Did Tom cruise have a point?

[rynnor]

When he went off on that chat show about psychiatry being a pseudo science?

Its not classical science where you mix two test tubes and it turns blue - it has different fashions in the approach with Freud n Jung in the old days onto the current ten million approaches.

Can it be called a science?

I still think TC is a cultist freak though but nonetheless he may have made a relevant point...

 

[Ormorof]

psychiatry is a human science, just like sociology, economics, psychology, religious studies etc etc

 

[Embattle]

People in glass houses shouldn't throw cannon balls

 

[FuzzyLogic]

If he does have a point he hasn't backed it up with anything, appears to me he's just doing the 'holier than thou' mojo and until he says something that actually has substance, I really am only going to assume that it's the Scientology indoctrination that he's spouting.

Maybe I shouldn't drag that into this, but I could just as easily call that a commercial organisation as opposed to a religion in all honesty and say "So there", it'd make just as much sense as him saying "I know about this, you don't". Heck, he's having a go at people (i.e. Brooke Burke) for taking drugs to deal with post natal depression without appearing to have any bloody experience or clue with it. Meh, who cares anyway, the guy can act, but his recent outbursts as a zealot against whatever just make me wish he'd stick to film.

 

[Paradroid]

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Anti-psychiatry

...
One organization often confused with the anti-Psychiatry movement is the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz. CCHR has used the considerable financial resources of Scientology to wage media campaigns against various psychiatrists, psychiatric organizations, and pharmaceutical companies (especially Eli Lilly). Dr. Breggin and other prominent figures and organizations in the anti-psychiatry movement have emphatically denounced efforts to associate them with Scientology, from which they are completely independent and, often as not, vehemently opposed. The prominence of Dr. Szasz - a co-founder of the CCHR - within the anti-psychiatry movement adds to this confusion.
...

http://www.cchr.org/what/faq/

...

Why is Scientology opposed to psychiatry?

When the Church of Scientology established CCHR in 1969, victims of psychiatry had no rights and needed a voice. “Treatment” was brutal, its only purpose to create compliant patients. Patients were subjected to punitive electroshock—without anesthetic as punishment for “bad” behavior. Using lobotomies and other psychosurgical procedures, psychiatrists destroyed patients’ brains with callous disregard. Those under psychiatric “care” were mercilessly experimented upon with therapeutically unproven mind-altering drugs.
...

I've always looked at pychiatry as pretty brutal - one psychiatric drug may help 90% of sufferers, but it fuks up the other 10%. I think the problem is that, although the science of the chemistry is sound, human beings are not an exact science. The brains complex chemical structure makes any "drug treatment" a voyage into the unknown (just take a look at the list of "possible" side-effects from any anti-depressant)... and Scientology's just silly.

 

[rynnor]

Psychiatry is still used as a way to justify doing inhumane things to people.

I have a friend who has battled schizophrenia all her life - every year or two she gets sectioned and put on really nasty drugs that turn her into a zombie for months and gain masses of weight - recently we had a letter she had dictated to us - one of the drugs they had given her caused convulsions so they secured her to her bed but this lead to her breaking both of her arms during convulsions.

They gradually reduce the dosages and eventually return her to society at which point they remove almost all her support - loneliness is a big factor in her illness but by ping ponging her into and out of institutions who's actually gaining anything?

She's never been violent at any point - she just gets very sad through loneliness and goes downhill from there - given proper support she could live a normal life but the system just keeps failing her.

One of the staff was beaten to death a year or two ago by one of the other patients so its not a healthy place for her to be in.

 

[Ormorof]

(just take a look at the list of "possible" side-effects from any anti-depressant)... and Scientology's just silly.

doesnt just have to be anti depressants, look at the side effects of Imovane(commonly prescribed sleeping pills ):

addiction
with the end of treatment you might experience; headache, musclepains, anxiaty attacks, restlessness, confusion, hallucinations and epilepsy attacks.
memoryloss, delusions

more possible side effects:
highten sensetivity to light, sounds and physical contact, rage, nightmares, psycosis and other social side effects, depression.
drowsyness, reduced abillity to have strong feelings, lowered consentration, dizziness lack of coordination, doublevision. stomach disorder. it may also affect sexual lust.

 

[Draylor]

Hes a religious nutter.

Like most religious nutters hes completely lost the ability to make any point from his own opinions, and instead rambles on incessantly about the beliefs of his religion thinking, normally mistakenly, that the world gives a shit.

For whatever reason popular opinion currently views scientology as acceptable, while most other freakish cults are "evil". Why $deity only knows, both result in seriously fucked up individuals.

