limbaugh [1]offers to cure p.e.s.t.—
‘professionals’ seeking trade are none too pleased
Yes, ‘them’ have invented yet another syndrome: post-election selection trauma or PEST.
It happens selectively to those who did so want boltneck [2] to win and who are now, apparently,
having severe difficulties adjusting to their crushed
desires.
Very large numbers of studies have shown that:
- “Any selective advantage the professional has
over the non-professional lies in their mastering the
basics of a valid technique or two.”
- “The accuracy of the judgement of professional
psychologists and other mental health workers is limited,
however, by the accuracy of the techniques they employ.”
[p.170, House of cards – see below]
From these two facts follows:
- Experience does not improve the ability of workers
in the field to improve their ‘diagnoses’.
- Any person learning to apply the basic techniques
can do as well as ‘qualified professionals’
If you want to read a whole book on this subject, try House
of cards by Robyn M. Dawes.
A great deal of what is presented as psycho-science is,
in fact, psycho-babble. Ritalin
and junk science includes a section with some
examples.
Here is a typical list used by shysters, taken from a
list for child abuse [pp. 157 – 8 of House
of cards]
- Withdrawal or excessive day dreaming.
- Poor peer relations.
- Poor self-esteem.
- Frightened or phobic reactions with adults.
- A deterioration with body image.
- Feelings of guilt or shame.
- ‘Pseudomature’ personality development.
- Attempted suicide.
- Exhibiting a positive relationship towards the suspected
offender.
- Regressive behaviour …
This list goes on for 48 items. As the author says,
“[...] this list includes, of course, virtually
every behaviour about which parents may be concerned,
[…] and even a few behaviours about which they
may not be concerned. […] this list bears a remarkable
resemblance to lists from around the end of the 19th
century for supposed symptoms of masturbation […].”
You will find a rather similar short list at drugs,
smoking and addiction.
- Another such list is provided
for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experienced
by soldiers
during front-line combat:
- "PTSD has been known by many names in the past, such as “shell shock” during the years of World War I and “combat fatigue” after World War II,"
- and is now ‘adopted’
by ‘victims’ seeking monetary compensation
for their life choices or resultant life mistakes:
- "but PTSD does not just happen to combat veterans. PTSD can occur in all people, of any ethnicity, nationality or culture, and at any age".
- (PTSD
is also used by socio- and psycho-‘professionals’
to increase their status and so their income.)
The ‘symptoms’ must have been caused because
“A. The person experiences a traumatic event
in which both of the following were present:
“1. the person experienced or witnessed or was
confronted with an event or events that involved actual
or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to
the physical integrity of self or others;
2. the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness,
or horror.”
The symptoms described (note that for collecting evidence
of symptoms, much reliance is placed on replies to questions
given by the person, often labelled as “the victim”)
have to include items from sections B, C and D of listed
here:
“B. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced
in any of the following ways:
“1. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections
of the event, including images, thoughts or perceptions;
2. recurrent distressing dreams of the event;
3. acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were
recurring (eg reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations,
and dissociative flashback episodes, including those
on wakening or when intoxicated);
4. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal
or external cues that symbolise or resemble an aspect
of the traumatic event;
5. physiological reactivity on exposure to internal
or external cues that symbolise or resemble an aspect
of the traumatic event.
“C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated
with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness
(not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least
three of:
“1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations
associated with the trauma;
2. efforts to avoid activities, places or people that
arouse recollections of this trauma;
3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma;
4. markedly diminished interest or participation in
significant activities;
5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others;
6. restricted range of affect (eg unable to have loving
feelings);
7. sense of a foreshortened future (eg does not expect
to have a career, marriage, children or a normal life
span).
“D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal
(not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least
two of the following:
1. difficulty falling or staying asleep;
2. irritability or outbursts of anger;
3. difficulty concentrating;
4. hypervigilance;
5. exaggerated startle response.
