home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:You must surely agree that the models of say physics are far more accurate than those of psychology? I would say that rather than comparing psychology to a natural science, you would be much more justified comparing it to a social science.

Not at all, the best parts of psychology are undeniably natural sciences - like neuropsychology or behavioral psychology. The laws and mathematical models of human behavior are just as accurate and supported by evidence as those for gravity or acceleration of bodies.

This is totally wrong. I guess we aren't living on the same planet. Good for you, that you have such accurate predictions of behaviour, but in my galaxy, this is not the case. Not even close.
Not very tasteful ideological propaganda, that's what the cited statement is.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. We have laws of behavior (e.g. those in choice theory) which can predict the behavior of people with great accuracy. For example, in a given choice situation, we can typically account for 95-100% of the variance of a subject's given behavior.

That's pretty impressive. No "ideological propaganda" needed, just science. Unfortunately, psychology doesn't have a good history of PR, and it seems that the general public is pretty unaware of just how much we know about behavior.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Shrunk has already answered this: the destructive behavior is identified by the patient.

His anwser is flawed, and so is yours. You've actually written definition of indoctrination:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Whilst the therapist might personally disagree with Bob wanting to go out and punch people, there would be no clinical problem with him choosing that as his target behavior and using CBT to achieve his goal. I'm sure most therapists would have ethical problems with encouraging a patient to hurt other people though.

Indoctrination par excellence: despite that there is no particular problem with Bob's idea of treatment, therapist wouldn't treat that way. There is only one conclusion: therapist has already decided (before Bob even entered ordination) what will his treatment look like. This is indoctrination in disguise (which is, again, not necessarily a bad thing).

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion? The very point is that Bob could use the tools he used in CBT to conclude that he should punch people. The therapist's choice is a personal and ethical one that I presume most psychologists would not encourage, but there is nothing which prevents them from doing so. And given that CBT is entirely value-independent, it's possible for Bob to make that decision.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Horizon didn't perform a replication. They did a 'similar' situation where they got 10 people, some with mental disorders and some without, and then monitored over a few days whilst they completed a few tasks. Three mental health experts watched their progress and were asked to guess which were mentally ill and which were not.

Without being able to formally interview these people, and without them coming forward asking for help, and the ones with mental disorders having undergone treatment and currently on medication, the experts were still able to accurately identify 2 out of the 5 with mental disorders.

2/5 is really bad. I would expect mental health professionals to do more such experiments on their own incentive, but it looks like they're not interested in that.

2 out of 5: without a formal interview, without the individual asking for help, and with all 5 having gone through years of treatment and currently on medication.

Put this into perspective: It's like attacking medicine because a group of doctors cannot identified who, in a group of 10, once had some kind of disease or are currently being treated for a disease by observing them from a distance. It's patently ridiculous.

And mental health experts do do studies to test these things, they just do them in scientifically rigorous ways that aren't confounded by extraneous factors or inherent biases. That is, they do routine checks to ensure that the criteria match patients independently of the subjective beliefs of the therapist, they check that prescription rates aren't significantly different from predicted incidence rates, etc.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:That makes no sense. If you're basing the validity of an entire field of health based on an anecdotal report involving 8 patients that were soon released as apparently being in remission because they had no symptoms of any mental disorders, then that's problematic.

I'm not basing my opinion only on that particular case, but on several different and independent sources. It seems to me that that particular case is symptomatic with what's going on in the entire field. I.e.: lots of unsupported claims, bad practice, flawed evidence, etc.

I'd be interested in reading these sources you cite (less interested if they aren't academic sources).

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And perhaps this is important to point out, but the time when the study took place was when psychoanalysis were at their peak. The people who judged these people as having or not having mental disorders were most likely psychoanalysts.

Hah, now it's psychoanalysis' fault.

Well they're obviously not blameless but you've entirely missed my point. It's not that it's the "psychoanalysts' fault", but in a thread about psychoanalysis being a preferable therapeutic modality to other perspectives (due to the others being too simplistic, focused on a "quick fix", and biologically-orientated) then it doesn't make sense to bring up examples that apply equally to psychoanalysis.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Of course there are tests - their behaviors either match the criteria or they don't.

Anyone can write dozens of such flawed tests, but they obviously don't provide any useful information in reality.

No they can't. The amount of effort that goes into ensuring that the diagnostic criteria are evidence-based and backed by statistical analyses is massive. That statement is pure ignorance. Anyone who has attempted to write up a psychological questionnaire which achieves high rates of internal validity, construct validity, test-restest validity, etc, knows that not just anyone could write one up. And when you do it right, it's inevitable that it provides useful information.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Not at all, the best parts of psychology are undeniably natural sciences - like neuropsychology or behavioral psychology. The laws and mathematical models of human behavior are just as accurate and supported by evidence as those for gravity or acceleration of bodies.

This is totally wrong. I guess we aren't living on the same planet. Good for you, that you have such accurate predictions of behaviour, but in my galaxy, this is not the case. Not even close.
Not very tasteful ideological propaganda, that's what the cited statement is.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. We have laws of behavior (e.g. those in choice theory) which can predict the behavior of people with great accuracy. For example, in a given choice situation, we can typically account for 95-100% of the variance of a subject's given behavior.

That's pretty impressive. No "ideological propaganda" needed, just science. Unfortunately, psychology doesn't have a good history of PR, and it seems that the general public is pretty unaware of just how much we know about behavior.

Law of gravity can predict position of planets thousands of years in advance up to 1' accurately. There is no psychological prediction that would achieve this accuracy.

Mr.Samsa wrote:The very point is that Bob could use the tools he used in CBT to conclude that he should punch people. The therapist's choice is a personal and ethical one that I presume most psychologists would not encourage, but there is nothing which prevents them from doing so. And given that CBT is entirely value-independent, it's possible for Bob to make that decision.

The facts are that those alternative decisions never occur in reality. People that come to doctor have lots of really weird ideas what they would do. Why do you think that when doctors follow CBT they don't encourage people to realize their ideas and instead they force their own? Do you think it's a coincidence?

Mr.Samsa wrote:2 out of 5: without a formal interview, without the individual asking for help, and with all 5 having gone through years of treatment and currently on medication.

Put this into perspective: It's like attacking medicine because a group of doctors cannot identified who, in a group of 10, once had some kind of disease or are currently being treated for a disease by observing them from a distance. It's patently ridiculous.

Do you think that astronomer would separate Jupiter from Saturn, if he'd be looking at night sky without telescope for one week? I'm sure he would. But psychiatrists didn't recognize ill patients. It's their methods that are ridiculous. Well, not ridiculous but inefficient.

