This use of "pseudoscience" - as 100% as it is justified against Psychiatry - still leaves me uncomfortable. I have seen it used FAAAR to often to prevent investigations that go beyond accepted "scientific" norms (aka "Materialism" theology).
While pleasant to see it turned upon that crowd in revenge, its main role is still defamatory.
After all, if psychiatry's dealers, Big Pharma, achieve what they appear to be looking for - a pill to make 'Happy slaves' who can view atrocities with emotional equanimity, or have a chemically lobotomised IQ lower than a frog, - then their science will have succeeded.
It's only a pseudoscience if you take what the pushers claim at face value (Helping the mentally injured).
You're not wrong, although they'll probably work in tandem.
Way back when I used a 'spellchecker' when they first came out - how easy! Wow! Until after 3 months I realised I couldn't spell anymore, and it was always one of my better skills. So I turned it off, and struggled for a few weeks. Never even thought of turning it back on.
Personally, I only use AI for technical help, such as how to use the new linux OS, or recently how to identify a broken part on my bike.
And I use deepseek.
I'm hardly techphobic, but crutches can certainly become dependencies.
Reminds me of some of the therapists on substack positioning themselves and wanting to get closer to the truth, just as long as it never seriously threatens the industry they support and profit from.
I'm aware of the potential for the term neurodiversity to be misused , but for the moment it has gained widespread acceptance in the disability community in much the same way that gender affirming language is helping to help remove the stigma for people who are born intersex, (having genitals that have both male and female characteristics for example).
Eugenicists can't acknowledge the existence of such people.
When I think of anxiety, I associate it with visceral sensations that relate to a threat, either real or imagined. There may be thoughts that trigger a feeling of anxiety, but to me, the somatic response is what marks the reaction as anxiety. Anxious thoughts may persist after the somatic response has diminished, but the accompanying hormonal cascade may not completely abate.
I wonder whether this agrees with Niall's definition
.
I'm not convinced that anxiety is a helpful term to describe disabilities such as colour blindness, deafness, tunnel vision, or poor capacity to perform cognitive tasks. The presence of these conditions don't correlate with the fact that people so affected may go through life mostly calm and attentive, but for the ups and downs that affect us all. Is muteness or poor capacity for self expression an example of anxiety? These disabilties aren't binary, but occur in degrees of severity.
Another example is that poor balance either from birth or because of an acquired brain injury imposes an additional cognitive load whenever a person is walking. As a consequence, they may be prone to feel anxious for some, but not all of the time. Referring to their handicaps as anxiety seems to be side stepping the fact that a person's vestibular apparatus is compromised, if not their motor cortex. I'm not sure that folk in the stroke rehab space would be so dismissive of framing behaviour in neuroscience terms.
It is well recognised that low EF can mimic schizophrenia, but demands for throughput and "risk management" trump the need to understand and deliver scaffolding that intellectually disabled people require. People with low EF don't need psychiatry, but they often get it.
For an inspiring story regarding the power of states of mind, check out either the book or movie. How many psychiatrists get this?
Niall formally studied Neuroscience before he went into Psychology - those are poor examples. He didn't say "Neuroscience is bunk", he said "Don't look up pop neuroscience", which is a totally different kettle of fish.
You have listed various disabilities, all of which relate directly to physical elements - easily demonstrated with modern medical technology. They CAN be physically measured, fixed, and usually are, these days.
Moving into the realms of what psychiatry studies (You will note that psychiatry is not interested in the disabilities you listed either), it CANNOT be physically measured, and cannot be "fixed" through medical interventions, in the most cases. And so we get onto what they lack, as Niall said "A theory of a normal mind". And now reread his essay.
You are not really addressing his points, but arguing past him.
I thought the purpose of psychiatry was to facilitate people "pulling themselves together"? To that end, stigma can be helpful - it encourages the person to minimise the role of mental illness in their life, to the point that it is irrelevant. Rather than wearing it on their sleeve as an award denoting how special they are, and how deserving of attention.
I am dubious about the psychologist who tells their client that they have a disease called depression and that their ten year history of poly substance abuse was self medication of this "disease".
No, it's Psychology that helps people "Pull themselves together". Psychiatry is about forcing harmful pills that very rarely work (A far lower rate than natural remission as it happens), but are EXTREMELY profitable for the Big Pharma corporations.
