Day: December 17, 2013

YU got ADD? I Do Too

The psych nonsense has been most apparent in the excessive effort to diagnose and suppress male energy.
In some places male energy is just not acceptable. You know, like the energy of Aristotle, Alexander, Caesar, Cicero, Augustine, Des Cartes, Voltaire, Einstein, Bohr, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Washington, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Louie Armstrong, and Churchill as just a few of the many who were energetic and assertive.
Continue reading YU got ADD? I Do Too

Babblegate Revisited

Some time ago we introduced Anthony Daniels, Brit psychiatrist, polymath, great essayist on the culture, with a unique insight into Brit cultural pathology. Daniels, who writes as Theodore Dalrymple, was expounding on the problems of modern psychiatric practice at the City Journal site. Daniels is merciless as a psychiatrist on the specialty and the new DSM V which is their cookbook for diagnosing troubled/crazy/unhappy/problematic people of all ages.
He was talking about one of my concerns in the junk science work we do, and Psychiatry at its worst.
The title is “Everyone on the Couch” and it places the nuttiness of psych practice gone amok in a good perspective, particularly the problem of pushing pills for unhappy people.
http://city-journal.org/2013/23_4_otbie-psychiatry.html
Here is another fine commentary on Daniel’s essay and his efforts to warn people about medicalization of behavior and the danger of creative diagnosticating (maybe that’s not a word, but I like it to describe the problem of finding a diagnosis for human foibles and bad habits and cultural/lifestyle problems).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12 the_psychobabble_bubble.html
Recall again my recommendation of Elaine Showalter’s book Hystories about the hysterical epidemics and the work of Paul McHugh and Sally Satel, two very insightful and prescient psychiatrists–who have common sense.