Talk:Anti-psychiatry/Archive 3

Biased
This is a very biased, disgusting article. The anti-psychiatric fringe extremist viewpoint is well represented. Perhaps the whole thing should be rewritten by someone who isn't an idiot.


 * I hope the above undated and unsigned statement was written before the massive cull this article underwent this very week (see below) Cesar Tort 04:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Normality and Illness
This section needs to be extensivley reworked/deleted:


 * It is true that a highly active child is more likely to cause damage to physical things (including themselves) than a relatively inactive child. This point helps to illustrate a primary concern of anti-psychiatry: in a community that places a high degree of value on material possessions, a person that disregards this intensity of material value runs the risk of being diagnosed as mentally ill. Herein lies the considerable danger that an individuals degree of adherence to communally held values may be used to determine that persons level of mental health. Using this logic it could be argued that in a communal display of violence (as in a public stoning) the person who abstains from violence could be diagnosed mentally ill and should, subsequently, be treated.

An encyclopaedia should not be using terms like "Using this logic it could be argued..." or "It is true that..." or "This point helps to illustrate..." or "Herein lies the considerable danger". These are all logic arguments that read like we are anti-psychiatrists using the article to justify our POV. We are not (i hope). I'd personally delete the whole section, as it is simply a practical example of the argument that "normality if defined by majority behaviour" (which could instead be stated much more simply, clearly and neutrally). However, i'll give someone else a shot at NPOV'ing it first - and if there is no takers, i'll cull it tomorrow. Rockpocket 08:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Rockpocket,


 * You are, of course, correct that this section is not phrased in an NPOV way. The person responsible was clearly trying hard to get across an important antipsychiatry perspective, by giving extra examples and explanation. I agree that the points can be stated more simply and clearly. I would suggest that this does not just boil down to the issue of normality being defined by majority behaviour. It is also about the common antipsychiatry challenge to the psychiatric practice of diagnosing illness partly be disability or dysfunction, without discrimination as to cause. A key point is that such disability or dysfunction is relative to the individual's society and culture and can be as much caused by those interpersonal surroundings as being inherent to a person. It makes the important related point about the often hidden role of value systems in interpreting what is dysfunction and what really matters.


 * Both Cesar Tort, Neurodivergent and myself have asked for some clarification as to the best way for us to collaboratively go about reducing, editing and sourcing this page. Concerns have been raised about your ability to edit this page in a way that explains and does justice to antipsychiatry rather than instead trying to highlight psychiatry's possible achievements, as I have suggested you have done in regard to the topic of genetics. Perhaps before you just go ahead anyway, you could provide some clarification on your intentions for the balance and coverage of this article. Franzio 11:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * My consultations with experienced editors and admins have overwhelmingly resulted in the opinion that this page is a overlong, POV mess and requires a serious cull. This is what i have been trying to do. Therefore i fully support any "outside" imput into how to clean this up. Infact, i would support a formal request for peer review.
 * I think you highlighting the topic of genetics speaks volumes about our different perspectives on this page. You my editing there is aimed at "trying to highlight psychiatry's possible achievements". Once again you demonstrate that you lack the assumption good faith which is impolite and uncivil. But, despite that, i think i can demonstrate exactly why i made those changes and why the reasons behind them were accuracy and factuality. Firstly, let me delcare a self-interest. By profession i am a geneticist (though am in no way connected to the psychiatric field).


 * So the article said:


 * "Psychiatry proposes that certain genetic weaknesses or vulnerabilities predispose people to particular mental illnesses"


 * This is incorrect for a few reasons. There is no such thing as a "weakness" or "vulnerability" in genetics. Genes cannot be weak or vulnerable. What there are, is genetic factors that predispose to phenotypes that could be considered as a "weakness". But that is a very different thing that what that sentence said. If you can find an academic or psychiatric source that calls a gene "weak" or "vulnerable" then by all means change it back. But i very much doubt you will be able to. Hence i changed it (and note the reference) to the more accurate:


 * "Psychiatry proposes that certain genetic factors can predispose people to particular mental illnesses ""


 * The next sentence said:


 * However, compared to gene-coding for traits such as gender, hair color, skin color or eye color, to date few specific connections have been evidenced, despite numerous high-profile claims that have been discredited after acknowledged failure to replicate .


 * This is almost laughable. Without going into too much detail, there is a single gene for gender (SRY), only two so far known for non pathalogical variation of skin colour (MC1R and SLC24A5) and the genetic of human eye colour pretty much unknown though there is one strong candidate (the Pink gene). In comparison, there are many tens of statistically significant correlations between genetic loci and psychiatric phenotypes and at least two genes that are well characterised and even have plausible mechanisms for function (including DISC). So that above sentence is patent nonsense. I reads to me like wishful thinking more than anything.
 * I'm also not familiar of any high profile cases of scientific discrediting of such claims, hence i deleted the next, unsourced sentence also. It may be that initial studies that suggest advances are not borne out in more applied studies - but that is a natural part of scientific method and is not "discrediting" "high-profile claims". I replaced it with the fully sourced and accurate:


 * To date only a few genetic lesions have been proposed to be mechanistically responsible for psychiatric conditions, though there are well characterised associations between specific genomic regions and psychiatric disorders . 


 * Finally i removed the following sentence:


 * In addition, psychiatry presents one theory of personality, and can be accused or ignoring or denigrating others, such as philosophical, spiritual, religious, information, or literary theories .


 * It was unsourced and would remain so as it presents a gross generalisation of the field. There are plenty of psychiatrists the accept an influence of religion on personality. Remember a little further down we state that psychiatric coditions are influenced by genes and environment, religion is an environmental influence. At very best that should be sourced and presented as a claim (not "can be accused of"), but to be honest such generalisations should be avoided (What are "information or literary theories" of personality anyway, i'd like to see a source for them? And does it not matter that a lot of these theories may actually be dismissed after consideration due to lack of evidence? This is not the same as "ignoring or denigrating", or else we could add psychiatry ignores and denegrates the theory that our shoes are the primary influence on our personality).


 * So thats my justification for those edits. Again, if you dispute those, and can justify it, then do so. But i find it highly ironic (not to mention hypocritical) that some editors criticise others for not understanding the complex and subtle issues involved in this article, when they are promoting a grade school view of genetics. And, to pre-empt the inevitable, i did the same sort of editing to the biochemical factors section. I (literally) laughed out loud when i read:


 * "Medications that regulate neurotransmitters are thought to heal damaged personalities in the way that antibiotics heal infected organs"


