From: cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Subject: Re: Lawyers not Chemists
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 06:18:55 GMT

In article <92101.202801JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu> JMS111@psuvm.psu.edu (Jenni Sheehey) writes:
>
>Peeve: People who don't realize what the world would be like if all of
>the mentally ill people were running about.

Obviously you haven't been to Manhattan lately.

Besides, it doesn't take a Freudian to chain a madman to a wall.  They were
doing that a long time before smart people with cavernous empty wallets
invented "psychiatry."  It also doesn't take a Freudian, or a Jungian or any
other breed of cultist to put him in a nice place and treat him nice, which
is all psychiatry boils down to when you distill out the mumbo-jumbo.

>RelatedPeeve: People who don't realize just how many of those people
>there would be if psychology/psychiatry were as much bunk as they say.

>I mean, the depressed ones would probably take care of themselves for
>you, but the paranoid delusionals and schizophrenics and manic
>depressives would be everywhere.

Excuse me while I chuckle.

Has psychotherapy ever cured a schizophrenic?
Has psychotherapy ever cured a manic-depressive?

Surely you're aware how well it's established that these diseases are gross
physiological disorders of the brain.  (Enter meaningless personal anecdote
mode.)  My uncle's a schizophrenic.  The shrinkos've drained quite a bit of
lard from my grandmother's wallet, and inflicted huge amounts of guilt on
her via their cute little myth that schizophrenia is caused by evil mothers,
but he's no better off than he was twenty years ago.  The drugs help him
cope some, though; thank god for real neurologists.  Probably the most
intelligent person I've ever known is/was a manic-depressive; he had almost
as much trouble with appointed psychiatrists trying to run his life as with
the disease itself.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by paranoid delusionals, as opposed to
paranoid-schizophrenics; my gut feeling is that most of the former are
harmlessly eccentric old ladies who get tag-team-committed by can't-wait
heirs and well-paid psychiatrists (read Szasz even if you don't agree with
him).

So you can see why I don't have such a high opinion of that bunch.

Psychology is a different can of worms.  It _is_ a science, based on
experiment and induction and all, but not a very successful one.  Beyond
some obvious perceptual results, nobody's generated any real working
principles in the field for the hundred-odd years it's been around.  You can
come up with all sorts of neat theories, but none of them are testable,
which turns the whole thing into a pleasant little dead end.

>Not to mention the garden variety phobic that would cause a 4 car accident
>because a dog ran across the road,

Oh?  Psychiatry can cure phobias, too?  Dis is new.  Tell me about it, Jenni.

>the vets that are still dealing with combat stress disorder,

Despite twenty years of free VA psychotherapy.

>and all of the decent, productive people that wouldn't be nearly so decent
>or productive if they had been left to their own...

Hah!  "When I see someone coming to do me good," said the wise man, "I reach
for my revolver."  Jenni, or Joy, or whatever your name is, you seem a
fairly pleasant sort despite the obvious mental impairments; please don't
grow up to be a psychofascist.  It's all right to be a psychiatrist, as long
as you understand that you're only in it for the money, but I have serious
moral objections to forcing "therapy" on people.

c