He'll convert his soon-to-be wife to his cult soon enough Im sure, if he hasnt already

That said: many psychologists are first degree nutters too

 

[Louster]

That said: many psychologists are first degree nutters too

psychiatry is a human science, just like sociology, economics, psychology, religious studies etc etc

You do know that psychology and psychiatry are different things, right?
Psychology is the science of mental processes, and psychiatry is a branch of medicine dealing with "treating" mental "disorders". They're really not at all similar.
And yeah, despite Tom Cruise being completely nuts and Scientology being a ridiculous sham, psychiatry, from my experience at least, is definitely a pseudo-science; almost to the extent of scientology, though perhaps not so blatantly. Freud, Jung et al all had some really crazy ideas (in addition to their insights) that still persist without any real evidence. Psychology is eminently more respectable as a science.
Basically, given the option, would you prefer psychiatry or psychotherapy to help you cope with fucked up stuff that you're struggling to deal with on your own?
Frankly, it seems to me to be a no-brainer.

 

[Paradroid]

doesnt just have to be anti depressants, look at the side effects of Imovane(commonly prescribed sleeping pills ):

addiction
with the end of treatment you might experience; headache, musclepains, anxiaty attacks, restlessness, confusion, hallucinations and epilepsy attacks.
memoryloss, delusions

more possible side effects:
highten sensetivity to light, sounds and physical contact, rage, nightmares, psycosis and other social side effects, depression.
drowsyness, reduced abillity to have strong feelings, lowered consentration, dizziness lack of coordination, doublevision. stomach disorder. it may also affect sexual lust.

The daftest thing I'd ever seen on an anti-depressant list of possible side-effects was: May experience facial swelling ... & ... may experience hallucinations.

WTF! Well? Which one is it? Are you actually experiencing symptoms X, Y & Z or are you just hallucinating?!?!

 

[Draylor]

You do know that psychology and psychiatry are different things, right?

yaya, thinko mid whine

 

[nath]

Freud, Jung et al all had some really crazy ideas (in addition to their insights) that still persist without any real evidence. Psychology is eminently more respectable as a science.

I get the impression (and do correct me if I'm wrong) that you're saying Freud and Jung were psychiatrists - I was under the impression the work they dealt with was to do with psychoanalytical psychotherapy. Also, further to your point I think generally there shouldn't be a choice between psychotherapy and psychiatry. If you have some problems and want to discuss them, therapy. If you have a mental disorder - schizophrenia/manic depressiveness/whatever you generally need a psychiatrist.

I've no doubt there are some dodgy psychiatrists out there, and there's definitely some dodgy therapists (since no qualifications are required to practice) but for people with mental disorders*, psychiatry can be a great help - even a solution.



*This doesn't mean feeling a bit glum and taking happy pills to make it better.

 

[Louster]

I believe in certain cases it gets a bit blurry, and I think Freud and Jung have, at least, influenced psychiatric thinking. Also I don't think it's always that easy to distinguish between mental "problems" and "disorders" - in lots of cases you could quite easily be referred to either type of practitioner. Psychiatry just seems to boil down to assessing symptoms, matching them up to whatever predefined "syndrome" fits the best, and then prescribing drugs based on whatever's pacified patients with this particular set of symptoms most effectively in the past. Surely this isn't ideal.

I'll admit that I'm biased though, having been misdiagnosed endlessly with all sorts of bullshit psychiatric syndromes by countless doctors, which all turned out to be utterly false, the root problem being an undiagnosed physical illness. I also know of a good few other people who've similarly been jerked around. It's quite sickening.

 

[nath]

I'm definitely not going to argue with you on the point of there being plenty of hacks about. However, there are cases were a psychiatrist is clearly needed over a therapist. The way I see it is that therapy is for people with issues and problems, psychiatry is for people with physical disorders with their brain - for example: chemical imbalances etc. People with a bi-polar disorder cannot be treated by psychotherapy as far as I know, anti-psychotics and mood stabilisers are often required. A therapist simply isn't equiped to diagnose/prescribe these meds.

Anyway the point I'm trying (and probably failing) to make is that there can be very clear and distinct lines between psychiatry and psychotherapy, though I understand they can be blurred.

 

[Louster]

My problem stems from things such as, at the extreme, ECT. How can you put any faith in a "science" when one of its practices is to create an artificial seizure without actually knowing how it affects the brain? This is what psychiatry seems to be based upon - given that nobody really or fully understands how the brain functions, treatments are developed by virtually random experimentation and adopted without true comprehension of their implications - hence the lengthy lists of side-effects. In this sense I can't see how psychiatry can be defined as a science.