 * That is the sort of language one might expect from a tabloid newspaper and is indicitive of what we have to deal with in this article. So, again, i stand by these edits, believe they are entirely justifiable and sourced accordingly. If you have a problem with it )as it appears you do) then i suggest you justify it with sources instead of assuming bad faith of me. Rockpocket 21:29, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Rockpocket, again you completely miss the point. I give up trying to explain that I am not defending everything on this page as it stood, so you do'nt need to lecture about scientific method and genetics. You seem to have made an assumption that anyone involved with this page is some kind of anti-scientific anti-genetic ignoramus. I suspect we actually share an interest in evolution, given your nick and occupation, but we seem to be just talking past each other. I told you I recently came to it and wanted to work on it to try and improve it, but without just walking all over everything that's there that people had obviously worked hard on. And the fact remains that this is a page to explain antipsychiatry. I give up trying to agree that it needs reducing, that it need to be NPOV, that it needs sourcing. You keep talking as if this is only being argued by yourself, but I had done so myself only shortly before you turned up as you could see yourself on the talk page. I give up trying to explain that I was in the process of trying to do this before you came along with your 70 tags and your determination to cull before properly assessing who was here and what they were trying to do. Franzio 16:10, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, so lets get past the specifics. I guess what we have here is a difference in editing style. You appear to want to reach a consensus on the talk page for everything, discuss our opinions first and write about our intentions before we do them. I can appreciate that, and often that works. But usually that only happens on highly stable pages that are heavily referenced, had had a lot of input and have had a huge amount of copy-editing. I believe (and i consulted on this with admins and more experienced editors than you or I) that this article was a real mess. It really was. It was highly POV, incredibly unfocused and on some areas just plain wrong. It was also way overlong because it was highly redundant. Thus, i was advised, to try and cull it down then build it back up in a fully referenced and POV manner. Trying to make this a good article by sentence, by sentence discussion of nuance is simply not going to happen. There has been about 10 times more input on the talk page than on the article itself. That doesn't get us anywhere.


 * So, instead i followed policy to be bold and edit mercilessly, and am fully supportive of others doing likewise. With a few good editors editing, if one misses something or makes a mistake on something that is outside their sphere of experitise, another should be able to jump in and restore and re-edit. This is a perfectly acceptable form of editing, it is one that is encouraged in policy and it is (in my opinion and those that i consulted with) then best and quickest way to get this article up to scratch. A good example of that is the origins section, which is much, much better than it was, and that is due to both you and i. There are things we still disagree on, and those can be resolved later, but we cut through a lof of the crap very quickly. You seem to be unhappy with how that worked, but do you deny that the end result is not better than what we started with? And it all happened within 24 hours. If we both spent the emount of time we have on this talk page tackling another section in the same manner, that would be better too. It does, however, rely on the assumption of good faith all around, and i'm sorry to say that that seems to be lacking on your behalf. I hope i'm wrong in that, but that is all i can surmise from your criticisms.


 * One we have got rid of all the crap, i have no problem with long discussions on details. But until then, i'm afraid i'm going to continue as i have been. As i said before, you may not like it, but i have done nothing wrong in policy. If you wish to continue explaining your intentions prior to doing them, then that is fine by me. I'll read them and give my opinion if you wish. But i'd really much rather you just jumped straight in and made them. You seem a reasonable and well educated guy (or girl) and i trust that your intentions are good, thus just be bold. If i disagree, then trust me, you'll hear about it. Otherwise, you can assume i agree with your edits and all is well in the Garden. Rockpocket 21:08, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Again these are mostly non sequiturs. I suggested you summarise what you see as the ultimate balance of this page, what it should cover. Because you didn't seem to get that the page is about antipsychiatry, or to really know what antipsychiatry is, or to be capable of seeing the issues behind things if they weren't phrased in an ideal way. Three people have suggested alternative ways to go about improving the article. You haven't been asked to pick apart and explain the flaws of what is currently there (I really don't understand your inability to stop talking about the problems with the page as if you alone recognised them, despite dozens of comments to the contrary).

Anyway so you're going to continue on as you have been, you've been having discussions with administrators about how to sort out this page and you're going to implement your decisions and 'get rid of all the crap' and then build it up again. People who have been trying to caution you (specifically you) about the issues, or ask for a bit more consideration (from you) to past or present editors, are people who just pointlessly want everything explained and justified in advance (not been the case apart from you). Thanks for clarifying Wikipedia for me and I'll leave you to it, I hope it is a great page in the end.


 * I'm sorry you feel that way, i genuinely hope you will stick around and contribute as i think you have a lot to offer. I don't pretend that i have the answers, or the ability, to make this page perfect. There are areas that i have expertise in and i have edited accordingly and there are areas i don't. I deal with the problems as i see them, and assume other will also. I don't believe Wikipedia is the place for inertia - we don't need to sit around and discuss every problem. When something is patent nonsense and you have sources and knowledge to back it up. Be bold and change it.


 * When there are areas i query that i am not an expert in - i have requested citations and edited to the best of my ability and would hope that people like you and Cesar, who clearly have a great interest in the subject, can provide the facts, replace what i erroneously remove or add and generally replace the nuances (as i have attempted to do with the genetics and biochemical section). For example, much of Cesar's suggestions above i have no problem with. So why he doesn't go ahead and make them i do not know, no-one needs permission to act as long as they can justify why the did it. I have treated other editors wish respect, have always assumed good faith, but i am not interested in sitting around having talk page meetings trying to debate some of the POV nonsense on this page. I have enough of that at work. If you don't like the fact that others will edit without your prior agreement you shouldn't be a contributor to Wikipedia, but for one think this page will be worse off without you input and would ask you to reconsider. Rockpocket 22:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Rockpocket, you really are the master of non sequiturs. When did you stop beating your wife? To borrow a legal 'joke'. It's ridiculous for you to start complaining now about endless discussions, when I have been complaining about you causing them and about you continually lecturing on the problems with the page whenever anyone tried to defend any part of it or any underlying value, or suggested that you don't appear as NPOV or informed as you clearly sincerely believe yourself to be. Shortly before you turned up on this page, and I had decided to give up some time to go through this article and try to NPOV and source it, I pasted a message about this, including "I'm trying to tidy and organise this article in a clearer way and add to or improve some of the lines of argument. If I'm doing anything objectionable to anyone please let me know, for now I'm just going for it." and asked for suggestions or help. So again you misrepresent me and what I have attempted on this page. You turned up a short while afterwards, ignored that post, and decided to do the same thing as if no one had ever thought of it or ever recognised any problems with the page, and as if no one here could possibly have any knowledge or understanding that you didn't have or couldn't achieve with a few hours internet searching - an attitude I find it hard to imagine you adopting in regard to subjects you respected more. You said something like 'I will now to through this article section by section, and then we can discuss it and any further edits', which was just so presumptous I couldn't believe it.

And incidentally I myself felt Cesar Tort's suggested edits were the sorts of things he could just get on and edit, which I initially said in reply to him, although I then reedited that comment for some reason. But he was also saying that before he went ahead with them and numerous other ideas he had, he wanted to check what his fellow editors were planning for hte page as a whole. You ignored him and just went ahead editing the issues he said he was going to edit. I would also add that I defended and supported Cesar Tort's knowledge and ability to edit this page - I won't go into the ways in which you did not. Glad you are respecting him a bit more now anyway, even I see congratulating him on his recent work, as if a team leader encouraging the troops.

