laying around trying to figure out what the heck is going on anyway. I don’t understand a lot about Jung or Freud because I never really studied them. I think I have some idea of what an archetype is. I’m sure Freud was probably messed up in some ways but the idea of an ego has gotten pretty imbedded into the psyche of modern culture.
Anxiety is something that I’ve had to deal with for a long time. When I started listening to sermons in church around the age of 10, I was was introduced to the fire breathing hard core messages of evangelical fundamentalism. I was constantly concerned about whether I was going to hell or heaven forever. I wasn’t sure if I believed in the resurrection. If I didn’t believe in the resurrection, I wasn’t sure if I would burn in hell forever or not. I wasn’t sure if someone could lose their salvation or not. The unpardonable sin was a continual mystery. Some “Christians” would say that Christians are predestined, some would say that there was a choice. The age of accountability never seemed to be very well defined. All the salvation prayers were different in some way or another. Even then, it seemed to make no sense how one could not be saved by works but somehow needed a salvation prayer. There were so many things out of the pulpit and out of the Bible that were so confusing that I would get very concerned about whether or not I could figure all that stuff out in time so I could go to heaven forever or by chance not be left behind to face the tribulation. There was a verse that said to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling. I literally thought that that was what I was supposed to be doing. And I tried very hard to do it. Outside of maybe band and church services and activities that I was highly encouraged to go to, I hardly had a social life in high school. When I was a teenager I tended to talk to adults and hardly got close to people my age. In my high school years until about the end of 11th grade I struggled through college prep courses and filled my weekends with homework making A’s and B’s. About the end of 11th grade, apparently from stress, my parents decided to put me back on psych drugs (I think Lithium) I guess hoping it would help. Immediately my ability to do schoolwork collapsed. I felt relieved from the drugs effect but from that point on, my academic potential went to the dogs. It was the beginning of a welfare dependent life in the hard knocks of mental “health”.
There is much more to say but I guess I’ve said enough for now. I think I need to get outside for a while.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/rise-and-fall-of-the-biopsychosocial-model/A31DAA3BED6569F6080A1DF2C1D15A64
I thought this was interesting. You might like it as well. I found it in the comments of one of your MIA articles.
Well aware of it. Notice they didn't cite my original paper, from 1998, which showed there is no such thing as a biopsychosocial model. Engel talked about it and named it but never wrote it. The mainstream doesn't want to know this so they pretend my paper was never written.
If one could describe psychiatry in a way that did not tip off the average medical PhD that what was described was psychiatry, the PhD would quickly realize that what was being described was utter quackery. Unfortunately, because the marriage of psychiatry and Big Pharma is a multi billion dollar quackery, it just happens to be the best thing since sliced bread.
I have said it is quackery without actually using the word.
McLaren N (2023). The Biopsychosocial Model and Scientific Deception. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 25: 106-118. doi:10.1891/EHPP-2023-0008
Another article on same topic, more pointed, is in the pipeline.
I didn’t finish the paper but I read most of it. I need to go to bed soon. It looks like very ivory tower academic stuff but you did a good job in explaining it in pretty average joe terms. I asked the PhD psychologist how important it was. He said it wasn’t that important. I asked the 4 year degree psychologist and he said it was very important. I think he said that they use it in diagnostics. I asked him if it was more than just a term. He said he would look into it.
The PhD is speaking for US psychiatry only, which is almost totally dominated by reductionist biological psychiatry. I have dealt with that in the forthcoming book. Outside the US, the so-called biopsychosocial model is held up as psychiatry's theoretical justification, which is BS. It doesn't exist. End of story. The rest is quackery.
Sleep well. Also send your email to me jockmclaren@gmail.com, I have some questions.
“It’s been said (and I like it): “It’s better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” That’s true for adults, but not for kids. Kids need to talk, to babble and feel part of the group so they can grow up feeling wanted and valued.”
At first I thought that that quote came from Proverbs in the Bible but after some investigation it appears that it may be an ancient concept. It appears hard to pin down the original author. I would often find myself talking to adults as a kid and not so much to those my age. Many of the kids in the religious private school were shallow and cruel. When I was in the 6th grade in public school I had some friendship with a girl in the 8th grade who had an interest in the paranormal. I liked Dr Suess books. Not so much for the easy reading but for the advanced concepts and Ideas. I loved Encyclopedia Brown stories. One of my favorite authors as a kid was Ronald Dahl. In some way I wanted to be like Matilda and I somehow identified with characters like her in Dahl’s books. As a kid I loved astronomy and science. I was fascinated with fractal art and would from time to time make symmetrical art. Computer programming fascinated me (especially programming the turtle in LOGO) but I never quite had the time to pursue it and the psych drugs forced my brain to take a different turn in thinking and problem solving.
