[Some edits done 10/1/12 and 10/5/12.]
Here is a casual explanation; I had thought of linking to a pdf copy of my college diploma and other such documents, to back up some of what I say. But that would involve expense and such I can’t afford right at the moment; and more generally, enough “discussion,” “linking to blog pages,” and such go on online—whether regarding my own blog or regarding anything else—without always bona fides being readily available that could provide a sense of credibility to readers; so, practically speaking, I think I can forgo providing such bona fides for now.
Here is a casual explanation; I had thought of linking to a pdf copy of my college diploma and other such documents, to back up some of what I say. But that would involve expense and such I can’t afford right at the moment; and more generally, enough “discussion,” “linking to blog pages,” and such go on online—whether regarding my own blog or regarding anything else—without always bona fides being readily available that could provide a sense of credibility to readers; so, practically speaking, I think I can forgo providing such bona fides for now.
Every credible media source sometimes has its faulty writers (e.g., in the case of The New York Times, for one, consider Jayson Blair of recent years; or, longer ago, Walter Duranty). And sometimes a random blogger can provide insights that a big New York–media writer may be “out of the loop” on. Plus, so much Internet content is free; so I don’t think you’ll have much ground for displeasure if proof of my bona fides is not presented yet.
I have a bachelor’s with a double major in philosophy and psychology. I had a 4.0 grade-point average just in my psychology courses, and I received awards at graduation for work in both my majors (graduation with distinction in each major, plus awards comprising the Psi Chi award for my psychology work and the Gauss award for my philosophy work). I never became a psychological counselor. I write on psychological topics as ancillary to, or otherwise important components of, other topics I write on, whether these be human-interest stories related to people I was involved with informally, or movie reviews, or something else. I think psychological issues are important health (and personal-realization) issues that often provide important sides to many people’s lives, and need not get discussed only in clinical, formally public-education, or established-media contexts.
However, because of the stigma that has perpetually been attached to psychological problems, I present my discussion of this in a context with other areas of life. For instance, a person’s credible story can be looked at not simply as if the person “only has a psychological problem” but also as a testament to that person’s contribution to society in terms of raising a family, being involved in a profession, helping out in community endeavors, or whatever else. And of course, putting stock in psychological matters as I do, I strongly believe that anyone who thinks that a psychological “status”—e.g., “That person is bipolar,” or “This person has suffered from episodes of anxiety and a period of alcoholism”—thereby discredits that person in some wholesale way is thinking like a peasant, shows a clear lack of enlightenment, and is not contributory to intelligent discussion of whatever issue is at hand. It is to be noted that, anecdotally, not a few people who try to discredit someone via some “stigmatizing” psychological “status” the person has have their own relatively debilitating psychological issues, often with a clear lack of insight into the same.
1. A super-condensed history of psychology
In my view, psychology is one of the oldest disciplines in Western society. It traditionally had been a “subset” of philosophy, which goes back at least to the ancient Greeks, including Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, had a subsection on an issue called akrasia, which means weakness of will. I studied this a bit when in graduate school in 1987. Akrasia as Aristotle spelled it out seems like a crude conception, empirically derived in a way, that does not seem to cohere with many modern ideas of psychological issues, but it is suggestive as a forerunner of later concepts of psychological problems. Essentially it addresses—in mere descriptions of the issues, not in any attempt at broad resolution of them—the problems of “Why do I not do what I know I should?” and “Why do I do what I know I shouldn’t do?”
A similar problem turns up in later philosophers’ work, in conceptual forms more recognizable to us today—for instance, in Thomas Hobbes and in Arthur Schopenhauer (the latter deals with this in, I believe, The World as Will and Representation).
Meanwhile, actual displays of psychological problems were identified as long ago as during ancient Roman times. Rufus of Ephesus, a physician alive in the second century after Christ, noted that hand-washing of the type that is associated today with obsessive-compulsive disorder occurred as part of depression (New York Review of Books, February 12, 1987, 5). Also, Ross J. Baldessarini, M.D., in an article from 2000, “A plea for the integrity of the bipolar disorder concept,” in the journal Bipolar Disorders 2 (2000), pp. 3-7, refers to an ancient Roman physician, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who described what we would today call bipolar disorder (Baldessarini references this with a 19th century British publication).
Of course, by the early 1800s, the rise of psychology as a separate science had begun. There is too much to say to give a sketchy history here. As one example of how far things had come by the late 1800s, it is noted in one 2002 book, “It remained for German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin to provide a definitive clinical description [of what we would call bipolar disorder] in his 1896 textbook and to baptize the disorder manic-depressive insanity—a name that, in slightly different form, is widely used to this day...” (Torrey and Michael B. Knable, Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families, and Providers [New York: Basic Books, 2002], p. 12).
