[Platt] In an article entitle, "Psychology: The Hard Truth about a Soft Science," the author not only supports Pirsig's view but attributes much of the cause to modern psychology, beginning with Freud. Citing that "Science deals in empiricism, in what can be observed, touched and quantified, and nothing spiritual, be it the soul, Truth or something else, qualifies," the author concludes, "Thus, psychology prefers to view man as an organic robot, a cosmic accident, one whose actions are explainable in terms of hardware (genetics) and software (conditioning or socialization."
[Krimel] You article addresses issues in clinical psychology not the science of psychology. Clinical psychology helps individuals with psychological dysfunction and proceeds from a largely medical model. This medical model has largely been perpetuated by the medical/insurance model that requires static labels for dysfunctions and standardized methods of treatment. The DSM IV manual that your author mentions is a direct result of this. In addition Freud was a psychiatrist and practiced medicine as psychiatrists all do. Some of the abuses your author reports in over prescribing of medications for example do not come from psychiatry. Very often, in fact much more often than not, psychiatric medications are prescribed by primary care physicians not specialists in psychiatry. This is likely the source of 'over prescribing.' As for the theistic aspects that your author describes, so what? When you consult with your physician do you inquire as to her faith? Most serious psychiatric problems have discernable symptoms and physical causes. They are diseases of the brain. The number of patients confined to psychiatric hospitals declined dramatically in the first half of the last century as a direct result of prescription drugs. The number and effectiveness of those drugs increase throughout the 20th century. The point of psychotherapy, which is Freud's main contribution, is to help patients gain insight into their own feelings regarding their problems. It still serves an important role in conjunction with prescription medications. Christian therapists developed specifically to address the needs of people who have strong religious beliefs. As for some of the 'barbaric' procedures your author mentions I am not familiar with some of them. Many of them sound like experimental techniques from the late 1800s or early 20th century. I know for example that insulin induced shock and convulsions were effective in relieving symptoms of depression but were abandoned when electro-shock was found to be less dangerous to the patient and equally effective. Electroshock should be familiar to MoQers as Pirsig received a bunch of them as a mental patient. This treatment is still practiced today and is very effective in patients with severe and chronic depression. Today when electroshock is administered patients are given muscle relaxants to avoid the serious convulsions most of us associate with seeing it administered in the movies. It is one thing to be critical of all of this when you think of how this applies to normal folks or to Woody Allen style neurotics but for chronic schizophrenics, people with life long bi-polar disorder, clinical depression, and other serious mental illness, all this talk of moral responsibility and accountability is shear rubbish. Pirsig for example does not dwell on this but he does describe himself as catatonic, soiling himself and letting cigarettes burnout on his fingers. All the mystical talk about a religion and culture of one in Lila sounds nice but consider his wife and son watching this. How mystical was their experience? Reckon they saw him enveloped in the Dharmakaya light? [Platt] As a result, any notion of a rational morality embedded in nature as proposed in the MOQ is rejected out of hand. "If psychology's predominant school of thought is correct and there is no God, no Truth and we have no souls, then, sure, we are simply a few pounds of chemicals and water; hence, organic robots. And this would have some staggering implications. For one, morality is then mere opinion, and we can't expect opinion to govern the operation of the human "machine" any more than it influences the rotation of the Earth." [Krimel] In contrast to the bleak man is "organic robot" nihilistic view, what does your author espouse? Man is the creation of a jealous God who puts us on earth to see if we will freely acknowledge him and then throws us into a fiery pit for eternity if we don't. The option is he sentences us to sit around his pearly throne singing his praises for eternity if we do. Free will is supposed to be the "blessing" that gives us this choice. And it really doesn't matter what we actually do while we are here since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And it is by faith that we are save not of works least any man should boast. So not matter how good you are, you fry if you don't say the magic words and if you say them, you get to sing, no matter how bad you are. As a bonus we, the living, get to inflict blame and punishment of the morally weak because they are inferior and deserving for our contempt while we are morally pure. God on the other hand doesn't care at all what we do as long as we acknowledge him and say we are sorry if we've been naughty, regardless of how naughty we've been. Speaking of electroshock, remember James Dobson's pre-execution interview with a saved Ted Bundy? Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