I have shown you incredible good faith, far too much. I kept on thinking, and hoping, that you just had strangely poor listening skills and some obsessive-compulsive issues regarding citing wikipedia policies, so I kept on trying to reason with you and show you that you had got the wrong impression. I now realise that, while you do appear to be a poor listener and very prone to misrepresenting things you or others have said, you have in fact been acting in the self-appointed role of corporate troubleshooter, sanctioned by admin to sort out the rabble who aren't necessarily always being positive about psychiatry (which seems to be the default acceptable mode rather than neutrality). Taking no need of who might have been responsible for what on the current page and regardless of whether or not they are professionals and scientists (your prejudice clearly led you to assume not). Ok fine, but it would have been a lot easier if you had just clarified this initially (to be fair I saw that you were under advice to be unfailingly polite but relentless in your mission to sort out the mess and attendant set of ill-informed editors). So, as I said, I will leave you to get on with it as fast as you can, so you can report back to admin on a job well done, and no doubt you'll be one of them soon. Franzio 09:25, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, i'm also glad that you appear to think i'm admin material, i hope i can rely on your support should i ever be nominated ;). I'm not quite sure if there is any point replying at length, as you have obviously decided your opinion on how i stepped on the toes of the collaborative effort you hoped to achieve. I genuinely regret that, and acknowledge that my actions could be seen as offensive, but i know my intentions were good and I do not feel the need to apologise for proactively editing, encouraging other to do so also and doing my best to stick to Wikipedia policy. I really feel i can't win, however, as firstly i'm accused of ignoring fellow editors and forging my own path without acknowledging others, then when i work with Cesar and praise some of his edits, i'm accused of acting like "a team leader encouraging the troops" and not in a good way, i imagine. If proactivity and a policy of boldness is what offends you, then i believe you may have the problem, and not I.


 * Despite the unfounded attack below - i'm still very keen to encourage your in put to this article, but i'd really rather not get into anymore finger pointing with you. You may have noticed the great strides the article has made in your absence over the last few days, mainly because we have been being bold and editing. If you are willing to join in, then please do so. Rockpocket 20:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm very grateful for your acknowlegement that you may have acted offensively and not been collaborative, you didn't stop for a moment though did you? You left a reassuring message on my talk page but then carried on regardless. But in any case, you don't need to apologise for proactively editing and encouraging others! Oh but that's exactly what I was criticising you for, yes! And why on earth does proactivity and a policy of boldness offend me, yes exactly! I've worked with people in acute psychosis who show more insight and ability to listen than you. And more knowledge of the mental health field.

You seem to think that because you're a geneticist (and you've actually met a few psychiatrists even!) that you were supremely able to sort this page out and patronise anyone else involved. You tell me above that I seem like a well-educated guy and you think I can contribute to the page - well gee, thanks! It makes me go all warm inside to get such praise from one so highly esteemed as yourself. Actually I gather from your comments that I'm better educated, qualified and experienced than you in this field. I think you seem to have some relevant education to this area and may have been able to contribute to this page, rather than taking it over in a way that has been very stressful to try and stand up to.

Regarding your expectation of an apology for my misattribution below, you accused me above of hypocritically promoting a high school grade level of genetics, where was my apology for that? Along with all the other things you wrongly assumed I was responsbible for or did not understand, where was my apology for that? You just carried blithely on. Unless you still haven't got the point that I DID NOT WRITE THOSE THINGS. Incidentally I now notice the non-sequitur critique you made above about the talk of genetic vulnerabilities - despite your area of expertise that you have applied as you say, this shows more ignorance of the mental health field. This is a very common phrase in mental health, including psychiatry and including in the titles of psychiatric journal articles which are really not hard to find - not to mean the stupid thing you infer (by not reading it charitably, surely there is a wiki policy on that somewhere?) but specifically in the context of vulnerability-stress models if the (phenotypic) vulnerability is seen as primarily due to genetic abnormalities. It is obvious to me what the person was trying to say, which was that the term vulnerability has a pejorative sense that inadvertantly causes stigma and negative attitudes, and your rephrasing entirely missed this important antipsychiatry point which is the sort of thing this article is all about.

Have fun, you've won and have remained unfailingly polite and relentless in your mission whilst I have got riled - but only because you made prejudiced assumptions and acted like a bully. Franzio 09:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Our main point
César Tort writes:

Hi Rockpocket. I fully agree with you that the article requires a very serious cull, and I hope I may be of some help in this important enterprise. That I can do it without bias was already demonstrated in the fact that the MDs did not object my incisive phrases in their main Psychiatry page. I believe I can help you to rewrite a truly NPOV article.

However, I have to take issue with some of your statements: “In comparison, there are many tens of statistically significant correlations between genetic loci and psychiatric phenotypes”. And also: “To date only a few genetic lesions have been proposed to be mechanistically responsible for psychiatric conditions, though there are well characterized associations between specific genomic regions and psychiatric disorders”.


 * Cesar. You may take issue with those statements, but if you read the sources i cite, you will see that they are specific examples of what i have said. I can give you tens of citations for descriptions of statistically significant associations, if you wish. Thus, you can take the work of a reviewer if you wish, and you can quote him as being in dispute with what i say, but you need to tell my why those citations do not back up what i wrote, if you want to remove it. Rockpocket 21:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

In my personal communication to you in your own talk page I mentioned a book by Jay Joseph, an specialist in psychiatrists’ claims on genetics, and he is not the only specialist who has criticized that field. Though I am not a geneticist, I have read some of their arguments.

In few words, psychiatric genetic studies are flawed. For example, the schizophrenia studies have never ruled out the environmental factor. Even in monozygotic-twins studies the twins lived in the same “schizophrenogenic” home and suffered the same traumatogenic mode of parenting. Those studies could be used, ironically, to support the trauma model of mental disorders —instead of the medical model of mental disorders! In other words, the logic “If it runs in families it must be genetic” is fallacious.


 * You completely misunderstand genetics if you believe that. No gene ever works independent of environment and no geneticist would ever rule out environmental factors, especially in psychiatric genetics. Most would agree that when something biological "runs in families" (over a big enough sample size) that there is most likely a genetic component. That is based on huge empirical evidence and, of course, on the dogma of genetic inherentance and its influence on biology. You may disagree, but do you have any examples of significant familial inheritance that has be proven to be a result of anything else?


 * Now, is somthing runs perfectly associated with a genetic loci then we might say it is "genetic", meaning that the gene has a very large influence on the effect observed. That is not to say there is no environmental effect. Far from it, that most likely means that the evironment that interacts with the gene to cause the effect is either very common or ubiquitous, or that a large range of environments can elicit the effect. If it doesn't "run perfectly" then it might mean there are more gene loci that contribute to cause the effect to a greater or lesser extent (or, in reality, that other genes are altering the environment in which the first gene functions) or it might mean the the environment required to interact with the gene to cause the effect is extreme, or it might mean the environment is rare. There is a continuum between these examples that explain the phenotype of any genotype. But the point is, genes do not work in a vacuum. They cannot act independently of their environment. Every type of genotype/phenotype correlation shows the same thing (from simple monogenic diseases like cystic fibrosis, to variation like skin colour - in each case there is an environmental effect that may not be fully understood, that modulates the gene the pre-disposes for a phenotype). By its very nature, psychiatric genetics is going to fall nearer the second of my examples. There is a huge environmental effect, every single paper i have ever read in the field takes that as its starting point, otherwise it would be a hell of a lot easier to study and we would have identified all the genes responsible or been able to demonstrate that there is no genetic effect whatsoever. So quite where you get the idea the that "psychiatric genetic studies are flawed" for not taking into account environment, i have no idea. Infact, perhaps you would be kind enough to give me a few sources demonstrating that. Anyway, if you have a source that backs up your claim, put it in there and make your point. There is little to be gained by disagreeing with me, and the established dogma that i justify it on, if you don't provide the reliable sources to back it up. Rockpocket 23:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Lysenkoism was also mainstream pseudo-biology thinking in Russia’s 1930s, but that doesn’t mean that the minority of Russian geneticists were wrong César Tort  23:25 (UTC)  18 March 2006.