Mr.Samsa wrote:And mental health experts do do studies to test these things, they just do them in scientifically rigorous ways that aren't confounded by extraneous factors or inherent biases. That is, they do routine checks to ensure that the criteria match patients independently of the subjective beliefs of the therapist, they check that prescription rates aren't significantly different from predicted incidence rates, etc.

If that is so then these academic studies and tests are totally detached from reality. They totally break down when they are confronted with real situation.

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'd be interested in reading these sources you cite (less interested if they aren't academic sources).

Sure, learn to speak Slovene and then you can read an extensive work of Slovene psychiatrist Janez Rugelj.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

home_ wrote:Anyone can write dozens of such flawed tests, but they obviously don't provide any useful information in reality.

No they can't. The amount of effort that goes into ensuring that the diagnostic criteria are evidence-based and backed by statistical analyses is massive. That statement is pure ignorance. Anyone who has attempted to write up a psychological questionnaire which achieves high rates of internal validity, construct validity, test-restest validity, etc, knows that not just anyone could write one up. And when you do it right, it's inevitable that it provides useful information.

That's plain wrong. I'm a mathematician and I know how strongly can statistics be misleading, especially if you want to build your theory on it. This is wrong. Not just wrong, it's capital failure. If you already have perspective theoretical model then you can use statistics to test it and see if it's worth to pursuit it, but if you don't have a good idea what to do with your observations then building your theory on statistics is complete failure. Tests will tell only that tests are in accordance with your tests.. which is meaningless.

Shrunk wrote:You're still missing the point. Bob is coming to the therapist and saying he does not want to chase people and punch them out. So how on earth does making him chase people and punch them out solve that problem? And, presumably, he wants to continue driving. So why would anyone who was trying to help him offer solutions that are directly opposed to those goals that the patient explicitly identifies?

Who said that? Bob came to therapist because he was frustrated by situations on the road. Nobody said anything about his alleged wishes not to chase people and punch them. It's false assumption. Bob wants to get rid of his feelings of frustration on the road. That's what he wants.

Shrunk wrote:Suppose Bob's car is not working properly. He takes it to a mechanic who identifies the cause as a faulty alternator and offers to fix it. Isn't that "indoctrination" by your standards? Why doesn't the mechanic tell Bob to just take public transport, or buy a new car? Those will also solve his problems.

Mechanic is not advisor for logistics. Mechanic fixes cars and psychologist helps people. Different situations, different discourse.

@katja z: yes he was extremely controversial psychiatrist, but I didn't pick him because of this*. I picked him because he knew what was the situation in slovenian psychiatry and he said things on basis of experience.

* why do you even care? Because it doesn't suit your views? Too bad. I don't approve his methods either. But we're not discussing that. We're discussing accuracy and efficacy of psychiatry in general, and Rugelj gave some good insights.

katja z wrote:Why do I care? You might as well ask why anybody here cares to have this debate. In this case specifically, I felt I could supply some information others here didn't have, because we are hardly speaking about an internationally-acclaimed academic. (For the record, I have no axe to grind here; I am not a psychiatrist.)

Why does it have to be internationally acclaimed academic? There are very few people in Slovenia that could qualify for such title. And it doesn't matter anyway - why should internationally acclaimed academic be more reliable than someone who publishes only in national language? Take Žižek for example: he is one of the worlds leading philosophers, but his claims are very rarely supported by evidence. Being academic doesn't make your claims more true.

katja z wrote:Now: what were those insights? Just claiming that he had some isn't enough.

They're written in his articles and books. I won't go into this because I'm familiar only with small part of that stuff.

katja z wrote: If you want to use his insights, you should 1) outline them, 2) show how they were more than biased personal opinions of someone at odds with most of his professional colleagues (who presumably had as much experience in this field*), and 3) show how his insights, if such there are, about the situation in the Slovenian psychiatry (= about local practice) are relevant to a general discussion about the merits of different therapeutic methods (which is a separate question from the quality of their application).

1) Why must I do that? Mr.Samsa was interested in sources, I gave one of them. With this particular matter, I'm not really into discussing my opinion, maybe some other time (it's actually off topic anyway..).
2) I don't know why Rugelj was expelled, but I wouldn't jump into conclusions. Almost everyone who was at odds with communist establishment in Yugoslavia was sanctioned in some way. My friend who was film director recorded a documentary about suicides in Yugoslavia, and after that he was prohibited to make movies (because that one show one bad side of Yugoslavia - high suicide rates). As far as I know Rugelj was also at odds with regime (which is not very surprising). I wouldn't be surprised if reasons that they kicked him out of Slovenian Medical Association were political (I'm not sure if this is even true? Because he also practiced 'hunger strike' twice and communist regime succumbed to his ideas).
3) Rugelj's name appeared when Mr.Samsa asked me for (academic) sources for my opinion about general status of psychiatry. You have his insights written in his books and articles, which are available at national library, as you have already found out.

katja z wrote:* I'm not saying they are always right - indeed, I am well aware of problems in the mental health field in this country. This still doesn't make Rugelj automatically right.

No it doesn't but it's something you should take into consideration.
Another thing: last year minister of health visited one of Slovenia's psychiatry clinics and after visit he gave a statement for media. He said that he is somehow disappointed because a lot is invested in mental health but effect is disproportionately smaller than money spent. In other words: psychiatry in Slovenia is inefficient. Again, we shouldn't jump into conclusions but this is something that you should take into consideration.

katja z wrote:Also: you said you had several "different and independent" sources. Rugelj is one; what are others?

Mr.Samsa asked for academia sources, Rugelj was the only one I could think of (at least for situation in Slovenia). Other sources come from my experience when my wife's mother was hospitalized because of depression, and when former director of one of major hospitals in Ljubljana (she happened to be my neighbour) was explaining me how things worked there (or maybe better: how things don't work in psychiatry department). But I assume this doesn't count for academia.

katja z wrote:If we were discussing the practice of psychiatry in Slovenia, then it would be relevant and interesting. But we're not, so it's not.

It was you who wanted further explanation about why I think that general practice of psychiatry is bad. Let me refresh your memory:

katja z wrote:I wonder which of these you were referring to?

katja z wrote:Also: you said you had several "different and independent" sources. Rugelj is one; what are others?

katja z wrote:what were those insights?