Now there is also appearing Complex PTSD,
because
“[...] there is growing awareness
that PTSD can also result from an accumulation of many
small, individually non-life-threatening incidents.
To differentiate the cause, the term "Complex PTSD"
is used. The reason that Complex PTSD is not in DSM-IV
is that the definition of PTSD in DSM-IV was derived
using only people who had suffered a single major life-threatening
incident such as Vietnam veterans and survivors of disasters.
“It seems that Complex PTSD can potentially arise
from any prolonged period of negative stress in which
certain factors are present, which may include any of
captivity, lack of means of escape, entrapment, repeated
violation of boundaries, betrayal, rejection, bewilderment,
confusion, and - crucially - lack of control, loss of
control and disempowerment.”
What is particularly notable about
such lists is that almost all items on such lists are
not empirically testable and not clearly objectively definable.
You try it; pick items from the lists and work out how
you would test, to see whether the supposed symptom was
genuine or faked, or was present at a ‘suitable’
level. Levels, I hear you cry, how am I going to measure
them? Well, you just sort of know, don’t you know;
well, don’t you?
People are imprisoned, then kept in prison or nut houses,
or alternatively awarded large windfalls by courts, on
the basis of such lists, often after boning up, even with
the help of lawyers, before the ‘cases’ come
to court.
A major problem is with people fooling themselves they
can do things they cannot. Another problem is that human
memory is extremely unreliable.
There is an ongoing saga in the Wall
Street Journal [part-way down the page] on Boca Raton.
Here is an episode:
We're almost beginning to suspect this is a put-on,
but the Boca Raton (Fla.) News has yet another follow-up
on the story of Kerry supporters suffering from "post-election
selection trauma," or PEST.
Mental health officials in South Florida blasted
Rush Limbaugh on Monday, saying the conservative talk
show host's offer of "free therapy" for
traumatized John Kerry voters has made a mockery of
a valid psychological problem.
"Rush Limbaugh has a way of back-handedly slamming
people," said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed clinician
with the American Health Association (AHA) who listened
Friday as Limbaugh offered to personally treat her
patients. "He's trying to ridicule the emotional
state this presidential election produced in many
of us here in Palm Beach County. Who is he to offer
therapy?" . . .
"Rush Limbaugh has no clinical qualifications
to counsel anyone," Cooperman said. "He's
not only minimizing PEST, but he's bastardizing the
entire psychological field and our clinical expertise."
. . .
"So if anybody on the left wants some serious
therapy here and counselling, I'm more than willing
to offer my assistance as well," Limbaugh said
on Nov. 9.
On Nov. 12, accused by Gordon of picking up the story
to rub it in the faces of Democrats, Limbaugh said,
"Now, my friends, I didn't do that. I reached
out. I offered a hand of friendship. I offered my
own counselling services."
AHA officials, listening to the taped broadcasts,
described Limbaugh's tone of voice as sarcastic.
It's wonderfully refreshing to read something like
this, given that the Onion has lapsed into dreary, didactic
leftism. And if the Boca piece is true, it is quite
possibly the most hilarious thing ever."
What is particularly interesting to those who are aware
of the snake oil sales ‘persons’ of the ‘professional
psycho-babblers’ is that there is little doubt that
Rush Limbaugh could indeed do quite as well as most of
the ‘professional’ shysters.
Back to House
of cards , p.106:
The empirical data indicate that mental health professionals’
accuracy of judgement does not increase with clinical
experience, just as their success as psychotherapists
does not. there are good logical and empirical reasons
why experience does not help in this context, even though
we may all “learn from experience” in other
contexts. Moreover, there are good psychological reasons
why the professionals incorrectly believe that experience
does enhance their purported experience, when it doesn’t.
The major reasons involve selective recall, selective
interpretation, and assumptions about what is likely
to be true even though it is not observed.
end notes
- Rush Limbaugh is a American conservative
chat-show host.
- Boltneck, otherwise known as John Kerry, Democrat
candidate at the 2004 US presidential elections.
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