Also, in your lengthy exchange with Franzio above you said: “There is a big difference between those that are anti-psychiatry and those that wish to improve psychiatry and many would argue that this section reads more about the latter group than the former”.

I think that you have not yet understood the critics’ main point. If biological psychiatry is a pseudoscience and an Inquisition, as Thomas Szasz and many others have tried to say in dozens of books, the psychiatric Inquisition, just like the Spanish Inquisition, can never be reformed: only abolished. I know you wouldn’t place psychiatry in the same category as the Inquisition. That is why I called to your attention some biological pseudosciences, such as Nazi phrenology, that was used to oppress non-Arians. Many believe that biopsych fits exactly in this category of bio-pseudoscience. Neither Nazi phrenology nor Lisenko’s genetics can been “improved”, only refuted and abolished by true scientists, humanitarians and politicians.

I will give you a very concrete example. Two days ago I learned that Mexican psychiatrists are lobotomizing teenage anorexic girls. Anti-psychiatrists’ main point is this: if psychiatrists have not proved that (e.g.) anorexia has a biological etiology, to mess with the girl’s frontal lobs to make her submissive and to eat is inquisitorial pseudoscience. No one is disputing the fact that mental disorders exist; only that the cause is not biological, but psychological (parental abuse). And if it is psychological anorexic girls ought to be treated by psychotherapists, never by brain butchers or surgeons.

It is just that simple. César Tort 18 March 2006  00:40 (UTC)


 * You may be right, but it relies on many "ifs". Which are presented by the anti- lobby but not accepted by mainstream thinking. I would retort that, "if" psychiatry is not a pseudoscience then you argument falls down. But your point does not address the fact that the other fields Franzio mentioned themselves are not inherently anti-psychiatry. Anti-psychiatry may promote them as complete alternatives, but the fields themselves often work together and complement each other. So while i have no problems saying something like "anti-psychiatrists promote newly emerging fields as challenges to psychiatry" i do not accept that "newly fields emerged to challenge psychiatry" - there is an important difference between the two. Your example is a sad and sounds to me like a very worrying case of psychiatric abuse. However, your argument relies on the assumption that the lack of proof of one thing, acts as proof of another. The lack of proof for biological etiology is not in itself proof that the problem is psychological (which, of course, has a biological basis anyway). It may simply mean the biological basis is not fully understood yet. That doesn't justify, of course, the extreme measures you mention - but neither does it tell us whether psychotherapists have the answers either.


 * But i have no problem with that general point being presented, just make sure it referenced and presented as the opinion of anti-psychiatrists and not as fact. Rockpocket 23:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * You are right, it is clear there are a number of ways to interpret the genetic and other findings, and their implications for therapeutic intervention. I think Rockpocket misunderstood my point about professions developing in opposition to psychiatry, I tried to clarify to him above. Of course there are varying anti-psychiatry views regarding the extent to which mental health problems can be addressed in terms of the 'hardware' of the brain. It is very concerning what you say about the situation in Mexico, I will have to ask you more about it when I get a moment. Franzio 16:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Formal request of peer-review
Rockport: In one of my 16 March posts above, the one that can be read below Franzio’s 10:15 UTC entry, you can see 9 suggestions I wrote related to sections that you have already made some changes. Please take a look at those 9 suggestions.

I volunteer to cooperate full-time with you for a radical overhaul of this article. César Tort  08:55 (UTC)  18 March 2006


 * Cesar, i'm glad you are keen to contribute. I scanned your suggestions and had no major problems with them (though its often difficult to be sure out of context). Since there was no dissent, i presumed you would go ahead and make those changes. Please do not feel the need to wait for mass agreement before you make any changes you suggest. As long as they follow policy and are justified, you should be bold and introduce them. If there is a problem, people will tell you. I'll have another look at them now and give my opinion. Rockpocket 23:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

"Challenges and Alternatives ... Theory" edits
I just made some edits to the intro. paragraph of this section:
 * I added "According to anti-psychiatry advocates,..." to the first sentance, because this appears to be an anti-psychiatrist's summation of psychiatry, rather than a generally-agreed-upon summary. Unfortunately, either way, it is unsourced. If anybody has one or several sources for this, help would be much appreciated.
 * The sentances on Kraepelian categorization have been removed, because I'm not seeing arguments against categorization per se in any of what follows.
 * I changed "Anti-psychiatry" to "Anti-psychiatry advocates" in the last sentance, because the former implies a unified, monolithic movement called 'Anti-psychiatry', which I don't think is a justified implication.
 * --Dcfleck 15:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Dcfleck,

Thank you for explaining here. The axioms listed are actually derived from a paper by the psychiatrist Klerman (1978), a psychiatrist attempting to sum up modern psychiatry and what it should achieve, in what has often been referred to as almost a psychiatric manifesto. So it is innacurate to say that this is according to anti-psychiatry advocates. I haven't got time to check the sentences you mean regarding (neo-) 'Kraepelinian' categories, but this is a very important issue are they are often criticised and opposed, so does need to be covered somewhere. Franzio 16:26, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I re-inserted the info. about 'Kraepelinian' categories into the "Psychiatric diagnosis in reality" section. BTW, I don't see a reference for the Klerman cite. Do you have the information available? --Dcfleck 22:17, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I pretty much re-wrote the thing again, re-inserting much of the previous info. once I ascertained its relevance and importance. Also added 1 source and provided full references for 2. --Dcfleck 14:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Schools of thought
Are there specific 'schools of thought' within the anti-psychiatric movement that are associated with specific viewpoints and criticisms? Or arguments that can be associated with specific (sourcable and notable!!) writers? If the article focussed more on that, it would do a better job of being about anti-psychiatry, rather than being an example of anti-psychiatry. --Dcfleck 15:56, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Dcfleck!


 * There have been five parallel critiques of psychiatry: (1) Thomas Szasz’s conceptual and logical critique of the mental illness idea; (2) Szasz and Ron Leifer’s parallel critique of social control through psychiatry; (3) Peter Breggin’s medical evaluation of the assaults on the brain with drugs, electroshock and lobotomy; and (4) the cry of those who have been harmed by it . Another way to question the validity of psychiatry is to examine the scientific basis of biological psychiatry itself. This fifth parallel critique, which I would call (5) the evaluation of the scientific status of psychiatry, takes psychiatry to task on its own theoretical base.  Exponents of this late strategy have focused on the various bioreductionist claims and logical fallacies in psychiatry (e.g., Colin Ross and Alvin Pam’s "Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry"); on the dubious science behind psychopharmacology (e.g., Elliot Valenstein’s "Blaming the Brain"), and on statistical analyses that show that poor countries with few psychiatric drugs called neuroleptics (“antipsychotics”) fare much better in the treatment of people in psychotic crisis than the rich countries (e.g., Robert Whitaker’s "Mad in America") .  César Tort   16:53 (UTC)  18 March 2006


 * So -- does any criticism of psychiatry, past or present, get a reference on this page? Or is it devoted to a particular set of critiques? (Do Michel Foucault's criticisms fall into any of the above categories?) Presumably there is a set of ideas, such that someone could say, "Oh, that's a recognizably anti-psychiatric idea", similar to the way in which someone could say, "Oh, that's a neo-Kraepelinian idea" or "Oh, that's a Marxist idea". Otherwise, the page can't help but to become a miscellaneous pile of "Things People Dislike About Psychiatry", which doesn't seem like a good Wikipedia page. --Dcfleck 00:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I did not write the article. I am an absolute newcomer to Wikipedia and believe the rewritten article should mention the five parallel critiques.  Foucault belongs to the first and second categories.  The common denominator among all five critiques is the rejection of bio-psychiatry and its involuntary “treatments”: psychiatric drugs, ECT and lobotomy.  This is the recognizable “antipsychiatric” idea  César Tort 01:07 (UTC)  19 March 2006.