It's silly that you ask and when I anwser you say it's irrelevant to other points that you weren't even asking. And btw, if you follow that logic then the most irrelevant is your reply. Why even bother?
Well, I won't bother replying, because your reply is so full of inconsistencies and complete failures to address the issue, that's it's not worth to continue debating it. It's irrelevant anyway, isn't it?..

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm not sure what you're talking about. We have laws of behavior (e.g. those in choice theory) which can predict the behavior of people with great accuracy. For example, in a given choice situation, we can typically account for 95-100% of the variance of a subject's given behavior.

That's pretty impressive. No "ideological propaganda" needed, just science. Unfortunately, psychology doesn't have a good history of PR, and it seems that the general public is pretty unaware of just how much we know about behavior.

Law of gravity can predict position of planets thousands of years in advance up to 1' accurately. There is no psychological prediction that would achieve this accuracy.

I can predict the behavior of a person 1000 years in advance with an accuracy of 95-100% in a choice situation. I can tell you how frequently he will choose option A over option B, how long they will spend talking to each person at a dinner table, how frequently they will take 2-point or 3-point shots in a basketball game, etc. I don't even have to know who this person is - doesn't that make it even more impressive than the physicists predicting the behavior of planets which they know all the information on already, and who will continue to behave in the exact same way for millenia?

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The very point is that Bob could use the tools he used in CBT to conclude that he should punch people. The therapist's choice is a personal and ethical one that I presume most psychologists would not encourage, but there is nothing which prevents them from doing so. And given that CBT is entirely value-independent, it's possible for Bob to make that decision.

The facts are that those alternative decisions never occur in reality. People that come to doctor have lots of really weird ideas what they would do. Why do you think that when doctors follow CBT they don't encourage people to realize their ideas and instead they force their own? Do you think it's a coincidence?

Because of ethical concerns. But you're still missing the point - a therapist will teach the patient how to use CBT, and the patient will apply it any way he likes. Your situation makes no sense; compare it with engineers. Are engineers engaging in indoctrination when they refuse to build a car-carrying bridge out of paper? Does their refusal to do so say anything at all about the validity of their field?

Of course not. Now can we stop this ridiculous line of thought?

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:2 out of 5: without a formal interview, without the individual asking for help, and with all 5 having gone through years of treatment and currently on medication.

Put this into perspective: It's like attacking medicine because a group of doctors cannot identified who, in a group of 10, once had some kind of disease or are currently being treated for a disease by observing them from a distance. It's patently ridiculous.

Do you think that astronomer would separate Jupiter from Saturn, if he'd be looking at night sky without telescope for one week? I'm sure he would. But psychiatrists didn't recognize ill patients. It's their methods that are ridiculous. Well, not ridiculous but inefficient.

Completely different situation. The astronomer would have to be looking at a picture of the night sky, where someone has edited the planets so that they no longer look the way they normally do and have been moved out of place.

Do you not understand how or why it might be difficult to identify someone as mentally ill when they have received (or are currently receiving) treatment so that they no longer are technically mentally ill?

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And mental health experts do do studies to test these things, they just do them in scientifically rigorous ways that aren't confounded by extraneous factors or inherent biases. That is, they do routine checks to ensure that the criteria match patients independently of the subjective beliefs of the therapist, they check that prescription rates aren't significantly different from predicted incidence rates, etc.

If that is so then these academic studies and tests are totally detached from reality. They totally break down when they are confronted with real situation.

Bullshit. Your criticism makes no sense.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'd be interested in reading these sources you cite (less interested if they aren't academic sources).

Sure, learn to speak Slovene and then you can read an extensive work of Slovene psychiatrist Janez Rugelj.

From what I've read, he only criticised the practice in Slovenia. Irrelevant to this discussion.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:No they can't. The amount of effort that goes into ensuring that the diagnostic criteria are evidence-based and backed by statistical analyses is massive. That statement is pure ignorance. Anyone who has attempted to write up a psychological questionnaire which achieves high rates of internal validity, construct validity, test-restest validity, etc, knows that not just anyone could write one up. And when you do it right, it's inevitable that it provides useful information.

That's plain wrong. I'm a mathematician and I know how strongly can statistics be misleading, especially if you want to build your theory on it. This is wrong. Not just wrong, it's capital failure. If you already have perspective theoretical model then you can use statistics to test it and see if it's worth to pursuit it, but if you don't have a good idea what to do with your observations then building your theory on statistics is complete failure. Tests will tell only that tests are in accordance with your tests.. which is meaningless.

Well I'm a scientist, so I know that these statistics can't be manipulated in a way to give you the results you want and have them replicated by other independent scientists. Scientific theories make predictions, so whilst it's possible to abuse statistics to give you the results you currently want, you can't make them fulfill every prediction accurately without them relating to the reality of the subject matter. Take IQ tests, or the Big Five personality questionnaires, such designs have undergone such rigorous research that you can't seriously be arguing that it's just dodgy statistics. Also, your second to last sentence is a misrepresentation. Nobody suggested building a theory on statistics. Statistics are used to test some of the specific predictions of the theory.

@Katja: Excellent comments, but it's unfortunate that Home has failed to understand your point. It is true that asking for academic sources usually entails being linked to academic sources, but it doesn't seem as if Janez Rugelj is relevant to this discussion anyway so nothing lost.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm not sure what you're talking about. We have laws of behavior (e.g. those in choice theory) which can predict the behavior of people with great accuracy. For example, in a given choice situation, we can typically account for 95-100% of the variance of a subject's given behavior.

That's pretty impressive. No "ideological propaganda" needed, just science. Unfortunately, psychology doesn't have a good history of PR, and it seems that the general public is pretty unaware of just how much we know about behavior.

Law of gravity can predict position of planets thousands of years in advance up to 1' accurately. There is no psychological prediction that would achieve this accuracy.

I can predict the behavior of a person 1000 years in advance with an accuracy of 95-100% in a choice situation. I can tell you how frequently he will choose option A over option B, how long they will spend talking to each person at a dinner table, how frequently they will take 2-point or 3-point shots in a basketball game, etc.

Major Bullshit. You're completely blinded with your faith in these theories.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The very point is that Bob could use the tools he used in CBT to conclude that he should punch people. The therapist's choice is a personal and ethical one that I presume most psychologists would not encourage, but there is nothing which prevents them from doing so. And given that CBT is entirely value-independent, it's possible for Bob to make that decision.

The facts are that those alternative decisions never occur in reality. People that come to doctor have lots of really weird ideas what they would do. Why do you think that when doctors follow CBT they don't encourage people to realize their ideas and instead they force their own? Do you think it's a coincidence?

