Tag: depression

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Falsifiable Theories of Depression

I offer a hypothetical.

Suppose that the best, most effective treatment for depression or emotional trauma was to suck it up and get on with your life?

Remember– this is a hypothesis. You don’t have to assume it’s true or that I am saying it’s true. You certainly don’t need to politicize it. I provide it in the spirit of Karl Popper’s idea — which I endorse– that it must be possible, theoretically, to prove any theory false, in order for it to be proven true. It must be falsifiable.

For example, if we assert that a certain bird eats worms, then we must be able to describe a method by which we could prove it false. Let’s say we are able to monitor the bird for every hour of every day for a week and to record with a camera everything that it eats. I think most of us would accept that if the bird never touched a single worm, the theory would be false. That seems silly on one level– don’t we only have to see the bird eat a worm to know that the theory is true? Yes. But that is because we can, theoretically, prove it if it didn’t. We think it’s a silly proof because it is so easy to do, but that’s why it works.

Here’s a more difficult one: preparing for war increases the possibility of war. In order to prove this hypothesis, we need to find an example of how it could be proven false. Let’s say, for example, that there was a country that never prepared for war. Like Costa Rica, which does not have an army. Costa Rica, sitting there in one of the most violent areas in the world, Central America, has never been invaded. Nobody is scared of Costa Rica. Nobody is worried that Costa Rica is going to invade their country and take their gold.

That’s only one example, so it’s not a very strong proof. We do have lots and lots of countries that do prepare for war and have prepared for war and got their wars. We don’t have so many countries who prepared for war and were thus able to avoid war. The big obvious one is the U.S., prepared– on a very large scale– for war with the Soviet Union, which, it would be argued, never happened because the U.S. was prepared. But our proxy nations like Guatemala, Iran, Chile, El Salvador, and so on, were not so fortunate.

Of course, the U.S. does go to war, often.  Point made.

Here’s another more anodyne example: pulling the goalie in the last few minutes of a hockey game does not improve the chances of victory.  Nobody dares to defy this piece of conventional wisdom.  Just imagine the crowd watching the home team trailing by one goal with one minute left and the face-off in the opponents end of the rink and the coach does not pull the goalie.  The crowd– and every sportswriter– would howl with derision.  But unless someone starts doing it regularly–not pulling the goalie– we’ll never know if it’s true or not.  (In fact, apparently in the KHL, Russia’s professional league, pulling the goalie is rare.)  My theory is that pulling the goalie doesn’t increase your chances of winning, but I’ll never be proven wrong, because nobody will test that hypothetical.

Anyway, suppose that you believe that the best way to deal with depression is to go see a therapist, get counseling, maybe some chemicals to adjust the serotonin levels in your brain (an idea which now seems to have been proven dubious). How would you know that was true? Well, you would have to be able to — theoretically– prove it was false.

Here’s the problem. If it is false, you would have a substantial number of people out there who were depressed but took the attitude that it was best to just suck it up and get on with your life…. and were less depressed because that’s what they did. In other words, just sucking it up and getting on with your life can be effective for some people who are depressed.

But here’s the catch: the clinicians and theoreticians and pharmaceutical companies who believe in therapies would say, those people are not really depressed.

Therefore, they are excluded from the sample that we analyze when discussing what works. In other words, the successes of the alternative approaches are simply excluded from the sample, so that only those who seek therapy and receive chemical treatments are in the pool of subjects.

That’s a self-fulfilling hypothesis.

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Self Esteem

Psychology is a religion. Like most religions, it has a core of beliefs –kidnapped from the vault of public cultural wisdom– that are at least partly true. Many of these insights can be fully apprehended in the work of good writers. Shakespeare wrote his plays hundreds of years before psychology became a formal discipline, but his works are filled with insights into human behavior that remain, often, more profound and more revelatory than any psychology text book. Mark Twain, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Bob Dylan… all great artists as a matter of course demonstrate remarkable insights into human behavior. Few of them would pretend that they have mastered a “science” that provides them with reliable knowledge about why people do what they do. Even Karl Marx had tremendous insights into the human mind, and he was far better at predicting human behavior than Freud ever was. (Ask yourself how often a persons’ actions, beliefs or attitudes reflect, intimately, his or her economic interest?)

Psychologists insist that their field of study is a “science”, like math, and physics, and chemistry. Here’s the problem: a reasonably competent engineer using the principles of physics and math and geometry could build a bridge that would, with reasonable certainly, support the weight of a specified load. Is there a reasonably competent psychologist out there who could take an anxious, depressed teenager, and guarantee that he or she will be happy with the application of a treatment based on his theories of human psychology? Could a reasonably competent psychologist even assure you — with justified confidence– that she understood exactly what the problem was? Could he examine your failing marriage and prescribe a course of action that will certainly save it?

Any psychologist might tell you that a particular woman is insecure and has low self-esteem and requires a husband who can be like an approving father-figure in her life. An economist might tell you she’s looking for someone with money. Neither of them will be right all of the time, and probably not even most of the time, but I would bet on the economist most days.

Psychologists do a lot of labeling because it’s a tool of the industry. Without the named syndrome, there can be no treatment paid for by insurance companies. Without a named syndrome, there is no authority, no industry, no power.

