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by tjradcliffe
4289 days ago
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Axis 2 disorders like Social Anxiety Disorder appear in the data as stable clusters of symptoms. Attaching a name to that stable cluster of phenomena is no different from attaching a name to the stable cluster of phenomena we call "smallpox". And attaching a name to the phenomenon is the first step toward identifying the causes and figuring out the cure (or even if it needs to be cured.) So yes, lots and lots of people have considered whether or not giving something a name adds anything to the conversation, and we have generally found it does. We have a lot of powerful tools for thinking, and words are one of the better ones. Does this mean we never make mistakes? Of course not, but unlike every other approach, isolating clusters of symptoms by an act of selective attention and reifying them with a name has long proven to be an extremely useful approach, so we keep on doing it even though we get it wrong sometimes. The great thing about science is that unlike every other approach to the world, it corrects itself fairly reliably, although sometimes it takes more than a generation to do so. |
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False! The difference, as you would know if you had any understanding of science, is that we know what causes smallpox. Mental illnesses are defined by their symptoms, not by their causes, for the simple reason that we don't know their causes.
This is why the DSM is being abandoned -- it's a listing of symptoms of ailments no one understands. And the man behind the program to abandon it is a psychiatrist:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
> We have a lot of powerful tools for thinking, and words are one of the better ones.
Sure, here's one. A mental illness diagnosis dating back to before the Civil War -- Drapetomania, the tendency of slaves to run away from their masters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
Do you know why slaves who ran away were diagnosed with a mental illness, instead of their masters for owning human beings? Easy to answer -- the masters had money to pay psychologists.
A quote from the article: "Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that caused black slaves to flee captivity.[1]:41 Today, drapetomania is considered an example of pseudoscience,[2]:2 and part of the edifice of scientific racism.[3] Thomas Szasz mentions Drapetomania in his book, The Myth of Mental Illness, as an example of how psychiatry, when calling certain people "diseased", attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them."
> ... isolating clusters of symptoms by an act of selective attention and reifying them with a name has long proven to be an extremely useful approach ...
Yes, but it cannot compare to doing science. Science requires explanations, falsifiable theories, empirically testable against reality. Psychology is satisfied with descriptions.