Because of ethical concerns. But you're still missing the point - a therapist will teach the patient how to use CBT, and the patient will apply it any way he likes.

Ethical concern = indoctrination under cover. It's you who is missing the point.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Your situation makes no sense; compare it with engineers. Are engineers engaging in indoctrination when they refuse to build a car-carrying bridge out of paper? Does their refusal to do so say anything at all about the validity of their field?

This is failed comparison: bridge out of paper would break down, but chasing people and punching them or using public transport would work perfectly fine with Bob.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Completely different situation. The astronomer would have to be looking at a picture of the night sky, where someone has edited the planets so that they no longer look the way they normally do and have been moved out of place.

In your situation it wouldn't even theoretically be possible to recognize Jupiter from Saturn without telescope. Enough said about credibility of your comparison.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Scientific theories make predictions, so whilst it's possible to abuse statistics to give you the results you currently want, you can't make them fulfill every prediction accurately without them relating to the reality of the subject matter. Take IQ tests, or the Big Five personality questionnaires, such designs have undergone such rigorous research that you can't seriously be arguing that it's just dodgy statistics. Also, your second to last sentence is a misrepresentation. Nobody suggested building a theory on statistics. Statistics are used to test some of the specific predictions of the theory.

Oh really? Is that so? Then where did this come from: Wikipedia, The Big Five Criticism. Let me quote beginning:

Wiki wrote:Critics argue that there are limitations to the scope of Big Five as an explanatory or predictive theory. It is argued that the Big Five does not explain all of human personality. The methodology used to identify the dimensional structure of personality traits, factor analysis, is often challenged for not having a universally-recognized basis for choosing among solutions with different numbers of factors. Another frequent criticism is that the Big Five is not theory-driven. It is merely a data-driven investigation of certain descriptors that tend to cluster together under factor analysis.

Now how did these statements appear there? It must be psychoanalysts who planted it!

home_ wrote:

I can predict the behavior of a person 1000 years in advance with an accuracy of 95-100% in a choice situation. I can tell you how frequently he will choose option A over option B, how long they will spend talking to each person at a dinner table, how frequently they will take 2-point or 3-point shots in a basketball game, etc.

Major Bullshit. You're completely blinded with your faith in these theories.

Why would I need faith?

I've done this every day in the lab for years now. Pick any random person you want and send them down to the behavioral psych lab. Doesn't matter who it is, how old, sex, race, or whatever. I will tell you precisely how many times they will press the button on the left, and how many times they will press the button on the right. I can even give them a choice between some money now, and more money at a delayed time, and depending on the amounts and the delays, I will tell you exactly which they will choose. I can also tell you exactly when preference reversal will occur, where their impulsive behavior takes over and they give up waiting for the delayed money.

I know it sounds wonderful and fantastic, but that's just science. We know a fuck of a lot about how people and animals work, and fortunately for us, people are incredibly predictable. There's no need to be overawed though, to paraphrase Asimov: "Any sufficiently advanced [science] is indistinguishable from magic". But don't take my word for it. Buy a psychology textbook. Read some experimental papers. Just don't base your beliefs on your incredulity.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Because of ethical concerns. But you're still missing the point - a therapist will teach the patient how to use CBT, and the patient will apply it any way he likes.

Ethical concern = indoctrination under cover. It's you who is missing the point.

That makes absolutely no sense. I can only guess that there is a language difficulty occurring here, but 'indoctrination' doesn't mean what you think it does.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Your situation makes no sense; compare it with engineers. Are engineers engaging in indoctrination when they refuse to build a car-carrying bridge out of paper? Does their refusal to do so say anything at all about the validity of their field?

This is failed comparison: bridge out of paper would break down, but chasing people and punching them or using public transport would work perfectly fine with Bob.

No, because Bob's life would "break down", and so would the lives of the people he chases and punches.

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Completely different situation. The astronomer would have to be looking at a picture of the night sky, where someone has edited the planets so that they no longer look the way they normally do and have been moved out of place.

In your situation it wouldn't even theoretically be possible to recognize Jupiter from Saturn without telescope. Enough said about credibility of your comparison.

That's the point. After treatment and without being able to interview them, it is not even theoretically possible to recognise a person who was once diagnosed mentally ill and one who has never been diagnosed. Expecting the experts in the Horizon entertainment show to be able to identify the once mentally ill is like expecting astronomers to recognise Jupiter and Saturn without a telescope.

(I should note, however, that the comparison is not technically perfect, as Jupiter and Saturn are of course visible to the naked eye as they are members of the classical planets).

home_ wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Scientific theories make predictions, so whilst it's possible to abuse statistics to give you the results you currently want, you can't make them fulfill every prediction accurately without them relating to the reality of the subject matter. Take IQ tests, or the Big Five personality questionnaires, such designs have undergone such rigorous research that you can't seriously be arguing that it's just dodgy statistics. Also, your second to last sentence is a misrepresentation. Nobody suggested building a theory on statistics. Statistics are used to test some of the specific predictions of the theory.

Oh really? Is that so? Then where did this come from: Wikipedia, The Big Five Criticism. Let me quote beginning:

Wiki wrote:Critics argue that there are limitations to the scope of Big Five as an explanatory or predictive theory. It is argued that the Big Five does not explain all of human personality. The methodology used to identify the dimensional structure of personality traits, factor analysis, is often challenged for not having a universally-recognized basis for choosing among solutions with different numbers of factors. Another frequent criticism is that the Big Five is not theory-driven. It is merely a data-driven investigation of certain descriptors that tend to cluster together under factor analysis.

Now how did these statements appear there? It must be psychoanalysts who planted it!

Did you understand what you copied and pasted there? None of that is relevant to what we're discussing here. For example, note how none of the criticisms suggest that the Big 5 traits don't exist, this is because the evidence that they do exist is overwhelming. Instead the complaints can be summarised as:

1) does knowing the Big 5 help us predict behavior? (Note: This is different from the scientific predictions of the theory).
2) does the Big 5 cover all personality types, or are there more to be discovered?
3) is there an objective basis for determining which results fall into each factor (i.e. is it possible that the Big 5 could be the Big 3 or Big 7)?

The answer to (1) is "yes", the construct is great at helping us predict behavior (making the criticism of it only being an explanatory model ridiculous). For example, in the same wiki article, we are linked to these articles:

The five-factor model and personality disorder empirical literature: A meta-analytic review
The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis

The answers to (2) and (3) seem to be answered in this section of that same wikipedia article you linked to. The decisions made in the factor analysis are supported by further evidence, like heritability studies.

home_ wrote:Historical data says that Copernican theory didn't make as good predictions as Ptolemaic did (this was because of inaccuracy of data at that time). You should have taken this fact into account when you were considering what was the ratio of merits and deficiencies of these two research programs. On the other hand, I acknowledge that Copernican theory was more parsimonious, and this was probably the most important reason that scientists (philosophers of nature) followed it.

