From: Timothy Bates (tbates@karri.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Date: Tue May 18 1999 - 02:55:02 MDT
> Speculations about life in the Pleistocene, however engaing and brilliant,
> don't help a depressive get out of the trough.
> Damien Broderick
I would dispute that on the basis that theories of social status and
depression suggest intervention quite opposite to those currently practiced
by "counselors".
The biggest trouble with therapy is that is is chronically insulated from
reality via such linguistic non-senses as validating all positions on the
basis that they are "news of difference" (told to me by a senior academic
just last week as justification for including psychoanalysis as a year III
paper at this institution).
Also, and perhaps more apposite, in recent discussions with the chief
research psychologist of a large maximum security hospital, i learned that
he is applying "Speculations about life in the Pleistocene" not only in
therapy but also in diagnosis and research.
Even if the outcome of this is an acceptance that nothing can be done bar
gene transplants (and that is not the case), we would still have more
validity pretending that discussing "widlers" or desensitizing our eye
movements are effective interventions.
Using biological psychology (not evolutionary psychology which is full of PC
cop outs) is far far better than the alternative clinical "philosophies"
which are designed specifically to insulate knowledge claims from reality
tests (read for instance of Freud's own falsification of critical case
studies (Frederick C. Crews (1998). Unauthorized Freud : Doubters Confront a
Legend
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670872210/qid=926146354/sr=1-8/002-
6495641-9087838>).
or recent developments in the genre such as
* Manufacturing Victims : What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People;
Tana Dineen
cheers,
tim
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