From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Peter Breggin, _Toxic Psychiatry_ (Q)
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:34:54 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.


In article <hank.726342690@well.sf.ca.us>, hank@well.sf.ca.us (Hank Roberts) writes:
|> 
|> Thanks for redirecting followups, I also appreciate the chance to continue
|> the conversation.  I didn't know sci.med was so anti-inquiry when I started
|> asking innocent questions about Breggin.
|> 
|> Gee, if I owned a television I'd know all this stuff about him already,
|> apparently, from talk shows.  Heh.

I don't think just owning a TV would do it.  At the very least you
would have to stay home all day and *watch* all the talk shows.  This
in itself would lead to serious mental disease.  Moreover, I really
doubt that you would have caught Breggin on them.  My impression is
that he has appeared on only a couple.  He's a crusader, sure enough,
and at times he gets pretty self-important, but things get a lot
more interesting when you actually look at the fundamental research
papers and the writings of academic and practicing psychiatrists
that he gives pointers to.  (Or just do as I did and go to a major
univeristy library and start searching the appropriate collections
for recent stuff.)

Again, I can't recommend the Guze book highly enough, although I
do not buy the conclusions of his first chapter.  One very interesting
thing about this book is that if you were to delete the first
chapter (or just delete the [to me] spurious conclusions Guze wishes
to endorse), you are still left with a coherent and well thought out
book that is eminently consistent with (if not outright supportive
of) the position that the concept of psychiatric disease has severe
problems and that claims made about *specific* psychiatric diseases
are on very shaky ground indeed.

Another interesting book I came across (which I did not mention in
previous postings) is

	_The Unread Mind_ by Morris Rosenberg (Lexington Books, 1992)

who appears to be either a philosopher or sociologist.  This takes
a different perspective on mental illness, and rather than addressing
the direct question of what mental illness *is* (or *whether* it
is), Rosenberg attempts to provide an account of why we react in
the way we do to those characterized as mad, insane, or mentally
ill.  I find the account interesting and valuable, but ultimately
unsatisfying since it fails to establish much of a link with
etiology via neurobiology (but this isn't his goal).  He does discuss
and analyze some of the methodological problems, and he does argue
that *if* "mental illness" is an illness, it is an illness unlike
any other.  He is referred to (approvingly) at several points by
Guze.

When you read this stuff (Guze, Rosenberg, the texts and research
papers I referred to in an earlier posting) and then look back
at Breggin's book (an obvious popularization, to be sure), I
think you have to concede that however nutty and perhaps fanatical
Breggin may be, he has a pretty good scientific and methodological
sense when he chooses to use it (modulo the last part of his book),
and his criticisms of the methodology employed in (much of) contemporary
psychiatry are in fact supported by a survey of the literature.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
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