Then, you cannot call it an "irrational" choice, because parsimony was one reason.

home_ wrote:

seeker wrote:I don't think you can offer any good argument to claim that their choice was "irrational" (and, so far, you haven't offered any argument to support that claim).

Yada yada. I offered many arguments from several sources, and if you can't see it that's not my problem.

You haven't offered any good argument. How do you define "irrational" here? I don't consider that a choice under uncertainty conditions can be called "irrational", unless there's a rejection of a rational choice. But there was no consensus about the rationality or irrationality of each choice: you've acknowledged that parsimony was one reason, and other potential reasons (both pros and cons) were controversial. Also, how would you explain the fact that an "irrational" choice became the "rational" choice after a few centuries? That's not the usual outcome of an irrational choice, not even when people make huge efforts to develop an irrational choice.

home_ wrote:

seeker wrote:You've acknowledged that it's not OK for an astronomer (today, in 2011) to adopt Ptolemaic theory. Why not? Does the reason relate to the evidence? Do you think that there're more important reasons for the rejection of a theory than these kind of evidential issues? Which ones?

You question is actually a bit silly, since today we know that there is no absolute center of the universe and that you can transform any frame reference to any other (be it Galilean or Lorentzian transformation..). This way discussion between heliocentrism and geocentrism becomes discussion between what is the most suitable frame reference for studying whatever you study. It's not that one is more real than the other. Nowadays people say that Earth is circulating around the Sun just because physicists said so, and they said so just because equations are easier to handle this way. But both approaches are valid, since they both give the same predictions. This doesn't have to do anything with evidence, as you mistakenly think.

The geocentric model is not merely the heliocentric model with a different frame of reference. Their predictions (e.g. the epycicles of the planets) were different, and the predictions of the geocentric model were disconfirmed. Despite what you say, this has to do with evidence: if a space mission were planned using the model of epycicles, it would fail.

home_ wrote:Nonsense. Choice between geocentrism and heliocentrism was whimsical, there is no historical evidence to think otherwise.

You've acknowledged that parsimony was a reason.

home_ wrote:

seeker wrote:I agree with this. But it's a criticism to Popperian falsationism, and not to Lakatosian falsationism, which is the view I'm defending. If you think this paragraph affects Lakatosian proposals, I'd like to know your explicit argument.

Are you kiddin' me? Have you even read the book? The whole point of that book is to undermine Lakatos' view!!! Feyerabend and Lakatos were very good friends and they wanted to write a book together in a form of a 'dialogue': Feyerabend would try to defend his position and attack Lakatos', and vice versa. But unfortunatelly Lakatos died before the work was finished (his death made Feyerabend very depressed), and later Feyerabend published only his part, which is now known as 'Against method'. He argued that Lakatos' research programmes could function only if they had epistemological anarhism underpinning. He said it was 'epistemological anarchism in disguise'.

So what? I'm not talking about Feyerabend's intentions, I'm talking about his arguments. If you think his arguments were sound, then you should argue about his arguments, not about his intentions.

home_ wrote:There is evidence about psychoanalysis on the rise. I already linked to it in the OP, and later I also found several other studies that support psychoanalysis (mostly there are studies about efficacy of psychodynamic treatment, an example).

I don't think we can assess the theory's claims through the treatment's performance. There're more variables involved in a psychological treatment than the ones that the theory assumes as relevant. We can imagine a scenario in which the basic claims of psychoanalysis are wrong, and yet many patients improve (e.g., because the psychoanalytic setting has triggered some emotional and cognitive processes that are very different to the processes described by the psychoanalytic theory). We can also imagine the inverse scenario, in which the basic claims of psychoanalysis are correct, but patients don't improve in a psychoanalytic setting (because of failures of the treatment procedure). For this reason, we need experimental research that targets the theory's claims in more controlled conditions. Is there any evidence obtained through experimental research regarding the basic processes assumed by the theory?

Hi again. I know it's been a long time since anyone posted on this thread, and I myself haven't posted for nearly a month. I've been meaning to, but have been very busy during this period. However, now I have a spare moment, and although I'm not sure if anyone checks this thread anymore, I am bored and will thus address a few points made by Mr. Samsa that disagree with.

First, a quick question:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Not at all, the best parts of psychology are undeniably natural sciences - like neuropsychology or behavioral psychology. The laws and mathematical models of human behavior are just as accurate and supported by evidence as those for gravity or acceleration of bodies. This is what CBT is based on - the natural science of behavior.

In addition to this, you say in another post rather absurdly that psychology is so good that you are able to predict what a person will do many years from now. If this is true, I'm surprised I haven't heard or seen you in the news. Surely you must realise that all of this sounds preposterous? Perhaps I'm not enlightened enough, but I've never read or heard about this extraordinary capacity of psychology before. In fact, most psychologists tend to be quite modest about the predictive powers of their subject. I don't think it would hurt you to learn from them...

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Hitting someone on the head makes very clear predictions, from biological responses (i.e. localised swelling, bruising, concussions, etc), to psychological (i.e. state of unconsciousness, followed by anger, etc).

No, the practice of hitting on the head does not make any predictions. It is nothing more than just hitting someone on the head. What might make predictions is a theory about what happens when someone hits someone else on the head. The theory about hitting does (or can) make predictions; the act/practice of hitting doesn’t.

The act or practice of hitting necessarily entails logical predictions. Whether people explicitly state or formalise them is another matter, but if hitting someone on the head entailed no predictions, then that means hitting someone in the head could result in anything. This clearly isn't the case.

Unfortunately you are simply wrong. If the acr of hitting necessarily entailed logical predictions, that would mean the act and its consequences would be logically inseparable. This, however, is not the case. I.e. you can envisage a logically possible world in which hitting someone on the head would not hurt someone but would cause flowers to grow. The reason for this is that the bruises caused by hitting someone on the head are due to physical laws, not logical ones. In other words, the necessity is physical or empirical but not a logical one.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
If it has an effect on people, then it necessarily makes predictions. The only way it wouldn't make predictions, is if it had no effect on people.

No, this is not the case. It is not the case that if x has an effect on people then x necessarily makes predictions. I just don’t see how you can argue that.

If something has a causal effect in the world (i.e. it's resulting effects are not simply random), then predictions must be possible to draw from such actions.

