David F Marks: Psychology - Science or Delusion?

[Hip]

For my money, if you want advice on life, real messy life, you talk to an older person who has lived it and seen others go through it. Not necessarily someone who has viewed it with an academic detachment.

That's a valid choice. It is up to the individual: if someone wants psychological therapy, they are free to go out and get it. Equally if they don't, they are free to avoid it. So I don't see any problems with employing psychological therapy in normal life.

Personally I've never felt comfortable with the idea of talking to a therapist, so have almost no experience of this; but I've known people who said they found it valuable and a good way to move their life forward and to motivate themselves, especially in times when they have fallen into a rut.

For me, I found that mindfulness meditation was able to give me insights into my own mind, and found that meditation allows you to become your own therapist. So that was my approach.

However I did find reading the ideas of various personality theorists at the impressionable age of around 22 immensely enriching. I studied hard science (mathematics and physics), and found the much softer science of psychology and its humanities-oriented focus quite liberating. It helped me escape from the clutches and great limitations of a hard science education.

 

[Wonko]

That's a valid choice. It is a buyer's market, and if someone wants psychological therapy, they are free to go out an get it. Equally if they don't, they are free to avoid it. So I don't see any problems with employing psychological therapy in normal life.

You're not in the UK.

 

[Snowdrop]

I have little to no experience of normal psychology and how that might aid the human race. However, time and again, I have seen people who should know,or have been taught better, attribute incorrect meaning to someone's behaviour. So, because they "know" , or have read about people, they assume they possess a level of understanding that just isn't there.

A person's behaviour, feeling and attitude are rooted in context. Just because one has studied psychology, doesn't mean one will understand the full context, or life situation the person is currently in or has experienced. However, the psych may not know they don't know, or may be over confident in their education.

For my money, if you want advice on life, real messy life, you talk to an older person who has lived it and seen others go through it. Not necessarily someone who has viewed it with an academic detachment.

For me this is a central issue also that I see as problematic. A psychologist certainly spends more time than the 10 of a Dr's appt but even so a few hours is still like taking a snapshot of someone and declaring you've seen the whole trilogy directors cut version of someones life (which is still an edited short version). If some limited and specific issues this is fine.

I have found from watching people in life that two other things might fair better. Offering them the opportunity to get out of themselves by volunteering their time somewhere and being/feeling truely useful or finding someone who they admire greatly and use them as a role model for what they'd like their behaviour to be.

I find that applying 'models of theory of mind' to the problems people struggle with to lack any authentic connection to reality.

 

[Hip]

You're not in the UK.

I don't get out that much, but last time I checked London was still part of Great Britain...

If what you are saying is that in the UK people without mental illness are forced psychological therapy for ordinary life situations, you will have to give some examples. In the case of normal psychology, I've never come across any story of forced therapy.

 

[Wonko]

I don't get out that much, but last time I checked London was still part of Great Britain.

If what you are saying is that in the UK people without mental illness are forced psychological therapy for ordinary life situations, you will have to give some examples. In the case of normal psychology, I've never come across any story of forced therapy.

The NHS and the benefits system is run according to a psychological theory. If I interact with either I am subject to it - there is no choice.

The UK government bases significant areas of policy on psychological theories, possibly because they are expedient, possibly because they think they will cost less, possibly coz they are total gits. Any interactions with them, or their agencies, or anything they have influence over subjects me to their interpretation of my behaviour re these theories, what I say or do has no influence if it doesn't mesh with these theories.

I am subject to a psychological interpretation of my existence and official coercion because of psychological theories. There is no choice, it happens, whether I chose it or not.

 

[Hip]

The NHS and the benefits system is run according to a psychological theory.

If you mean the biopsychosocial model, that is a model of disease etiology, and deals with abnormal psychology (mental illness) or physical diseases assumed to have psychogenic factors. BPS does not include normal psychology to my knowledge.

 

[Wonko]

If you mean the biopsychosocial model, that is a model of disease etiology, and deals with abnormal psychology (mental illness) or physical diseases assumed to have psychogenic factors. BPS does not include normal psychology to my knowledge.

Of course it does - it includes PwME, most of us are probably not mad.

Psychologists are advising, steering, and setting government policy, anyone who is subject to the UK government is subject to the effects of a forced psychological theory.

In practice this means anyone in the UK who needs something from "government" funds, as all applications, and policies, are dictated by a philosophy dictated by a report come up with over a few day by a couple of psychologists.

My lack of treatment options on the NHS is because of an attitude to ME created, pursued and actively maintained by psychologists. I live on a pittance because of the views expressed by psychologists. Psychologists have a major impact on my life, abilities and limitations, what they say impacts me greatly.

How is this different from "treatment"? They have set in motion, and maintain, policies specifically designed to try and modify my "behaviour" to suit what they, and their masters, consider optimal.

Treatment.

 

[Hip]

Of course it does - it includes PwME, most of us are probably not mad.