You appear to be mixing up "mental illness" with "Neurodivergence", neurodivergence may be associated currently with mental illness, but is quite different. We are literally ALL "neurodivergent", although some is beneficial to our current societies, and some find it difficult to cope in our current societies. In different societies, that could reverse.
As Niall hinted at, the current fad of "neurodivergent" came directly as a counter to the pseudoscience "Psychiatry's" attempt to bring everything down to Matter. And it is in most cases a cop out. "ADHD" - inability to concentrate - is simply that - an inability to concentrate. It's not a MEDICAL condition, it's a personal/cultural condition that can be lessened considerably by spending a few minutes a day meditating. It's a practice. You can go down the entire list of "Neurodivergencies" and see that every single one of them are perfectly normal behaviours, within the normal human range.
But now people have an excuse. Rather than take the steps to remedy whatever difficulty they have, they fall back on pseudomedical terminology and say "It's not MY fault, I can't do anything about it!".
Well, of course you can. You just prefer not to do the hard work that lessening the effects would entail.
We would all like a 'pill' that would make us perfect - perfectly intelligent, perfectly emotionally balanced, perfect physical condition, perhaps even perfectly spiritual while we're at it - but in the Real World(tm), all those things take a lot of hard work.
A "disease" - lit: "Dis-ease", did not originally mean "Virus" etc. It meant you were not at ease. And that certainly applies to the group of effects called "depression".
As for chemical use/abuse, it goes without saying that taking any chemical long-term will eventually have physical and mental effects. This is as true of Big Pharma products as street drugs. Thing is, many if not most people 'Get into drugs' because they find the surrounding society/community quite lacking. Unsupportive, and built upon abuse. The 60s hippies joyfully took drugs because 50s Western culture was stultifying, abusive, exploitative, vindictive and nasty (See 'Easy Rider', fx).
They wanted to be normal people - the society ordered them to conform, instead.
"The sane response to an insane world is to go insane" - as true today as it was all those decades ago when it was coined.
But 'people' far less then psychiatrist or psychologist suggest and or prescribe pharma chemicals for undesired 'behavioral issues' or people who think they feel sad but can't figure out why they feel sad.
Sure, though more would probably experiment if they could, just to see what it's like. Fx, I tried a mate's lithium for 3 days... until I felt a darkness descend on my mind like the worst bad trip in history.
I went to see a psychiatrist once - my doctor referred me to a friend of his, after telling me the waiting list for a psychologist was several years. My opinions are no different now, so you can imagine how I felt about that. But, I went, just to... experiment, lol.
He agreed I showed the signs of depression, and offered me pharma that would "Reduce the connections I was seeing". Having been a student of psychology on and off, I immediately replied: "But spotting connections is literally the definition of intelligence". He looked surprised - and annoyed - that I knew this, and was considerably more annoyed when I got shirty and said he should feel guilty for prescribing drugs to make people stupid WITHOUT EVEN WARNING THEM THAT WAS THE EFFECT OF THE DRUGS. He got positively enraged when I accused him of being a drug-pusher, and then when I found out he hadn't even TRIED the shit he was handing out, which even street dealers have the decency to do, I then said he was WORSE than a drug-pusher. As ytou can tell, the experience didn't go well. ;)
He got the final revenge though - his report went into my permanent medical record, and he literally said the opposite of everything I'd told him. AND he added that I was a coke addict - despite my making it clear to him when he'd asked I tried it once several years earlier, and hadn't liked it, never done it again.
Literally one of the worst human beings I've ever met in my life. Psychiatrists, hey?
But I think people would experiment with this stuff if they could, just because. I bet most would quit very quickly, and become advocates for shrooms or similar instead.
This use of "pseudoscience" - as 100% as it is justified against Psychiatry - still leaves me uncomfortable. I have seen it used FAAAR to often to prevent investigations that go beyond accepted "scientific" norms (aka "Materialism" theology).
While pleasant to see it turned upon that crowd in revenge, its main role is still defamatory.
After all, if psychiatry's dealers, Big Pharma, achieve what they appear to be looking for - a pill to make 'Happy slaves' who can view atrocities with emotional equanimity, or have a chemically lobotomised IQ lower than a frog, - then their science will have succeeded.