Yes, predictions must be possible to draw from such actions. However, this doesn't mean that the actions themselves make predictions as you claim above. The act of "drawing out" is necessary for there to be predictions. If there is no-one to "draw them out", there will be no predictions, no matter how much the actions have causal effect.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:
My response above already deals with this claim. I am not saying that explicit claims about normality are made in psychology. I am merely trying to point out that the definition of a mental disorder rests, in the end, implicitly upon a conception of normality.

And this is patently false. Out of interest, have you read or studied clinical psychology at all? I just cannot understand how you reach this conclusion at all. The suggestion was hugely debatable back in the 60s, and now it is simply nonsensical.

Wy is it nonsensical? You provided criteria for anxiety disorder which involve words like "excessive" which are normative. And if a definition contains normative words than it surely is not nonsensical to wonder to what the extent the definition is itself normative.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote: Yes and no. It depends on what is causing their unhappiness. If their unhappiness is caused by something other than what they can change in their environment, then medication may be necessary. If not, then CBT is what helps them deal with the aspects you describe.

Psychoanalysis facilitates the thinking through one’s emotions, aspirations etc. in a way that learning a “set of skills” might not on its own.

And that's what CBT does. How much have you read about CBT?

Ok. So if CBT does (according to you) what psychoanalysis does, what's the problem?

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
It's not indoctrination because indoctrination requires the patient to uncritically adopt the dogmatic opinion of the therapist. Since CBT is a method predicated upon critical self-analysis, it is impossible to be called indoctrination - it is more accurately labelled "education". And no, the therapist doesn't decide what is destructive or beneficial behavior, that is what the patient decides. CBT is just a process or a method that the therapist teaches to the client, specific behaviors are not necessary to be dealt with by the therapist since the client is the one who deals with it.

Insofar as we are talking about CBT as a method of critical self-analysis, it doesn’t sound too different from psychoanalysis. In fact, if anything, psychoanalysis is the ultimate self-analysis.

Except of course that CBT is preferable to psychoanalysis because it has a stronger empirical basis, and better outcomes across all measures.

[/quote]

If that is the case, could you provide me with research showing that CBT achieves better outcomes across all measures? Furthermore, I hope you realise that such research on its own is not sufficient due to the fact that its acceptability depends on which measures it chooses to look at. There can be genuine debate over which measures are important and valuable and which are not.

Fibonacci wrote:First, a quick question:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
We have a number of measures for these since things like well-being or autonomy are hugely important measures in psychology, and every treatment will account for them when looking at the effectiveness of a treatment.

How on earth do you scientifically measure for example autonomy? Especially as there is a huge disagreement over what autonomy actually is? (Among for example philosophers, political and social theorists...)

Disagreement over autonomy is irrelevant, as long as the researchers operationally define what they are measuring - as such, we can have different measures of autonomy depending on what aspect of the term we're interested in. There are a number of ways of measuring autonomy, but most will involve both self-reported data, and independent observation. These measures will be done by completing a questionnaire or filling out an observation sheet where performance is rated on a scale, and many of these approaches have been supported and validated by multiple lines of evidence.

I couldn't tell you which ones are currently popular though as it's not my area, but typing "measures of autonomy" into Google Scholar gives me thousands of hits, so research is certainly strong in the area.

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Not at all, the best parts of psychology are undeniably natural sciences - like neuropsychology or behavioral psychology. The laws and mathematical models of human behavior are just as accurate and supported by evidence as those for gravity or acceleration of bodies. This is what CBT is based on - the natural science of behavior.

In addition to this, you say in another post rather absurdly that psychology is so good that you are able to predict what a person will do many years from now. If this is true, I'm surprised I haven't heard or seen you in the news. Surely you must realise that all of this sounds preposterous? Perhaps I'm not enlightened enough, but I've never read or heard about this extraordinary capacity of psychology before. In fact, most psychologists tend to be quite modest about the predictive powers of their subject. I don't think it would hurt you to learn from them...

Whether you think it's preposterous or not is irrelevant, and you won't have heard about me in the news since the discovery was made a few decades before I was born. However, if you were in the behavioral field, you would recognise the names Herrnstein and Baum as being the researchers who managed to quantify choice behavior, with an unprecedented level of accuracy.

The consistent finding in behavioral science is that when people are placed in specific situations, we can predict what they're going to do simply by measuring some of the environmental variables. So when placed with two options (for example, a left and right button), we can predict how often, and how much, they will press each button in a session. The person is irrelevant, and assuming that humans don't change dramatically between now and 20 years (i.e. they lose their frontal lobe), the same law will continue to predict future human behavior. The interesting implication of this research is that we can extend it to real life situations; for example, when researchers tested people sitting around a dinner table, they could predict how much time they'd spend talking to each person at the table.

So for me to say that we can continue to predict human behavior to the same degree in 20 years is actually severely understating the scientific position. This is because our knowledge will of course continue to increase and get better, so it's unlikely that our level of prediction will remain at the same level as it is now, and it will inevitably increase. In other words, it's hard to sound "modest" when I'm pointing out the scientific fact that models like the generalised matching law consistently account for 95-100% of the variance in any given choice situation.

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The act or practice of hitting necessarily entails logical predictions. Whether people explicitly state or formalise them is another matter, but if hitting someone on the head entailed no predictions, then that means hitting someone in the head could result in anything. This clearly isn't the case.

Unfortunately you are simply wrong. If the acr of hitting necessarily entailed logical predictions, that would mean the act and its consequences would be logically inseparable. This, however, is not the case. I.e. you can envisage a logically possible world in which hitting someone on the head would not hurt someone but would cause flowers to grow. The reason for this is that the bruises caused by hitting someone on the head are due to physical laws, not logical ones. In other words, the necessity is physical or empirical but not a logical one.

I cannot envisage a logically possible world where such a thing could occur, but okay fine, it entails logically necessary predictions within this universe. But the "logical" part is redundant now as you seem to accept that the action does make predictions - whether we want to call them physical or empirical doesn't bother me.

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:If something has a causal effect in the world (i.e. it's resulting effects are not simply random), then predictions must be possible to draw from such actions.

Yes, predictions must be possible to draw from such actions. However, this doesn't mean that the actions themselves make predictions as you claim above. The act of "drawing out" is necessary for there to be predictions. If there is no-one to "draw them out", there will be no predictions, no matter how much the actions have causal effect.