 

[nath]

Oh, well I wasn't really arguing that point - merely the fact that psychiatry has its uses. I know nothing about ECT so can't really say anything about it, however I don't think you can write off an entire field of medicine (if that's what you want to call it) because there's some questionable methods used at times. Not saying those methods should be ignored, but I just mean let’s not say all psychiatry is bad because there are nasty elements. My mum used to work with a guy who was bi-polar. Off his meds he was basically psychotic, on them he was able to live a normal and decent life - those meds would have been prescribed by psychiatrists. As for whether you can call it a science - who knows. It's definitely not an exact one.

 

[yaruar]

When he went off on that chat show about psychiatry being a pseudo science?

Its not classical science where you mix two test tubes and it turns blue - it has different fashions in the approach with Freud n Jung in the old days onto the current ten million approaches.

Can it be called a science?

I still think TC is a cultist freak though but nonetheless he may have made a relevant point...

Threre are a couple of arguments (Karl Popper being the essential reading on this, especially Refutation and Conjecture) about disciplines being in the early stages of becoming a "scientific" discipline.

there is also an argument that all science is pseudo science especially at the margins of physics

 

[maxi]

does that argument stem from John Ashcroft?

I think it;s an argument regularly used by bible literalists and the like. And hence utter bollocks when you look into it see: psuedo-science

Pseudoscience fails to meet the criteria met by science generally (including the scientific method), and can be identified by a combination of these characteristics:

by asserting claims or theories without first verifying them in experiments
by asserting claims which cannot be verified or falsified (claims that violate falsifiability);
by asserting claims without supporting experimental evidence;
by asserting claims which contradict experimentally established results;
by failing to provide an experimental possibility of reproducible results;
by failing to submit results to peer review prior to publicizing them (called "science by press conference")
by claiming a theory predicts something that it does not;
by claiming a theory predicts something that it has not been shown to predict;
by violating Occam's Razor, the heuristic principle of choosing the explanation that requires the fewest additional assumptions when multiple viable explanations are possible (and the more egregious the violation, the more likely); or
by a lack of progress toward additional evidence of its claims.
Pseudoscience is distinguishable from revelation, theology, or spirituality in that it claims to offer insight into the physical world by "scientific" means. Systems of thought that rely upon "divine" or "inspired" knowledge are not considered pseudoscience if they do not claim either to be scientific or to overturn well-established science. There are also bodies of practical knowledge that are not claimed to be scientific. These are also not pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is also distinguishable from misleading statements in some popular science, where commonly held beliefs are thought to meet the criteria of science, but often don't. The issue is muddled, however, because it is believed that "pop" science blurs the divide between science and pseudoscience among the general public

 

[old.user4556]

Some more Tom related press

I used to like Tom Cruise and his movies, but his comments have been a little bit off for my liking.

 

[mank!]

tom cruise is a ****

 

[old.user4556]

tom cruise is a ****

You're a jerk! Why would you say that?! You're a jerk!

/coat

 

[rynnor]

Actually I did have sympathy for him at the Premier of WotW when the guy from channel 4 squirted him with water - I mean is this entertainment - have we sunk so low?

Next we'll have a show that shows clips from 'happy slapping'...

 

[Embattle]

Actually I did have sympathy for him at the Premier of WotW when the guy from channel 4 squirted him with water - I mean is this entertainment - have we sunk so low?

Next we'll have a show that shows clips from 'happy slapping'...

Most people I know didn't agree with it since he does spend a lot of time with fans.....also we found it hard to find it funny.

 

[old.user4556]

Actually I did have sympathy for him at the Premier of WotW when the guy from channel 4 squirted him with water

Yeah, as did I - I would have lamped someone for squirting me with water, or at least hurled some sensational verbal abuse.

you're a jerk was a bit limp, he should have said "you're a mother fucking crack whore".

 

[rynnor]

Yeah, as did I - I would have lamped someone for squirting me with water, or at least hurled some sensational verbal abuse.

you're a jerk was a bit limp, he should have said "you're a mother fucking crack whore".

You could tell he wanted to say more but he just managed to control himself - I think he would have come accross better if he had acted more human...

 

[Wij]

Scientology withstanding Phychiatry is a definate pseudo-science. I've studied it and gave up after hearing my lecturers spouting utter bullshit and being fobbed off whenever I asked for actual evidence. Arrogant pricks the lot of 'em. And surprisingly thick too. I could beat those lecturers all ways up in an argument and they still wouldn't accept they could be wrong about anything.

To be honest 90% of all Psychology is bad science. I respect Neuroscience deeply. Some great guys and girls worked on that. Most phychology though is people who believe too many crime novels or want to think they could be Hannibal Lecter.