 * While browsing for sources i came across these . I can't vouch for how authentic or academic they are, but they appear legit enough, and they say among other interesting things:


 * The label anti-psychiatry needs to be understood for what it is. The terminology was disowned by both RD Laing and Thomas Szasz, two people who are probably most closely and consistently identified with the anti-psychiatry movement. The general view is that anti-psychiatry was a passing phase in the history of psychiatry and that it is no longer of any influence (Tantam, 1991).


 * and


 * Anti-psychiatry has perhaps been defined more by psychiatry itself than by its adherents. R D Laing (1986) never called himself an anti-psychiatrist and distanced himself from David Cooper, as Laing did not regard himself as ideologically Marxist as Cooper. Thomas Szasz attacked Laing for his lack of rigour (Mullan 1995) and although Laing agreed that the term mental illness is a metaphor, he argued that it mapped onto reality. Nonetheless, "anti-psychiatry" has had an anti-authoritarian popular, even romantic, appeal as an attack on psychiatrists' use of psychiatric diagnosis, drug and ECT treatment and involuntary hospitalisation.


 * Of course, it might be nonsense, but the general tone of the piece appears to be 'anti-psychiatric' in all but name. If there is any truth in the assertion that Lang and Szasz disowned the term it should probably be mentioned, seeing as we seem to give them some credit for starting the movement. It might also be worth adding something on the drive away from the term and more towards "critical psychiatry", if this POV has any wider support of course. I agree with Dc's concern that we are not focussing enough on a movement and rather appear to be putting forward a rambling critique of psychiatry. I feel we need to define the boundaries of what "anti-psychiatry" is. If we can agree on that (and Cesar seems to sum it up nicely above) then i think we get really prune this article back and then focus on those 5 principles in more detail. Rockpocket 09:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes: even I disown the term! However, if I chose it for my own web page it is because it has become a very popular name for anything that is wrong with psychiatry. It must be noted that psychiatrists use the term “antipsychiatry” pejoratively. And I never, ever call myself an “antipsychiatrist” (as your colleagues wouldn’t call themselves “anti-Lysenkoists”, just Mendel geneticists; or as astronomers would never call themselves an “anti-astrologers”). Nonetheless, the term is practical for Wikipedia and the five parallel critiques outlined above. César Tort 09:50 (UTC) 19 March 2006.


 * Great - so we can use that. I don't dispute that we should not use the term, its just appropriate to note that it can be seen as pejorative and that proponents of the sentiments themselves do not often use the term. Perhaps we can use the under traditional, but lacking here, 'criticism of anti-psychiatry' section. Rockpocket 18:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Side? - effects? of not doing something
People might argue about "the side-effects of not treating ADHD" but it seems a tortuous way of considering what is the main effect not a side-effect of a course of action or decision, and is better represented by th simpel English constuction "the consequences of not treating (ADHD)". Everyone knows that side-effects are bad of coruse, whereas discussing consequences would seem like something more open. Better not included, even as a quote unless it means somethign very different from that. 18:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * ADHD is a fraudulent diagnosis  César Tort   18:57 (UTC)  18 March 2006.

Changes in the introductory section
I deleted “over simplified” because the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is an extremely complex manual. Also, it is a subject of paramount importance to explain that psychiatrists are divided in (1) biological psychiatrists: those who advance the medical model of mental disorders, and (2) non biological psychiatrists: those who advance trauma model of mental disorders. The paramount importance of this difference is shown in the “Our main point” section above: “No one is disputing the fact that mental disorders exist; only that the cause is not biological, but psychological (parental abuse). And if it is psychological anorexic girls ought to be treated by psychotherapists, never by brain butchers or surgeons” César Tort  20:24 (UTC)  18 March 2006.

Biological psychiatry?
Biological psychiatrists view anti-psychiatry (and even non biological psychiatry) as a fringe movement with little or no validity...

How is "biological psychiatry" different from plain old psychiatry? What other kind(s) of psychiatry are there? --Dcfleck 21:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Just saw this comment ; never mind. (For the moment.) --Dcfleck 22:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * This illustartes a wider point that confuses me in the article. It appears from what is written, that anti-psychiatry appears to favour some types of psychiatric thinking (such a social psychiatry, which appears to follow much of the same principles that Cesar promotes) but is against the strain of psychiatry (if it even exists) that promotes a entirely genetic view of mental illness. If that is the case, then i think that should be explained early in the intro, as my understanding of the movement (from its name and mission statement) is that it is against psychiatry as a whole. Yet my experience of psychiatrists suggests that there is a whole continuum of psychiatric thinking from one extreme to the other in the field. It seems very unfair to represent psychiatry as a whole as how anti-psychiatrists perceive it, simply so they can set their stall out against it. Rockpocket 23:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Rockpocket. The reason is that the great majority of psychiatrists are biological psychiatrists; whereas a very small minority are advocating the trauma model of mental disorders; though the trauma model was more popular in the 1960s and 1970s' counterculture.  (Alas, American society changed a lot after Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr!)  Today “psychiatry” means almost exclusively “biological psychiatry” in the profession César Tort 23:43 (UTC)  18 March 2006.


 * Thanks for the clarification, Cesar. I'm not sure i agree with that, as my professional experience tells me that most propose a middle ground (i.e. that a genetic pre-disposition combined with an environmental "trauma" is the basis for mental illness). If you classing them by those that think there is some biological/genetic iteraction with environment ("biological phsychiatrists") and those that deny any biological/genetic influence and believe environment is the only influence ("trauma modelists") then i concur. But if you are suggesting that the majority of "psychiatrists" deny environmental trauma as a factor then i strongly disagree and have plenty of sources that acknowlege the widespread acceptance of effect of environment on genetic factors.


 * Either way, I think it would be very beneficial to make clear this distinction early on in the article. It may just be that i'm more ignorant than most (insert you own comment here!), but i think such an assertion makes the rest of the article make a lot more sense and focuses on the point of the movement. Rockpocket 00:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Most psychiatrists really hate the trauma model. For instance, the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) consists of 374 disorders. Only 2 of them, “Post-traumatic stress disorder” and “Dissociative identity disorder” are thought to be psychogenic. The other 372 “disorders” are dogmatically said to be somatogenic: biomedical entities “of unknown etiology” (which is an obviously pseudoscientific assertion as I demonstrated in my first contribution to this debate six days ago, just after your entry in the “A Pseudoscience” section). It is true that psychiatrists talk a lot about both bio and environmental factors. But that’s lip service, Despite their “environmental triggers” rhetoric most are thoroughgoing bioreductionist ideologues that promote psychiatric drugs, ECT, lobotomy and don’t like to hear anything —anything!— about schizophrenogenic parents   César Tort 00:41 (UTC)  19 March 2006.