A prediction in science is simply a formalisation of a logical conditional relational; that is, IF X THEN Y. The point, however, is that whether someone writes this sentence down or speaks it, doesn't change the fact that an action in the universe will carry with it particular effects. If something occurs in the universe, and it's observable (i.e. makes a difference), then it necessarily has effects. This statement of fact is called a "prediction".

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And this is patently false. Out of interest, have you read or studied clinical psychology at all? I just cannot understand how you reach this conclusion at all. The suggestion was hugely debatable back in the 60s, and now it is simply nonsensical.

Wy is it nonsensical? You provided criteria for anxiety disorder which involve words like "excessive" which are normative. And if a definition contains normative words than it surely is not nonsensical to wonder to what the extent the definition is itself normative.

No, it's relative. Specifically, relative to functionality, not normality. If mental disorders were simply "abnormal" behaviors, and things deemed to extend beyond "normality", then why wouldn't psychologist attempt to treat all "abnormal" behaviors? Why do they only limit themselves to "abnormal" behaviors which affect functionality? And why do they also treat "normal" behaviors which affect functionality?

When you look at it, you could in fact say that the issue of "normality" appears to be irrelevant, given that mental disorders concept of both "normal" and "abnormal" behaviors. It seems as if it's actually "functionality" which is important.

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And that's what CBT does. How much have you read about CBT?

Ok. So if CBT does (according to you) what psychoanalysis does, what's the problem?

The problem is that psychoanalysis adds more than is necessary, introduces an unsupported framework and paradigm, and is limited in its scope. In other words, it's like finding that some aspects of chiropractic work; specifically the areas that utilise physiotherapy techniques. Does this mean we should accept chiropractic as a valid treatment? Of course not, because chiropractors are just (at best) poorly trained physiotherapists, with an incorrect theory of disease, that can only attempt to treat a limited number of conditions. Since the valid areas of chiropractic are entirely subsumed by physiotherapy, then why try to keep it around?

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Except of course that CBT is preferable to psychoanalysis because it has a stronger empirical basis, and better outcomes across all measures.

If that is the case, could you provide me with research showing that CBT achieves better outcomes across all measures? Furthermore, I hope you realise that such research on its own is not sufficient due to the fact that its acceptability depends on which measures it chooses to look at. There can be genuine debate over which measures are important and valuable and which are not.

Why would I spend time hunting out research to satisfy you, when you just essentially stated that no matter what evidence I present, it won't be sufficient to convince you? Specify exactly what measures you are interested in, and if I have time I'll try to hunt some out for you.

I dont really have the time to go all thorught this,

Is psychoanalysis bullshit?. Answer with Y or N, your reply will be valued, I consider it as Y it is bullshit.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:First, a quick question:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
We have a number of measures for these since things like well-being or autonomy are hugely important measures in psychology, and every treatment will account for them when looking at the effectiveness of a treatment.

How on earth do you scientifically measure for example autonomy? Especially as there is a huge disagreement over what autonomy actually is? (Among for example philosophers, political and social theorists...)

Disagreement over autonomy is irrelevant, as long as the researchers operationally define what they are measuring - as such, we can have different measures of autonomy depending on what aspect of the term we're interested in. There are a number of ways of measuring autonomy, but most will involve both self-reported data, and independent observation. These measures will be done by completing a questionnaire or filling out an observation sheet where performance is rated on a scale, and many of these approaches have been supported and validated by multiple lines of evidence.

I couldn't tell you which ones are currently popular though as it's not my area, but typing "measures of autonomy" into Google Scholar gives me thousands of hits, so research is certainly strong in the area.

Of course the disagreement is not irrelevant. Why? Well, because what we find/confirm depends on what we are looking for/want to confirm. In other words, whether we can say that a treatment brings about autonomy depends not only on the effects of the treatment, but also on what we understand autonomy to be. What do we understand autonomy to be? This is a very good and difficult question, and one which doesn't have a clearcut answer. This is why I am rationally sceptical about researches that claim to have measured how much autonomy is brought about by treatments. But the good thing about psychoanalysis, I believe, is that it takes this question seriously and offers a space for individuals to try to understand what autonomy for them can and does actually mean.

Mr.Samsa wrote:[

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Not at all, the best parts of psychology are undeniably natural sciences - like neuropsychology or behavioral psychology. The laws and mathematical models of human behavior are just as accurate and supported by evidence as those for gravity or acceleration of bodies. This is what CBT is based on - the natural science of behavior.

In addition to this, you say in another post rather absurdly that psychology is so good that you are able to predict what a person will do many years from now. If this is true, I'm surprised I haven't heard or seen you in the news. Surely you must realise that all of this sounds preposterous? Perhaps I'm not enlightened enough, but I've never read or heard about this extraordinary capacity of psychology before. In fact, most psychologists tend to be quite modest about the predictive powers of their subject. I don't think it would hurt you to learn from them...

Whether you think it's preposterous or not is irrelevant, and you won't have heard about me in the news since the discovery was made a few decades before I was born. However, if you were in the behavioral field, you would recognise the names Herrnstein and Baum as being the researchers who managed to quantify choice behavior, with an unprecedented level of accuracy.

The consistent finding in behavioral science is that when people are placed in specific situations, we can predict what they're going to do simply by measuring some of the environmental variables. So when placed with two options (for example, a left and right button), we can predict how often, and how much, they will press each button in a session. The person is irrelevant, and assuming that humans don't change dramatically between now and 20 years (i.e. they lose their frontal lobe), the same law will continue to predict future human behavior. The interesting implication of this research is that we can extend it to real life situations; for example, when researchers tested people sitting around a dinner table, they could predict how much time they'd spend talking to each person at the table.

So for me to say that we can continue to predict human behavior to the same degree in 20 years is actually severely understating the scientific position. This is because our knowledge will of course continue to increase and get better, so it's unlikely that our level of prediction will remain at the same level as it is now, and it will inevitably increase. In other words, it's hard to sound "modest" when I'm pointing out the scientific fact that models like the generalised matching law consistently account for 95-100% of the variance in any given choice situation.

Ok, I'm aware that predictions can be made when it comes to simple situations such as pressing two buttons given a certain set of controlled environmental variables. But more complex situations with more variables and options are something completely different.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The act or practice of hitting necessarily entails logical predictions. Whether people explicitly state or formalise them is another matter, but if hitting someone on the head entailed no predictions, then that means hitting someone in the head could result in anything. This clearly isn't the case.