Perhaps it is worth spelling out what is meant by normal psychology.

An example of normal psychology would be a girl abruptly dumped by a long-time boyfriend she is in love with, and she subsequently feels very upset and lost in life. So she decides to see a therapist for a bit of support. That's normal psychology. It deals with normal life.

 

[Wonko]

No, it's not, I understand that.

 

[Hip]

I understand that.

Good, then all I said earlier was that if someone wants psychological therapy for normal life circumstances (not medical circumstances), they are free to go out an get it. Equally if they don't, they are free to avoid it.

 

[Wonko]

I, and many other people who just happen to have been unlucky, have no medical circumstances that would require psychological treatment.

We are still subject to the dictates of psychologists, treated as defective and in need of coercion to "enable" us to behave correctly, a seen by them. The state enforces this coercion, as policy, to try and make us better, more productive people.

I am not free to avoid the psychologically based policies and beliefs of the DWP, if I want a roof and to eat. I do not have the choice to obtain the funds I would need to do so elsewhere.

This is treatment, treatment designed by psychologists, psychological treatment, we have no choice in it, it is therefore "forced" treatment, IMO.

 

[Invisible Woman]

I am sure there are a great many people who have undergone what you refer to as "normal" psychology @Hip .

However, there are people who are harmed by it too. Instances of people I know for example -

A lady whose relationship with a close family member and a (non abusive) childhood event sought help. After months and months of shelling out and talking round in circles she felt, if anything, it was making matters worse with no hint of progress. She talked to the therapist and explained it wasn't for her. The therapist then sent a revenge letter to this lady's GP making sure to include all the highly confidential details so they went on her medical records.

A couple seeking therapy - he ran up a big, big debt, but couldn't tell her why. Agreed to go to therapy. The therapist insisted the behaviour of running up a huge debt was equivalent to not mowing the lawn? That it was designed to provoke even though it was all in secret and the wife found out by accident. The therapist just made a bad situation worse.

I know of another who just spent lots of money, wasn't made worse, but not helped either. A nice luxury weekend, or even week, away would probably have done them more good.

It's hard enough to report a harm from a prescribed drug, but the harms from therapy are almost impossible to prove. Many people may be scared to complain for fear of the "revenge" letter and so leave it. So the therapist is free to exploit others.

While there is no easy means of reporting harms, while psychologists continue to fail to appreciate the limits of their knowledge and skills, they will continue to do harm to some.

 

[Invisible Woman]

I also believe that schools these days use psychologists. So a child may end up being seen by the school psych on a teachers say so.

Now, I am sure for many that's a good thing, but I'm equally sure that it's a bad thing for others. Think of a kid in the early stages of ME for example.

The parents may not have much say in whether or not the psychologist is seen, but I'll bet if they fight it it will look bad for them.

Just throwing that in there as an example of enforced engagement with psychs.

Mind you, an old colleague of mine was also forced to see a counsellor. He was having personal problems which started affecting his work. They agreed to help him, but one of the conditions was he had to see a therapist.

 

[JamBob]

He blames psychology. Is psychiatry any better?

If anything psychiatry is far worse and it is the major cause of why we are in the mess that we are in.

Medicine is the profession that created and continues to cling to an intellectually dishonest schism between "organic" disease and the "functional/psychosomatic/MUS/***" illness and until doctors somehow rid themselves of that false dichotomy then patients will continue to suffer. I say "rid themselves" because doctors won't listen to critiques of medicine from non-doctors so the enlightenment will have to come from within. Until such time, the "psychological medicine" dustbin serves as a useful container for all of the patients that doctors can't currently help with their known tests and treatments.

Psychologists don't receive biomedical/pharmacological education as part of their training and aren't in a position to question doctors' judgements about disease and illness. It's only because doctors like Wessely, Sharpe, Stone, Crawley, Fink and the rest of the BPS crew have classified certain illnesses as "psychological" that psychologists get involved and offer up "curative" rather than adjunctive psychological treatments. For example, you don't see psychologists telling diabetic patients to come off insulin so that they can treat the diabetes symptoms with CBT, that would lead to the psychologist losing their license for going against medical consensus.

I agree with the points that David Marks makes but I think he portrays psychologists as having far more power and influence then they actually have. Instead it would be better if he set about tackling the root cause of this problem which is the intellectually dishonest practice by doctors of attributing symptoms without known medical cause to a patient's mental state or faulty illness beliefs without any evidence for the existence of a causal link.


***insert current obfuscatory buzzword useful for misleading patients about what doctors really think is wrong: "the patient is a loony".

 

[alex3619]

Instead it would be better if he set about tackling the root cause of this problem which is the intellectually dishonest practice by doctors of attributing symptoms without known medical cause to a patient's mental state or faulty illness beliefs without any evidence for the existence of a causal link.

Which is based on multiple fallacies, not just a lack of evidence.

 

[Woolie]

I'm very, very late to this party.