Of course, Sigmund Freud is still widely known about today; his work started in the late 1800s. Another psychologist, William James, who has influenced me quite a bit, published his long-developed and monumental The Principles of Psychology in 1890.
2. My own “disposition”
I consider my own “disposition” as one who understands psychological issues on the individual level, and how I would assess or relate to more general schools of thought, in line with the phenomenological and existential schools of thought. Phenomenological, in the area of psychology, means looking at problems as the person with insight into him or herself would, and having an eye for seeing this sort of thing in others [that is, seeing the problems in them, with hopefully the ability in these people to recognize the problems themselves]—in patterns of behavior, with a reference to empathizing with the other person. Existential has to do with personal choice, with taking control of own’s life to the extent possible. I am more of a phenomenologist than an existentialist, I think.
I also do not think that as a psychologist, regardless of how insightful our readings of someone might be, (1) we either understand everything we can about a person in the given context, for the purposes at hand, or (2) we understand a subset, ethnic group, or other group of people so very well. We do the best we can under ongoing circumstances, and we keep in mind Aristotle’s premise spelled out in the Nicomachean Ethics that it is the mark of an educated person to understand something via a system of knowledge only to the extent possible (implying limitations). An un-elegant paraphrase, of course.
It has taken me many years, starting in the 1970s, to gain what idiosyncratic education in psychology I have, from both formal academic training and autodidactic means, the latter from reading and from dealing with others. I obviously am not going to spill, for free, a whole lot of this material in my blog.
3. Psychology versus psychiatry
A note on terminology: Most people with much interest in this area know the difference between psychology and psychiatry. Psychology is the original, purer area of the field, having started as a sort of sub-area of philosophy. Today, in a clinical sense, it means the field as dealt with by talking counselors, who typically have Ph.D.s; some social workers (with an M.S.W., A.C.S.W., or the like) can do talking therapy too. Psychiatry is a narrower concept, meaning essentially psychological issues as dealt with by medical doctors (usually, those with M.D.s), and the professional practice of dealing with same. Another type of medical doctor, the osteopath, who has a D.O., can also prescribe medication for psychiatric problems (particularly if that D.O. is trained in psychiatry); meanwhile, some state-licensed non-M.D.s like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who are empowered to prescribe medication, can possibly, I believe, prescribe psychiatric drugs.
All this is not meant to constitute any sort of medical advice.
4. Tidbits of info, for your possible use
Here are a few little tidbits that may be of interest (reference styling will not all be consistent, due to how I derived these from electronic files of mine):
On how the diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been confused as long ago as the 1960s:
Ross J. Baldessarini, “Frequency of diagnoses of schizophrenia versus affective disorders from 1944 to 1968,” in American Journal of Psychiatry 127 (6), (1970), pp. 759-63.
An example of phenomenological interpretation by a writer on the history of phenomenology, Herbert Spiegelberg, whom I saw in the philosophy-departmental office in 1987 when at graduate school but did not formally meet:
From phenomenological psychologist Alexander Pfander, who gives a rather extreme example of such a thing in an extracted quote in Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982), p. 182:
When a person feels extremely insecure, weak, and valueless in his innermost being, when he is filled with diffidence,...he lives on the whole only provisionally.
He goes to sleep and gets up, always only provisionally; for: "This is still not the proper and real thing." He washes, combs his hair, and dresses, but only provisionally. ... He unites with his clothes, his rooms, his furniture only quite provisionally....
On how, even in William James’ time, the issue of whether psychological problems have a purely emotional basis or a physical basis was an intriguing and not entirely settled area:
[from a writing of mine] There is also the debate between genetic determinism and the factor of the patient’s own will in one's state of personality. On the side that says will is primary, there is this suggestive quote from the father (Henry James, Sr.) of the philosopher and psychologist William James, made with respect to William, that is excerpted in Erik H. Erikson's Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1968), p. 154, on whether a sheer physiological basis is the sole cause for mental illness:
[William] came in the other afternoon while I was sitting alone, and after walking the floor in an animated way for a moment, broke out: “Bless my soul, what a difference between me as I am now and as I was last spring at this time!” ... He had a great effusion. ... He said several things...but more than anything else, his having given up the notion that all mental disorder requires to have a physical basis. This had become perfectly untrue to him....
An example of phenomenological interpretation in a fairly-widely misunderstood psychologist, R.D. Laing:
R.D. Laing, in The Divided Self (New York: Penguin Books, 1960/1969): Here is a glimpse of an introduction to his project: “The mad things said and done by the schizophrenic will remain essentially a closed book if one does not understand their existential context. In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world” (p. 17). Despite whatever is today's prevailing view about schizophrenia as a level of illness or regarding its understandability (from a patient's view), I think Laing's interpretations, particularly in The Divided Self, are a high-water mark of psychiatric phenomenological interpretation of a certain kind, and this is true whether you love or hate Laing, and think him relevant or a cultural artifact.