Unfortunately you are simply wrong. If the acr of hitting necessarily entailed logical predictions, that would mean the act and its consequences would be logically inseparable. This, however, is not the case. I.e. you can envisage a logically possible world in which hitting someone on the head would not hurt someone but would cause flowers to grow. The reason for this is that the bruises caused by hitting someone on the head are due to physical laws, not logical ones. In other words, the necessity is physical or empirical but not a logical one.

I cannot envisage a logically possible world where such a thing could occur, but okay fine, it entails logically necessary predictions within this universe. But the "logical" part is redundant now as you seem to accept that the action does make predictions - whether we want to call them physical or empirical doesn't bother me.

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:If something has a causal effect in the world (i.e. it's resulting effects are not simply random), then predictions must be possible to draw from such actions.

Yes, predictions must be possible to draw from such actions. However, this doesn't mean that the actions themselves make predictions as you claim above. The act of "drawing out" is necessary for there to be predictions. If there is no-one to "draw them out", there will be no predictions, no matter how much the actions have causal effect.

A prediction in science is simply a formalisation of a logical conditional relational; that is, IF X THEN Y. The point, however, is that whether someone writes this sentence down or speaks it, doesn't change the fact that an action in the universe will carry with it particular effects. If something occurs in the universe, and it's observable (i.e. makes a difference), then it necessarily has effects. This statement of fact is called a "prediction".

My point, rather, is that you grossly misuse language. It may be the case that if something occurs in the universe, then it necessarily has effects (although this is a metaphysical question about the location of causality). But it is not the case that it necessarily has some particular effects. This is because something having had certain particular effects in the past is no necessary guarantee for those same effects in the future. Moreover, having effects is not the same as predicting. A prediction is making a statement about the observable connection between two things, not the connection itself.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And this is patently false. Out of interest, have you read or studied clinical psychology at all? I just cannot understand how you reach this conclusion at all. The suggestion was hugely debatable back in the 60s, and now it is simply nonsensical.

Wy is it nonsensical? You provided criteria for anxiety disorder which involve words like "excessive" which are normative. And if a definition contains normative words than it surely is not nonsensical to wonder to what the extent the definition is itself normative.

No, it's relative. Specifically, relative to functionality, not normality. If mental disorders were simply "abnormal" behaviors, and things deemed to extend beyond "normality", then why wouldn't psychologist attempt to treat all "abnormal" behaviors? Why do they only limit themselves to "abnormal" behaviors which affect functionality? And why do they also treat "normal" behaviors which affect functionality?

When you look at it, you could in fact say that the issue of "normality" appears to be irrelevant, given that mental disorders concept of both "normal" and "abnormal" behaviors. It seems as if it's actually "functionality" which is important.

And what is functionality defined in terms of? I'd be interested to hear your understanding of the matter. Especially as it can very well be argued (as I would wish to) that functionality rests on a conception of normality. There seems to always be a normative judgement at the heart of a claim that something is functional or disfunctional.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Fibonacci wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And that's what CBT does. How much have you read about CBT?

Ok. So if CBT does (according to you) what psychoanalysis does, what's the problem?

The problem is that psychoanalysis adds more than is necessary, introduces an unsupported framework and paradigm, and is limited in its scope.

Necessary for what? A relief of certain symptoms or a better understanding of oneself?

Also, I don't know how much you know about psychoanalysis, and it would be interesting to know where you are based/have studied. This is because you seem to only be aware of and discuss a particular strand of psychoanalysis which has historically been the dominant one in USA (but less so in e.g. Europe or Latin America). Certain strands of psychoanalysis rely much less on some kind of a strict theoretical framework, and don't rely on the theories formulated by American ego psychologists.

In fact, one could argue that just about the only thing that is common to all forms of psychoanalysis is the commitment to the method of the talking cure, a recognition of some kind of unconscious processes (though not necessarily of the neo-Freudian variety), and a realisation of the importance of transference. None of these are as controversial as you make them out.

Mr.Samsa wrote:


Except of course that CBT is preferable to psychoanalysis because it has a stronger empirical basis, and better outcomes across all measures.


Why would I spend time hunting out research to satisfy you, when you just essentially stated that no matter what evidence I present, it won't be sufficient to convince you? Specify exactly what measures you are interested in, and if I have time I'll try to hunt some out for you.

Evidence would be much appreciated, especially as you place so much importance on it in your arguments. In particular I am interested in research which shows that CBT has better outcomes across all measures than psychoanalysis.

This would be a good starting point. However, regardless of the outcomes, it would be wise to scrutinise the assumptions and methodology of such researches. Whether the research will be sufficient to convince me I cannot promise. But surely this is only fair if our aim is to retain a healthy rational scepticism and evaluate implicit and explicit assumptions and methods?

cavarka9 wrote:I dont really have the time to go all thorught this,

Is psychoanalysis bullshit?. Answer with Y or N, your reply will be valued, I consider it as Y it is bullshit.

Y. And if you don't mind, I'll argue why a bit. In my country pretty much psychology = psychoanalysis. This is bullshit for several reasons:
a) psychologists are not trained on how to do scientific research, those that are interested in that (like me) have to learn it independently. This is ironic because the first thing we hear at the university is "psychology is a science". The result is that pretty little research is going on here, but we have thousands of books of neo-psychoanalysts that no one cares about because they are not famous like Freud, Foucault or Lacan.
b) psychology is reduced to clinical psychology.
c) not even all forms of psychoanalysis are accepted, only freudian or lacanian variations.
d) people seeking help for mental disorders spend from 5 to 20 years and lots of money doing psychoanalysis and in some cases without even getting better, when they could improve a lot in a few months with different forms of therapies. They also aren't warned that they will be treated with a form of therapy that is not scientifically supported by evidence.
e) psychoanalysis is used to explain everything: psychopathology, communities and group dynamics, art, criminality, memory, perception, you name it.
f) the whole thing works as a religion, not a science (this is real indoctrination).

Luckily this is not absolute, and there are other options, although pretty damn hard to find. Things seem to be changing in the present, but there is a lot of resistance from the psychoanalytic statu quo of "bishops" and "cardinals". I had to suffer this bullshit for several years, and although I don't regret it because I have managed to learn about real psychology by my own means, many students never do and still think that this is the best psychology can do.

PS: About some of the epistemological posts I've read here, I'm also used to hearing psychoanalysts trying to undermine the validity of the scientific method(s) in order to make psychoanalysis look acceptable, but I don't think the conclusion follows. Even if we show that science is imperfect and not absolute, and that predictions and probability haven't solved the problem of induction, which is pretty obvious by now, that does not make psychoanalysis acceptable (for science or health issues) because it doesn't propose any better method for distinguishing between competing hypotheses.