 * It really isn't "lip service" - its fundamental genetics. See the above summary for an overview of environment and genetics. No-one, and i mean no-one in the field would dismiss the effect of environment is essential and, again, i challenge you to provide a source that says otherwise. The problem is that its a lot easier to look for genes than find the environmental triggers, hence they set out to look for the genes then worry about the triggers later. Look at cystic fibrosis. Finding the gene was what everyone focussed on. It was only after the gene was found that the environmental trigger of pathogenesis (specific bacterial infection) was fully investigated. In the field, its a given that any genetic factor requires an environment with which to interact, but its much, much easier to find the mechanism of gene/environment interaction when you have the gene, so the environmental cues often get put aside. I'm not saying that is right, correct or even smart science, but it is what happens. So just because they are not studying the environmental cues (which I think is the real problem here) doesn't mean to say that they do not acknowledge that they exist and are fundamentally important.


 * However, i accept that the difference between "trauma model", in terms of an extreme environmental effect being the only factor, and a general environmental influence are different things. And i can understand how two schools could be in opposition over this. But again, being against a trauma model does not mean dismissing gene/environment interaction or giving it "lip service". Rockpocket 02:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Please do not misunderstand me. Genetics is a real science.  Only psychiatrists pay “lip service” to the environmental factor and hate the trauma model.  César Tort 03:10 (UTC)  19 March 2006.

Psychiatry and genetics
Rockpocket: instead of replying to what you said some sections above just before I mentioned Lysenkoism, I urge you to take a look at Jay Jospeh’s just published “The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes”. What I tried to say above is that, even though I belong to a family of musicians (both of my parents are musicians and my brother is studying music in Paris) it is fallacious to state that music vocation is genetic (it is obviously environmental). Non biological psychiatrists could say the same of schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression or any other DSM disorder. “If it runs in families it must be genetic” is a logical fallacy. César Tort 02:08 (UTC) 19 March 2006.


 * Perhaps. I think there is a fair argument that there is a genetic factor, or more likely a multifactorial genetic combination of factors, in musical predisposition. For example, i'll bet that there are certain physical characteristics (long, slender fingers, for example) that would make one a better musician than the next person. Moreover, birdsong and mouse song have highly genetic componants, so why wouldn't human musical contributions also have genetic influence?
 * However, if one was basing the genetic influence of musicality on associations between you, your parents and brother then i would agree with you. But association studies are based on multiple, extended families over multiple generations.
 * Let me ask you this: say there is strong statistical correlation between a specific genetic locus and extreme musical ability that, by chance, would co-segregate with a phenotype over multiple generations maybe only once in a million times. We dismiss other obvious possible correlates, like sex etc. What other conclusion would you suggest we draw? You are very keep on promoting scientific principles, so what would occam's razor say about this? It would suggest that we have found a genetic association between musical ability and that locus.


 * No-one would claim "that gene codes for musical talent" what they would say is "that gene is strongly correlated with musical talent". That is a simple statistical fact and that is what people mean when they say something appears to be genetic. Now, replace "musical talent" with "bi-polar disorder" and you have got exactly the evidence we have for a genetic component to that condition. So how is that fallacious? It appears to me the only fallicy is your association of the phrase "runs in families" with "genetic". Geneticists do not make claims on things that run in families, they study statistical corrolates, and that is what they mean by "association". Rockpocket 02:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, and i just had a quick read of the summary of the book you mention. I tend to agree with much of what is said. However, for a geneticist it offers little new pretty much agrees with what i wrote in the section. With the exception of the landmark paper late last year and some recent work on bi-polar genetics from the Salk, there is very little mechanistic data out there, which is acknowledged in the text of that book and in the text of the article. All the rest if associative.
 * The problem with books like that is it takes media headlines as its counterpoint, not the claims of the professional themselves (it admits as much with its "as is frequently reported in the popular media") It does this to make it sounds like its saying something new and exciting, as it relies on the assumption the reader believes the media reports the scientist's claims accurately. But as we all know the media like to oversell stuff, so what the book is saying is well accepted in academia.


 * I think it speaks volumes that it quotes Ken Kendler - a top psychiatric geneticist himself - saying "the concept of ‘a gene for …’ does not exist for psychiatric disorders". Why? Because the influence of environment is so great! So i'm not sure how this stacks up with your claim that those in the field only pay lip-service to the effect of environment - your major source quotes one of the top guys saying otherwise! Now thats schizophrenic ;) Rockpocket 03:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, geneticists do not make those claims, but bio-psychiatrists do. For instance, in the case of alcoholism they cling to the non parsimonious hypothesis that it must be genetic.  One thing is musical ability, which may be genetic, but a very different thing is musical vocation.  My brother chose music not because of his genes, but because he admires our father.  That is the whole point.  Biological psychiatrists believe that bipolar disorder is caused by genetic predisposition that the environment merely “triggers”.  Non biological psychiatrists believe it is caused by horrifying, heart-breaking abuse at childhood (even though the disorder may appear later in life).  Since the genes for bipolar disorder have not been found, and since nobody denies the existence of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at home, Occam’s razor points to the traumatogenic hypothesis as the more parsimonious and commonsensical, the “working hypothesis” for professionals who work with abused and disturbed people César Tort 03:33 (UTC)  19 March 2006.
 * Well, i can't speak for all psychiatrists, but the ones i have met seem to have a fair understanding of gene/environment interactions (but then again, if they are speaking to geneticists they probably have a specific interest in the subject). I take your point about vocation and ability (though i could debate with you the genetic reasons one chooses a vocation based on parental admiration, there are very good evolutionary reasons for that!) I think we have boiled down the differences between the two groups now and their different perspectives and i think stating that somewhere in the article (in a slightly less POV manner, of course) would be informative to illustrate that the precise problem anti-psychiatry has with mainstream psychiatry. My only other caveat would be this. While no causative bipolar gene has been found (yet) there are plenty of associative studies like i demonstrated above e.g . Thus you still need to explain to me a parsimonious explanation for how these statistical associations occur if there is no genetic component. My personal feeling, which the psychiatric genetic community seem to share, would be that there is a genetic predisposition (at least in some cases, explaining the statistical associations to certain loci) and a very large environmental requirement (most commonly the undeniably important traumatic events like you describe) during neural development. That is also the opinion of those psychiatrists i know professionally. So what group would this leave me (and them) in?
 * And i guess this is what my concern boils down to - i'm worried that this article is labelling the entire psychiatric entire field with the views of just one fringe (the extreme geno-centric bio-psychiatrists) so best to explain why another extreme (the extreme geno-skeptic anti-psychiatrists) oppose them. When infact, the majority of the field actually holds views somewhere inbetween thoses extremes - that is they accept both genes and traumatic environment work together and have a spectum of opinion on the relative influence of each. I'm keen to make sure that doesn't happen. Rockpocket 04:11, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that the majority of the psychiatrists who prescribe psychiatric drugs or ECT held views “somewhere in between the extremes”. Any psychiatrist who approves brain-disabling treatments —i.e., the great majority of psychiatrists— is in the bio extreme and just pays lip service to environmental issues (and, I repeat, most of them really, really hate the trauma, schizophrenogenic-parent model).