It's only a pseudoscience if you take what the pushers claim at face value (Helping the mentally injured).
The happy pill appears to be AI.
AI will do the same to human brain power as pocket calculators did to people to do basic math.
You're not wrong, although they'll probably work in tandem.
Way back when I used a 'spellchecker' when they first came out - how easy! Wow! Until after 3 months I realised I couldn't spell anymore, and it was always one of my better skills. So I turned it off, and struggled for a few weeks. Never even thought of turning it back on.
Personally, I only use AI for technical help, such as how to use the new linux OS, or recently how to identify a broken part on my bike.
And I use deepseek.
I'm hardly techphobic, but crutches can certainly become dependencies.
The Brave New World of 1984 huh? ;)
Reminds me of some of the therapists on substack positioning themselves and wanting to get closer to the truth, just as long as it never seriously threatens the industry they support and profit from.
REmind me of St Augustine who prayed for the strength t be celibate, but not today.
Nicely conform DSM 4, 5, etc.
Trapped forever.
I know its impossible, but I would like to strip all Freudian assumptions from the 'world view'
But what is the most feasible way to turn away from Freud, how to not end up as Wilhelm Reich? As CIA dumped him in prison where he died...
The more I learn about Freud the more questions I get. Freudian psychology feels more like a cult, not as a science.
Not a real question, more an observation of a hopeless situation.
I really feel hopeless for the next 100 years that humanity is facing after Freudian assumptions and Bernays exploits.
Definitely a cult, read Jeffery Masson, "The Assault on Truth: Freud's suppression of the seduction theory" 1984.
Is the Frankfurt school part of it, the base of it, something else?
I have a book by Jeffrey Mason, about animals and emotions.
I hope I can find this one as well.
Thank you!
I'm aware of the potential for the term neurodiversity to be misused , but for the moment it has gained widespread acceptance in the disability community in much the same way that gender affirming language is helping to help remove the stigma for people who are born intersex, (having genitals that have both male and female characteristics for example).
Eugenicists can't acknowledge the existence of such people.
When I think of anxiety, I associate it with visceral sensations that relate to a threat, either real or imagined. There may be thoughts that trigger a feeling of anxiety, but to me, the somatic response is what marks the reaction as anxiety. Anxious thoughts may persist after the somatic response has diminished, but the accompanying hormonal cascade may not completely abate.
I wonder whether this agrees with Niall's definition
.
I'm not convinced that anxiety is a helpful term to describe disabilities such as colour blindness, deafness, tunnel vision, or poor capacity to perform cognitive tasks. The presence of these conditions don't correlate with the fact that people so affected may go through life mostly calm and attentive, but for the ups and downs that affect us all. Is muteness or poor capacity for self expression an example of anxiety? These disabilties aren't binary, but occur in degrees of severity.
Another example is that poor balance either from birth or because of an acquired brain injury imposes an additional cognitive load whenever a person is walking. As a consequence, they may be prone to feel anxious for some, but not all of the time. Referring to their handicaps as anxiety seems to be side stepping the fact that a person's vestibular apparatus is compromised, if not their motor cortex. I'm not sure that folk in the stroke rehab space would be so dismissive of framing behaviour in neuroscience terms.
It is well recognised that low EF can mimic schizophrenia, but demands for throughput and "risk management" trump the need to understand and deliver scaffolding that intellectually disabled people require. People with low EF don't need psychiatry, but they often get it.
For an inspiring story regarding the power of states of mind, check out either the book or movie. How many psychiatrists get this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_E._Goodman
Niall formally studied Neuroscience before he went into Psychology - those are poor examples. He didn't say "Neuroscience is bunk", he said "Don't look up pop neuroscience", which is a totally different kettle of fish.
You have listed various disabilities, all of which relate directly to physical elements - easily demonstrated with modern medical technology. They CAN be physically measured, fixed, and usually are, these days.
Moving into the realms of what psychiatry studies (You will note that psychiatry is not interested in the disabilities you listed either), it CANNOT be physically measured, and cannot be "fixed" through medical interventions, in the most cases. And so we get onto what they lack, as Niall said "A theory of a normal mind". And now reread his essay.
You are not really addressing his points, but arguing past him.
