Clinical Psychology Is Dead

[speculumphilosophi]

Which is why I was forced to dig deep into early German wartime research. This research (and also in the USSR) had a big emphasis on genetics. Psychological disorders were studied in depth, and classified, although diagnosis has always been complex.
Modern psychology fell into the trap of Neurodiversity, as if neurological deviations are somehow the same as racial or gender distinctions. This happened I found because psychologists ignored core German research, which addresses the distinctions between personality type and clinical pathology. In fact, the same misunderstanding existed then, as they do today, yet they were basically cleared up.
I haven't encountered a single acclaimed psychologist today whose essays have included early German psychology research, often mixed with genetics. This starts with E. Kretshmer who demonstrated that somatotype and racial heritage influence the types of psychological disorders we get, e.g. manic depressive episodes vs schizoid conditions. This was carefully researched along family lines.
Kretshmer drew up a list of personality types, including the psychopathic personality, although these were not clinical conditions. And that's how the modern Neurodiversity application got misled.
To put it very starkly, we have
(1) Personality type (geek, Peter Parker profile.
(2) Clinical pathologies.
Neurodiversity tends to idealise the former but the success in actual clinical diagnosis has fallen well behind the standards in the 1970s.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 11:32 PM

This from 1925:
"A more precise distinction of the schizoid class (i.e. clinically autistic people) is necessary to distinguish from (1), other pathological syndromes and (2), schizoid type of reaction, as a physiological phenomenon within the range of normality." G.E. Suhareva."

And again here:

"The fact that both of these conceptions are referred to by one term gives rise to major confusion"."

 

[Firetree]

Hmmmmm ... maybe , clinical psychology shies away from this due to it being directly entangled with the Nazi regime’s ideologies of "racial hygiene" (Rassenhygiene), eugenics, and the elimination of genetic defects?


( While Kretschmer originally formulated his somatotype theories in 1921 under the democratic Weimar Republic, his later life and work became heavily compromised by compliance with the Third Reich. )

Ever had yer head measured to see if you are a candidate for a gas oven ?

FFS !

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Yes. this does indeed look like Nazi wish-fulfilment nonsense. I've seen a couple of people on the forum recently spouting this kind of eugenics bollocks. And when you start describing autistic people as "schizoid", well that puts the tin lid on it for me.

 

[HoldAll]

The USSR leaned heavily on Pavlovian psychology and classical conditioning since the communists despised psychoanalysis and related methods as bourgeois. Freud's and other pioneers' being Jewish may have had something to do with it, which it definitely did for the nazis.

Mental pathologies do have a strong hereditary aspect. Forced sterilisation of women and girls with severe psychosocial conditions is still legal under certain conditions in many countries including many US states and 12 EU nations. It was also abused as an eugenics measure, see the Canadian scandal involving the forced sterilisation of thousands of indigenous people. However, the nazis took so-called 'racial purity' to another horrendous level with their

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, and psychiatrists like Kretschmer certainly paved the way for such atrocities.

As a bipolar person on lithium and other psychiatric drugs, I don't feel the need to pussyfoot around the issue. I self-designate as manic depressive and resent the term 'neurodivergent' as a cowardly euphemism for what I've been through in the previous decades - that's me personally and subjectively and doesn't relate to any fellow sufferers. I feel that such a 'polite' concept, as beneficial as it may be for public awareness and acceptance, would trivialise my own horrible experiences.

However, this is not about myself and my own issues. The counterculture of the 1960s and beyond liked to rage against the idea of conforming to societal norms (remember "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"?), the antipsychiatry movement was born, and all and any standards for sanity came into question. Now the pendulum seems to have swung into the same direction again, and suspicious and cynical as I am, I fear that the neurodiversity concept might be abused by society to turn a blind eye to the issue of mental illness yet again, as it always has. Mental illness. There, I said it.

I see the word 'neurodiversity' as an expression of wokeness. I have no problem with wokeness as long as it doesn't result in hypocrisy. It's one thing what psychologists write in their papers and what they think and do in actual practice. As my late doc once said: "Can you hold down a steady job? Can you maintain meaningful relationships? Can you take care of yourself? No to all three? Voilà, you've got a mental problem!", which is what it all boils down to - his students would have been in an uproar at such an oversimplification but nevertheless.

Psychologists don't mention genetics because one, it isn't their field, and two, because psychology is often considered a part of the humanities which don't like determinism. Medical doctors don't care, in their profession determinism works just fine. In my experience, you can run rings around a psychologist, especially in a manic phase, but you can hardly ever fool a psychiatrist (I live in a country with an excellent government-backed healthcare system). Judging from the papers out there, psychologists are quick to jump on the latest fads while psychiatrists are much more careful and, yes, more scientific about their trade.

It's of course both nature AND nurture. Some mental health practitioners tend to stress one or the other aspect for ideological reasons but always at the cost of their success rate. Savvy psychologists know which patients to refer to a psychiatrist as soon as they realise they require medication and want to keep a clean conscience, while sychiatrists would be well advised to send patients who'd like to talk about their issues in more detail to a psychologist.