A paper (from 1970) on the issues tied to long-term use of psychiatric medication, looking at the idea favorably:
H. E. Lehmann, “The Philosophy of Long-acting Medication In Psychiatry,” Diseases of the Nervous System 31, supplement (1970): pp. 7-8.
An article (from 1981) on the ethics of assigning psychiatric diagnoses:
Walter Reich, “Psychiatric diagnosis as an ethical problem,” in the book Psychiatric Ethics, edited by Sidney Bloch and Paul Chodoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
On the misconception on the background of issues noted in a recent obituary of Thomas Szasz, the famous anti-psychiatry doctor; New York Times writer Benedict Carey notes him as if he featured in a debate as if it was only between Freudianism and a medical approach to psychiatric issues, but actually the debate in the 1960s and 1970s was within the area of psychology in general (there was not yet a hard practical and philosophical divide between psychology and psychiatry, as there seems to be today); the debate, more specifically, was between Freud’s deterministic approach and more patient-centered, will-based, and other such non-deterministic approaches) [see 10/1/12 blog entry for clarification of the foregoing statements]; here, for example, is a definition of humanistic psychology:
For a general characterization of humanistic psychology as written about [in the 1970s], see John B.P. Shaffer, Humanistic Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1978), in which he states that humanistic psychology “identified with the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a movement that attempts to liberate people from a dehumanizing culture through a series of specific techniques” (p. 1). Shaffer quotes another source, namely the American Association of Humanistic Psychology, in an extract, describing humanistic psychology in a general way:
Humanistic psychology is primarily an orientation toward the whole of psychology rather than a distinct area or school. It stands for the respect for the worth of persons, respect for differences of approach, open-mindedness as to acceptable methods, and interest in exploration of new aspects of human behavior. As a “third force” in contemporary psychology, it is concerned with topics having little place in existing theories and systems: e.g., love, creativity, self, growth, organism, basic need-gratification, self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, spontaneity, play, humor, affection, naturalness, warmth, ego-transcendence, objectivity, autonomy, responsibility, meaning, fair play, transcendental experience, peak experience, courage, and related concepts.... [p. 2]
An indication of how psychological topics, not least the “scary type” like paranoia, can be used in creative cultural ways:
Leo Bersani, a professor of French, writes in The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), on paranoia, a state of mind sometimes related to schizophrenia [and bipolar disorder], in particular as playfully represented in Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow: “...Pynchon is less interested in vindicating his characters' suspicions of plots than in universalizing and, in a sense, depathologizing the paranoid structure of thought” (p. 181).
An example of the mental illnesses of famous people; here, Vincent van Gogh, who through the years has been variously assessed to have suffered, as his main problem, from schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, or (in a recent 60 Minutes report) epilepsy:
E. Fuller Torrey and Michael B. Knable in Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families, and Providers (New York: Basic Books, 2002) make some comment on van Gogh as if he’d suffered from bipolar disorder, on p. 268. There is also a study on van Gogh that I haven't read (D. Blumer, “The illness of Vincent van Gogh,” American Journal of Psychiatry 159 (2002), pp. 519-26), an abstract for which on PubMed says that “there are clearly bipolar aspects to his history.”
A bit of history of the danger of tardive dyskinesia (TD) (a side effect of various medications, including the category known as neuroleptics, or antipsychotic medication), as acknowledged by medical science:
[multi-paragraph passage is from a draft of an article I didn’t have published] (1) Researchers have known about TD as a possible consequence of long-term neuroleptic use since the 1950s. But (2) a set of suggested guidelines for warnings (to be offered by psychiatrists) to patients about TD was adopted by the American Psychiatric Association only in 1980. One could speculate that it took decades for the APA to issue a warning in the public interest about TD because there was a more hermetic, closed attitude surrounding medical use of such drugs, unlike today, when the FDA requires so many black-box warnings and such extensive “productive information” copy that include a widely variegated set of possible side effects.
One point on the history of knowing about TD: Daniel E. Casey, in “Tardive Dyskinesia” (Western Journal of Medicine 153 [November 1990], p. 535), refers to European studies on TD that were published in 1957 and 1959. The first English-language report was from Denmark in 1960, he says.
Also, I have a copy of a document titled “ ‘Tardive Dyskinesia, Summary of Task Force Report’ - American Psychiatric Association - dated Oct. 10 [and 11?], 1980, American Journal [of] Psychiatry 137: 10” (italics added). This set of guidelines says that patients and families should be advised about risks and benefits, and they—in concert with the doctor, I would think—should “arrive at mutual decision when use of neuroleptic exceeds 1 year.”
Psychological books I have worked on in some way as an editor:
Irving Solomon, A Primer of Kleinian Therapy (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson Inc., 1995).