Like all religions, it claims to know who is saved (the sane) and who is not (the mentally ill). Unlike most religions– in North America and Europe, at least– it has been able to insinuate itself into government institutions and the justice system so that the weight of government authority can be brought to bear against heretics. No court would accept the testimony of a priest that a particular individual is a sinner, but it would accept the conclusion of a psychiatrist that a particular individual is irrational. I’m not sure that the psychiatrist’s testimony is really any more authoritative than the priest’s.

A heretic is someone who either doesn’t meet the psychologist’s standard for “normalcy”, or rejects the authority of psychology altogether. Heretics can be detained indefinitely, deprived of life and liberty and property, and condemned to perpetual incarceration. They will be labeled: “unstable”, “neurotic”, “schizophrenic”, “obsessive-compulsive”, “depressed”, “PTSD”, and so on. Labels are very powerful. Most people are convinced that these labels actually correspond to a real set of standards and rules that meet the criteria of scientific “evidence”. They don’t.

Consider this: if a bridge collapsed killing or injuring dozens of people and there was legal action and the court heard from engineers about the structure of the bridge and the materials used and the design, you could be reasonably sure that the information presented is soundly based on tested and proven scientific information. You could bring in any number of engineers and they would all agree, at least, on the basic principles of design and material. But when a psychologist testifies, for example, that a man has “psychopathic tendencies” and is lacking in “empathetic response” or a woman (Teresa Lewis) has “dependent personality disorder”, we have no idea if these are real, objective syndromes, or just his opinion all dressed up in polysyllabic babble. It would not be difficult at all to find another person with the title “psychologist” to testify that the subject has no syndromes at all: he’s just bad, or she’s just “needy”.

In fact, in the past few decades, it has become almost impossible to have a suspect classified as mentally ill during the commission of an offense in U.S. courts. (I don’t agree with this development either– for different reasons– among other things, for example, Teresa Lewis has an IQ of 72.).

Like religion, psychology has had it’s schisms and heresies. Freud, Jung, Adler, Skinner, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Moslem…

Unlike most religions, psychology tries to claim it is a science. It is a religion claiming to be a super-religion, so far above subjective experience that all competing religions must bow before it. In that respect, it is very much like a religion: all other religions are false. A devout psychologist believes he has an explanation for religion that is based on his scientific knowledge of how your mind works. He’s partly right. It’s the way your mind works. And the way his mind works, with it’s compulsive obsession with creating for itself the illusion that it understands why people do what they do or feel what they feel.

Psychology is no more a science than Calvinism. Like Calvinism– and a broken clock– it’s get things right twice a day.

Like religion, psychology is used by those in power to exploit and oppress the powerless, to pay itself, to charge people for its service of declaring a person sane, or cured, or recovered.

Like a religion, most of the assertions made by psychologists can’t be proven or disproven. This man is schizophrenic. This man is possessed. This woman is in denial. This woman is self-righteous. This child has a trauma. This child is guilty. This person is depressed. This person is in despair.

Christian Pop

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The Casualties

I came across this plaintive little piece in a newsgroup on various pharmaceutical remedies for mental illness. I was struck by the fact that the man is an ex-marine, something he assumes should convey an image of power and integrity, but for me means nothing more than the cloak of institutional authority we append to schools for killers.

I was also thinking about the fact that our society, cruising along at this hysterical pace towards some kind of elusive manifestation of nirvanic technopoly… seems to be casting more and more casualties to the side.

It’s by a guy named Jim. He blames everything for his troubles, except that which is most directly before him and least obvious to him: our narcissistic culture of instant gratification and the mindless pursuit of wealth. He feels left out, lonely, and isolated. His problem is that he has become reflective and thoughtful. He thinks he should have some sense of purpose here, but he can’t question the assumptions that betray him, because he is so much the product of those very assumptions. So he tries the medications….

From a Christian perspective, it seems we are sent here on earth, to fail. We have our little victories, but inevitably we fall short of the grace of God. I think once we admit this, that we cannot fulfil all greatness, perhaps we can have a better perspective about going on with life. I have a disorder which has most recently been downgraded to bi-polar provisional. This because depression takes hold of me much more often than the manic high that we long for. I may have had this much longer than the past five years but was unaware because everything is relative-normalcy is only defined by those around us. I have done things that my ex-wife considered crazy, but from my point of view were, perhaps, necessary evils (I threw my landlord out once after warning him three times to leave) We all make our choices-whether we are in control of our faculties at the time of event seems to be the distinguishing factor of our sanity.

I was a recon Marine during the Gulf war. I was raised in utter poverty by a social outcast and an overbearing mother. I speak my mind as Marines do, but am not accepted in this practice by civilian people. I uphold a personal code of honor and integrity, but we live among those who do not. In my quest for truth and integrity-I become branded as strange. My wife has left, but she was never a very good person anyway. Her heart is cold and selfish. So….what do the afflicted do to lighten the burden even in the face of suicide as perhaps our only means of escape from the madness. I wish I knew. It is the fear of destoying my beautiful children’s lives by taking my own life that keeps me going-one step from homelessness, one step from jail, one step from insanity. I have no friends, though I consider myself a very nice guy. Strange as it seems, people consider me very good looking and well built too, but my personality seems to scare them off- though few if any people will offer a reason for their hurried departure. We live together but alone. I envy those who have close, good hearted friends. We all need them. AFter many different medications, I have begun to think that not only is there no cure to this thing, but no real relief either. We ride ’em high and ride ’em low and just hope we’re still breathing when the dust settles. Best of luck and God speed to all of us who suffer.