 * Well i guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this - which is, of course, perfectly fine. I suppose we'll just have to be careful to make sure any assertions or accustions of what a majority do or do not believe are fully sourced. Rockpocket 07:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you have not fully understood the trauma model. Some proponents of this model such as Alice Miller or John Modrow mantain that even with the best genes they, you or I would get mad if psychological torturers break our minds in Auschwitz, the Gulag or in extremely abusive homes.


 * That appears to be as dogmatic as the extreme genetic model. In the same way one would argue why twins show different occurances of mental disorder, i would ask if that is the case why certain people to experience extremely traumatic and abusive childhoods yet are mentally 'stable' as adults while others experience, in comparison, much less psychological abuse and become severely mentally disturbed. I find it very difficult to understand how there could be no biological modulators whatsoever regulating those differences. Rockpocket 07:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

But you are right. There are people in between the two models. In fact, I know personally psychiatrist Colin Ross, editor of “Pseudoscience in biological psychiatry” in which, among other things, he debunks the genetic theory of alcoholism. Though Ross is one of the main proponents of the trauma model, he acknowledges the role played by genes (not in alcoholism). We exchanged a couple of e-mails about one of his latest books: “Schizophrenia”, where he recognizes: “Genetic studies showing that while there is genetic connection, it is not prevalent enough for biology to be the only predisposing factor in all cases of schizophrenia”.

But perhaps it’s pointless for a non geneticist like me to continue a discussion with a professional geneticist? I’d rather work from now on to make some modifications in the main Anti-psychiatry page! César Tort 06:25 (UTC) 19 March 2006.


 * True enough, i think our very different perspectives will make it difficult to completelt resove the debate. Moreover, if we spent as much time on the article as we have debating here, it would be in much better shape! Thank you for your insight on the subject though, its certainly been enlightening - and i'm sorry again to hear of the extreme 'treatments' your friends have been subjected to. Rockpocket 07:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Normality and illness judgements
So here is my justification for my major changes to this section: I hope this doesn't ruffle too many feather, and while i'm at it, i'd like to commend Dc and Cesar on your edits over the last few days, i think the article is coming on in leaps and bounds already. Rockpocket 03:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I culled the highly POV text about basing mental illness on societal norms. I may have lost some of nuance about material\financial importance, and if that is deemed specifially important in the movement and someone can work that back in in a NPOV concise manner, then please do so. But as it is, i think it still makes the point about a sanity in a sick society without overkill. I took out the claims about Iraq. It would have been nice to keep that in (otherwise it reads a bit like an extreme theoretical example), but google couldn't find any such allegations in my hands. If anyone can find a source for that then please replace it.
 * The point about hyperfocus a good one, but the problem is that specific term is not used in the scientific community, though the general area is. So making the point that is is not discussed is like saying the scientific community does not mention "arses" in colorectal studies! I tried to change it to illustrate the more relevent point that psychiatrists generally see hyperfocus as a "BAD THING" while it could in fact be considered an useful mental state to be in. I would like a reference for a psychiatrist that thinks there are no positive aspects at all. One may well exist (and if they do, they are clearly insane themselves ;)) but i couldn't find a reference for that. I left that in for the moment, but i'll delete of no-one else can come up with one.
 * The rest was grammer and flow and a few references.

Citation style
Can we start fighting about the single proper citation style to be used in this article yet? --Dcfleck 03:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * And in the blue corner...I'd vote numbered outlinking to a web reference, pdf or pubmed if available, simply because its easier and more interactive. Otherwise Harvard style for non web accesible sources. But thats because i'm lazy. If there is a policy preference we should follow i'll go with that. Rockpocket 04:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Changes in “Origins of anti-psychiatry”
I relentlessly deleted many long-winded phrases and do not have to apologize: they were redundant and beside the point.

The generic name of a drug such as chlorpromazine should not be capitalized (only Thorazine, the commercial name).

I didn’t find in my thick biography of Solzhenitsyn that he was labeled schizophrenic by the Stalinist regime, so I deleted it. If I am wrong please indicate the source.

I deleted the paragraph about Clinical Psychology. In the latest years it has become closer and closer to bio-psychiatry, not to the more humane, psychological alternatives.


 * And this follows from my concern that the listed disciples can work in complete contrast to psychiatry (the anti view), but can also be seen to work in a complementary manner (the psychiatry view). I think we have to be careful to strike a more neutral balance on how we describe the emergence of new fields. Otherwise, with the exception of what Dc pointed out below, i agree with most of your edits. Rockpocket 18:26, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the phrase that traditional religions challenge psychiatry since in my clinical practice I see the opposite: the more religious the school —whether Jewish or Catholic— the more parents want to control or subdue their children with the psychiatric drug Ritalin (or other psycho-stimulants).

Since (I believe) in this article the trauma model must be presented as a more humane alternative to the medical model (i. e., involuntary drugging, ECT or lobotomy) I mentioned non biological psychiatrists by name and completely modified the paragraph in which I mentioned them.


 * Ah, but there's the rub, César -- it's not our job to present either as "more humane". It's Wikipedia policy, when there is a controversial topic such as this, to present descriptions of each side's arguments, not to argue that one is better or worse than the other. Such value judgements are outside our scope. You may regard psychiatry as an abomination, but Wikipedia, by definition, does not. Somebody else somewhere on some other talk page summed it up like this: "Don't try to write The Truth; write 'position X says this is the truth', and leave it at that." --Dcfleck 14:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * OK. I now understand your point!  César Tort 18:06 (UTC)  19 March 2006.

Finally, I added a paragraph about psychohistory, and my referent justifies that addition.

César Tort 09:40 (UTC) 19 March 2006.

Rockpocket: "I deleted the paragraph about Clinical Psychology. In the latest years it has become closer and closer to bio-psychiatry, not to the more humane, psychological alternatives." Wow, what planet are you on. It is incredibly biased of you to take out mention of the development of clinical psychology as an alternative to, and often territorial or theoretical challenger to, psychiatry. It seems to be because you see antipsychiatry as a disreputed anti-establishment unscientific thing, so it doesn't seem right to you for clinical psychology to be linked to it, although you're OK to leave stuff like humanistic approaches (interesting error re. humane). Your justification misses the point made about origins, which are a matter of historical record, and you give an extremely unbalanced and strange misrepresentation of a diverse field generally based on a biopsychosocial approach rather than medical model, even if it often works with the latter and those trained in it. I know this. You're so sure of yourself and how superbly NPOV you are and yet there is no clearer example of your ill-informed POV than this deletion. Your actions continue to be about adding support for psychiatry and reflecting institutional prejudice (whether you feel neutral or not), and to be about deleting rather than clarifying or balancing (which you say you want) valid points in the other direction. I won't bother detailing and sourcing how you're wrong because clearly this is your page to sort out, so rest assured you dont need to cite wikipedia policies or reply with a missing-the-point lecture and a biased selection of sources, but I'm off so feel free to do so anyway. Franzio 10:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * *Deep Breath*. Franzio - the deletion you refer to, and the quote you attribute to me, was actually the work of Cesar (my reponse to that was indented and was actually inspired by some of the same concerns you mention). Thus the personal attack, above, is completely without foundation or justification. Seeing as you are "off", i'll repeat this on your talk page and calmly await an apology. Rockpocket 20:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for patronisingly clarifying that I misread the editor, my apologies - which I would have given anyway without your prompting. My comments still largely apply to you in this case because you replied mentioning something about balance but did not suggest reinserting mention of clinical psychology, and this is indeed now non-existant. You also suggest that it is anti-psychiatry POV to note that the development and expansion of clinical psychology was opposed by the psychiatric establishment.