But I found Marks' article empty and overly sensationalist. If you want to critique theories and/or methods used in the general discipline of Psychology, there are many good and useful ways to do that. This article does not present any of them.

I also think that Marks creates a false division between Psychology on the one hand, and the "real" sciences on the other. When you delve into the "real" sciences, into any topic that involves some complexity - a subject that's more than just observing and reporting the facts - then you see the same kinds of theory-making going on and the same kinds of overconfident wrongness. That's just what humans do when faced with a complex problem with too many facets to it to just describe it.

Last time I looked, all the sciences were vulnerable to being hugely wrong - and those dealing with complex systems/phenomena, where theory-making is the only real way forward - are the most vulnerable. Quantum mechanics and theories of evolution come immediately to mind. On the medical side of things, of course we don't often know an idea's wrong until someone comes up with something better. But there's the idea that dietary fat and cholesterol play a causal role in heart disease (once part of the medical mantra, but now generally discredited), the controversy over whether persistent EBV plays a role in MS (some researchers are committed to this, others think its hogwash), whether the toxins in corticosteriods can shorten the lives of asthma sufferers and should be avoided (again, some doctors adamant, others sceptical). Inflammation is big in models of dementia now; a decade or so ago aluminium and toxins were all the rage. Who knows what the truth will be? Reckon that a lot of that telomere stuff is going to be debunked soon.

Let's face it. We're all vulnerable to confirmation bias, and once we're on a good theory, we're reluctant to give it up.

If you are going to make the claim that researchers in Psychology are overconfident in their theories, then I'm with you all the way. But if you try to create a false dichotomy between this and the "real" sciences, then I think you're doing the very thing you despise the psychologists for.

 

[Suffolkres]

Psychology certainly seems to be a crossroads at the moment, and needs to do a bit of soul-searching to decide what it actually is, and what it wants to be. And in particular it needs to consider whether it actually wants to be a science, or something else.....

Biomedical science must be given priority and primacy when it comes to researching MUS diseases, as well as serious mental health conditions (which increasing evidence suggests are organic biologically caused illnesses).

Oh how true.

 

[BruceInOz]

Last time I looked, all the sciences were vulnerable to being hugely wrong - and those dealing with complex systems/phenomena, where theory-making is the only real way forward - are the most vulnerable. Quantum mechanics and theories of evolution come immediately to mind.

There is a big difference though. Progress in quantum mechanics looks like: strange phenomenon observed; many theories postulated to explain; predictions are made from those theories; predictions are compared with old experiments or new experiments performed to test predictions; theories that don't agree with experiments are discarded.

So while it is true that many theories turn out to be wrong, that is just the scientific process working.

The trouble with psychology is that so often it's theories are unfalsifiable or evidence is not concrete enough to say either way. To my mind, it's the lack of a proper anchor to evidence that makes psychological theories unscientific.

 

[BruceInOz]

Wow. I had no idea I was just reflecting Popper. Had only known the name as being connected with philosophy of science but just felt compelled to read the wikipedia page on him
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

Popper believed that there was a contrast between the theories of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, which he considered non-scientific, and the revolution set off by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in physicsin the early 20th century. Popper thought that Einstein's theory, as a theory properly grounded in scientific thought and method, was highly "risky", in the sense that it was possible to deduce consequences from it which were, in the light of the then-dominant Newtonian physics, highly improbable (e.g., that light is deflected towards solid bodies—confirmed by Eddington's experiments in 1919), and which would, if they turned out to be false, falsify the whole theory. In contrast he thought that nothing could, even in principle, falsify psychoanalytic theories. He thus came to the conclusion that they had more in common with primitive myths than with genuine science.[13]

This led Popper to conclude that what were regarded[by whom?] as the remarkable strengths of psychoanalytical theories were actually their weaknesses. Psychoanalytical theories were crafted in a way that made them able to refute any criticism and to give an explanation for every possible form of human behaviour. The nature of such theories made it impossible for any criticism or experiment—even in principle—to show them to be false.[13]When Popper later tackled the problem of demarcation in the philosophy of science, this conclusion led him to posit that the strength of a scientific theory lies in its both being susceptible to falsification, and not actually being falsified by criticism made of it. He considered that if a theory cannot, in principle, be falsified by criticism, it is not a scientific theory.[39]

Seems relevant here.

 

[alex3619]

I had no idea I was just reflecting Popper.

Falsifiability is a core tenet of the whole field of critical rationalism, which I regard as started by Popper. An unfalsifiable theory cannot be scientific. Not all psychological theories are unfalsifiable. Then there is the problem that a theory that is unfalsifiable with today's technology, might become falsifiable in the future. So while some of these theories are potentially scientific, it can be valid to say they are not scientific with today's technology.

My chosen philosophical position is pancritical rationalism, which starts when you ask the question how do you apply critical rationalism to poorly defined discourse, or vaguely defined entities, like justice. Its a superset of critical rationalism, in that most of critical rationalism is tentatively accepted for scientific enquiry.