For some reason, either I was born differently or something happened in my childhood that set me off to a very different path than that of my peers. There are a lot of things that seem to go unsaid that over the years I have had to just pick up on. Social norms can be confusing. It seems I’m often expected to just read between the lines of what people say. I spend a lot of time to myself. In a way it can make life easier but it can also pave the way to mood swings and psychosis (which I assume means not being in touch with reality). A very depressing aspect to all this is the idea that I am so totally screwed up that I can never escape the bizarre and hellish grip of antipsychotics. I know that I have to keep talking and searching for help. Sometimes the light out of the tunnel seems bright. Sometimes there is despair, confusion and darkness. Usually the quick fix looks the a trip to to the hospital but that is not at all the fix that looks very good. One of the hardest problems of “medication” madness is not knowing exactly what it is that is causing the problem. Psychiatrists (especially the ones in the hospital) seem to love the mostly blind game of playing with their mystery pills that somehow have some magical ability to solve all mental disturbances if they can just play and work their magic long enough. Does it ever occur to them that after years (in my case decades) of fooling around with neuroleptics that maybe, just maybe that reckless game might by chance traumatize the nervous system? Oh no, that can’t possibly be the case. The industry funded and persuaded studies that just by default have to be the God honest truth don’t seem to lead us in that direction. So there you have it folks, the Pharma influenced studies say it so it has got to be the gospel truth. It’s blue skies from now on. I’m not sure that the KOL’s can be really be reasoned with unless you happen to have a pretty sizable wallet. I think I read somewhere that the Pharmaceutical industry is about in the same place that the tobacco industry was 100 years ago (or maybe it was 50 years ago, I can’t remember very well). Compared to psych drugs, tobacco (although still not looking all that ideal) really doesn’t look that bad. Something tells me that the bad rap given to tobacco, alcohol, street drugs and in some ways even caffeine may be in large part the same reason Scientology attacks Big Pharma. It’s competition. Back when I was growing up I was taught to say no to drugs. I remember a commercial coming on repeatedly referring to a cracked egg sizzling in a pan as an illustration of what what drugs do to the brain ending with “any questions?” If only a commercial like that said “This is your brain. This is your brain on psych drugs. Any questions?” I’m sure a commercial like that could have saved many lives and much mental despair and suffering. Something tells me that Eli Lilly probably behind the scenes called up the right people to end that once famous commercial so that people didn’t ask too many concerned questions about Prozac.
I don’t remember seeing a psychoanalyst or psychologist when I was a kid before being in the hospital. There was probably some psychological testing that was done in my early years. I think I was too young to comprehend what was going on. The therapist in the mental hospital that I first went to as a kid played pretty rotten. I think in my teens, my mom tried to get me to see a therapist. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t have a good feeling about him. If the therapist/counselor is faith based, I don’t mind talking to them so much. If they are doing it for free, I really don’t mind at all. There is a retired psychologist here that I go and talk to sometimes to try to work things out. There is another guy here that I don’t mind talking to who claims to have a 4 year psychology degree and is looking to gain experience in counseling. He’s often too doped up to talk though. I like talking to students who are interested in or studying for a career in mental health. One time in the university affiliated mental hospital a student came to visit me and asked me questions. I think I remember him asking a question like “What is insanity like?” I think I responded “Uh, you don’t want to know.” There are mental states out there that are just not recommended to be experienced. Like when it comes to suicidal thoughts, don’t go there. Psych drugs cause states of mind that people should not have to experience. In one of the articles I provided written by Aftab, he refers to a hypothetical patient that is reluctant to take Wellbutrin. After one’s sanity is shoved through the meat grinder of psychiatric drugs there is a natural hesitancy to take more. Psychiatrists far too often have a hard time understanding this reality. Probably because in the vast majority of cases they’ve never taken the d-n s-t. Some people on psych drugs dogmatically defend them as miracle substances. I on the other hand tend to be sensitive to industrial chemicals. I think when I was a little kid things may have been different. It seems somewhere along the way, I became more sensitive to synthetic substances. As I grew older I (as I’m sure most everyone, if not everyone) changed.
I try to understand myself but I think it’s been a while since I’ve been psychoanalyzed to this degree. I once asked my parents if I could go to a psychoanalyst. They refused but I couldn’t seem to understand why. From what I understand, psychoanalysts try to understand the subconscious. What could possibly be wrong with that? Maybe they are scared that I might get filled with all kinds of Freudian ideas or maybe it looked too expensive. I already spend a lot of time laying around trying to figure out what the heck is going on anyway. I don’t understand a lot about Jung or Freud because I never really studied them. I think I have some idea of what an archetype is. I’m sure Freud was probably messed up in some ways but the idea of an ego has gotten pretty imbedded into the psyche of modern culture.
Anxiety is something that I’ve had to deal with for a long time. When I started listening to sermons in church around the age of 10, I was was introduced to the fire breathing hard core messages of evangelical fundamentalism. I was constantly concerned about whether I was going to hell or heaven forever. I wasn’t sure if I believed in the resurrection. If I didn’t believe in the resurrection, I wasn’t sure if I would burn in hell forever or not. I wasn’t sure if someone could lose their salvation or not. The unpardonable sin was a continual mystery. Some “Christians” would say that Christians are predestined, some would say that there was a choice. The age of accountability never seemed to be very well defined. All the salvation prayers were different in some way or another. Even then, it seemed to make no sense how one could not be saved by works but somehow needed a salvation prayer. There were so many things out of the pulpit and out of the Bible that were so confusing that I would get very concerned about whether or not I could figure all that stuff out in time so I could go to heaven forever or by chance not be left behind to face the tribulation. There was a verse that said to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling. I literally thought that that was what I was supposed to be doing. And I tried very hard to do it. Outside of maybe band and church services and activities that I was highly encouraged to go to, I hardly had a social life in high school. When I was a teenager I tended to talk to adults and hardly got close to people my age. In my high school years until about the end of 11th grade I struggled through college prep courses and filled my weekends with homework making A’s and B’s. About the end of 11th grade, apparently from stress, my parents decided to put me back on psych drugs (I think Lithium) I guess hoping it would help. Immediately my ability to do schoolwork collapsed. I felt relieved from the drugs effect but from that point on, my academic potential went to the dogs. It was the beginning of a welfare dependent life in the hard knocks of mental “health”.
There is much more to say but I guess I’ve said enough for now. I think I need to get outside for a while.