It seems during this mass overhaul that if anti-psychiatry points are wrongly weakened or deleted this is allowed to happen, but anything going the other way is challenged and scrutinised and carefully reworded. I stand by my accusation that your edits to this page generally represent bias against antipsychiatry and that more care should have been taken over the merciless culling of this page, including by Cesar Tort who has been encouraged in this by you.

Also Rockpocket, regarding misattribution, see above regarding your lack of apology for your prior personal criticism of me that I was hypocritically promoting high school grade genetics, in regard to a section that you described as such but that I had nothing to do with. Along with many other prejudiced assumptions that I was personally responsible for anything wrong on the page (simply because I tried to defend the past work of people whose intentions I could clearly see) in a way that amounted to a sustained personal attack on me and my credentials in this area which I have not been able to get you to stop. I didn't go around accusing you of personal attacks and expecting apologies all over the place, I just tried to clarify and communicate with you, but as I say I shouldn't have bothered. Franzio 08:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, your very gracious apology is accepted. As i said, i'm tired to the finger pointing. Seeing as you haven't actually edited this article for many days - and have repeated and dramatically insisted that you are "leaving Wikipedia" only to return with more false accusations - i'm not sure what the point is of continuing this discussion at any length.
 * I'm going to leave this issue alone, my final words on the subject being that, once again, you should read more carefully before making accusations. If you do, you will notice i never called you or anyone else a "martyr" and i never referred to you as being "hypocritical" or "promoting grade school genetics", simply that editors who were promoting those views would be. If you say you were not promoting those views, then that clearly does not apply to you, if your were then it does. However, that is your judgement to make, not mine, and thus it cannot be a personal attack as i never named you personally. You also conveniently forget that i have three times apologised and expressed my regret if i have offended you. Each time unsolicted, i might add.


 * Lastly, now that i'm being criticised for "suggestions" that i didn't make, after you realised the edits you originally attributed to me were by someone else, it appears to me that your agenda is now not to improve this article but to attack me. Wikipedia is not the forum for that and so i now fully support your intentions to leave for good, so i can get back to the act of editing the article instead of dealing with these distractions. Rockpocket 18:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

If you can resist twisting the knife in further as I'm walking out of the door, I won't need to correct your misrepresentations and finally leave (which, believe me, I very much want to do).

I know you never called me a martyr so I don't know why you raise that - as I told you, I know it was by your colleague Dcfleck re. Cesar Tort on your talk page, and I was just trying to defend him and suggest a better way to approach things (although I was clearly included as guilty by association, because he also discussed with you the need for a better 'set' of editors to be involved and for admin to 'just happen to turn up' some day.)

You are either mis-remembering or lying when you say you were not referring to me with the genetics comment ('normality and illness' 1st section at top) - the reason you called it hypocritical ("i find it highly ironic (not to mention hypocritical) that some editors criticise others for not understanding the complex and subtle issues involved in this article, when they are promoting a grade school view of genetics") was because I had previously ("There are a lot of different, complex, subtle issues involved and it takes a lot to understand this area from all angles and to be NPOV, so we need to work together to achieve it. Franzio 11:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)") suggested that you were acting in relative ignorance of this area which I know intimately and yet taking it over in a mass unilateral tagging and culling. So your failure to apologise for your misattribution is just as I said, and you have failed again to apologise despite expecting it from me.

And I did not 'conveniently forget' anything - your previous comments about your initial entry onto this page were not directly relevant to this so why on earth would I mention it. But in regard to that, yes you apologised and left a really reassuring comment, but then for some reason then just carried on with your culling plans as you had been, so it didn't mean much.

Aside from your clever rhetoric about being accused of suggestions you didn't make (are you sure you're not a politican or spin-doctor?) all I did was stand by my criticism that you have been consistently failing to support antipsychiatry points but supporting propsychiatry points, even if in this case it was bizarrely Cesar Tort's unsigned deletion and you were just going along with it (in line with your view that it is an antipsychiatry POV). So your attempt to trump this up into charges of personal attacking, justifying permanent exclusion from Wikipedia (well done for not citing policies), are just that, trumped up charges. Incidentally I never said I was going 'for good', that seems to be your wishful and frankly rather cruel thinking, given that I'm only leaving because I can't cope with you and the apparent admin support for your 'style'. Franzio.

Unjustified focus on genetic factors
Rockpocket, I have just read your re-written section. You lean toward the bio-psychiatric viewpoint rather than to the critics’ viewpoint.

Since I am not an specialist in this area I urge you to take another look at the work of Jay Joseph. He has not only published the book I called your attention to. His articles on genetic research in psychiatry and psychology have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Developmental Review; The American Journal of Psychology; Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs; Politics and the Life Sciences; The Journal of Mind and Behavior; Psychiatric Quarterly; New Ideas on Psychology; and Ethical Human Sciences and Services (renamed Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry or EHPP). He is currently an Associate Editor of EHPP and an Assessing Editor of The Journal of Mind and Behavior. Jay Joseph has also published another book, "The Gene Illusion: Genetic research in psychiatry and psychology under the microscope".

Joseph is not the only critic of bio-psychiatrists’ genetic theories. But I can summarize, in a nutshell, what I have read in the literature. Scientifically, a pattern of family transmission is neutral with respect to genetic versus environmental etiology. This phrase should appear in an article that is about the critics of mainstream psychiatry, not about the proponents!

César Tort 21:20 (UTC) 19 March 2006.


 * You are very welcome to include that sentence as a viewpoint of a critic if you can source it to Joseph or anyone else for that matter. As i see it, we should state the facts as accepted by mainstream "science" and then how and why the movement opposes them. I have tried to explain elsewhere how genetic association works and how statistical significance means the widely accepted most parsimonious explanation is a genetic influence. One (or a few) critic's views can be used, but do not presume that they represent anything other than a minority POV.


 * Anyway, Its not a case of "leaning towards" any viewpoint, its a case of accurately stating what the different viewpoints are. I may not have stated the anti-psychiatry viewpoint accurately, i admit, but that is because my understanding of anti-psychiatry is probably as limited as your understanding of genetics. If you are able to illustrate that viewpoint better, then please do so. Rockpocket 22:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I added that sentence on your behalf, as i think it makes more sense than the argument that was there (which i instead moved to the biochemical section). However, i'd appreciate it if you would cite one or two of the sources that you mention, in place of the Fact tag, which best sum up that POV. Rockpocket 22:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)