I thought the purpose of psychiatry was to facilitate people "pulling themselves together"? To that end, stigma can be helpful - it encourages the person to minimise the role of mental illness in their life, to the point that it is irrelevant. Rather than wearing it on their sleeve as an award denoting how special they are, and how deserving of attention.
I am dubious about the psychologist who tells their client that they have a disease called depression and that their ten year history of poly substance abuse was self medication of this "disease".
No, it's Psychology that helps people "Pull themselves together". Psychiatry is about forcing harmful pills that very rarely work (A far lower rate than natural remission as it happens), but are EXTREMELY profitable for the Big Pharma corporations.
You appear to be mixing up "mental illness" with "Neurodivergence", neurodivergence may be associated currently with mental illness, but is quite different. We are literally ALL "neurodivergent", although some is beneficial to our current societies, and some find it difficult to cope in our current societies. In different societies, that could reverse.
As Niall hinted at, the current fad of "neurodivergent" came directly as a counter to the pseudoscience "Psychiatry's" attempt to bring everything down to Matter. And it is in most cases a cop out. "ADHD" - inability to concentrate - is simply that - an inability to concentrate. It's not a MEDICAL condition, it's a personal/cultural condition that can be lessened considerably by spending a few minutes a day meditating. It's a practice. You can go down the entire list of "Neurodivergencies" and see that every single one of them are perfectly normal behaviours, within the normal human range.
But now people have an excuse. Rather than take the steps to remedy whatever difficulty they have, they fall back on pseudomedical terminology and say "It's not MY fault, I can't do anything about it!".
Well, of course you can. You just prefer not to do the hard work that lessening the effects would entail.
We would all like a 'pill' that would make us perfect - perfectly intelligent, perfectly emotionally balanced, perfect physical condition, perhaps even perfectly spiritual while we're at it - but in the Real World(tm), all those things take a lot of hard work.
A "disease" - lit: "Dis-ease", did not originally mean "Virus" etc. It meant you were not at ease. And that certainly applies to the group of effects called "depression".
As for chemical use/abuse, it goes without saying that taking any chemical long-term will eventually have physical and mental effects. This is as true of Big Pharma products as street drugs. Thing is, many if not most people 'Get into drugs' because they find the surrounding society/community quite lacking. Unsupportive, and built upon abuse. The 60s hippies joyfully took drugs because 50s Western culture was stultifying, abusive, exploitative, vindictive and nasty (See 'Easy Rider', fx).
They wanted to be normal people - the society ordered them to conform, instead.
"The sane response to an insane world is to go insane" - as true today as it was all those decades ago when it was coined.
But 'people' far less then psychiatrist or psychologist suggest and or prescribe pharma chemicals for undesired 'behavioral issues' or people who think they feel sad but can't figure out why they feel sad.
Sure, though more would probably experiment if they could, just to see what it's like. Fx, I tried a mate's lithium for 3 days... until I felt a darkness descend on my mind like the worst bad trip in history.
I went to see a psychiatrist once - my doctor referred me to a friend of his, after telling me the waiting list for a psychologist was several years. My opinions are no different now, so you can imagine how I felt about that. But, I went, just to... experiment, lol.
He agreed I showed the signs of depression, and offered me pharma that would "Reduce the connections I was seeing". Having been a student of psychology on and off, I immediately replied: "But spotting connections is literally the definition of intelligence". He looked surprised - and annoyed - that I knew this, and was considerably more annoyed when I got shirty and said he should feel guilty for prescribing drugs to make people stupid WITHOUT EVEN WARNING THEM THAT WAS THE EFFECT OF THE DRUGS. He got positively enraged when I accused him of being a drug-pusher, and then when I found out he hadn't even TRIED the shit he was handing out, which even street dealers have the decency to do, I then said he was WORSE than a drug-pusher. As ytou can tell, the experience didn't go well. ;)
He got the final revenge though - his report went into my permanent medical record, and he literally said the opposite of everything I'd told him. AND he added that I was a coke addict - despite my making it clear to him when he'd asked I tried it once several years earlier, and hadn't liked it, never done it again.
Literally one of the worst human beings I've ever met in my life. Psychiatrists, hey?
But I think people would experiment with this stuff if they could, just because. I bet most would quit very quickly, and become advocates for shrooms or similar instead.