It sounds to me as if the therapy isn’t working. Maybe it’s time to try something else, getting an effing life maybe?
Ottokring
16 days ago
Oy vay
Tanya Gold is part of that Special Breed : Jewish ( usually American ) women who make a living out of telling us about their angsts and hang ups. Her Speccie columns were all in this vein.
Ruby Wax is another, but at least she’s funny with it.
She can actually write when she gets out of her own way but most of it is narcissistic neurotic wibbling.
Marius
15 days ago
He stops the interview after 12 minutes and asks that we begin again
I am sure the good doctor has made a very comfortable living out of his racket but can you imagine how tedious it must be to spend your career listening to self-obsessed dullards?
Yep. I thought of my poor music teacher stuck with giving my sorry ass lessons my parents INSISTED I take. 45 minutes a week of me hacking around with a coronet.
He didn’t argue with my parents. He took the money.
rhoda klapp
15 days ago
I’m posting a link to utube. I know most people don’t click on links, but this one is worth it. All you need to know about analysis in six minutes. Click it, yo will not be sorry.
That’s very good and reminded me of the story of the hairdryer told by Scott Alexander, formerly Slate Star Codex.
TLDR:
High powered woman has obsessive compulsion about leaving her hair dryer on at home, so bad that she has to keep driving home to see if it is off. It’s destroying her career and life. After much failed treatment young psychiatrist suggests she takes it with her and that’s enough to return her life to some normality.
Cue big dispute in psychiatry:
And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?
I always remember the scene in ‘Frasier’ where Daphne, Frasier’s father’s physio, says: ” It’s not like I’m a psychiatrist where it doesn’t matter if my patients never get better…”
Dunno about the genuinely mentally ill, but for the unhappy, worried well the purpose of therapy is to put your feelings into context and teach you those coping mechanisms. If you learn and apply them, many actually work.
For this to happen the therapist actually has to know what they’re talking about, and not just be full of mystical shit. This is rare.
As long as we’re running with the Granny Weatherwax form of witchcraft, yes. Works too.
On the actual drugs and needs bit I defer to Steve. Tanya is whingeing about how life ain’t perfect, which is a very, very, different thing. I’ve had the glums, which is just a part of life. An uncle was schizophremic, a cousin is currently in his third (at least) visit from the Black Dog. Both entirely, wholly different from the glums. As Steve says, drugs are great for real problems. The others, well, life eh?
Grikath
15 days ago
And in 30 years of therapy no-one has ever said to this ….female…. :
“Sorry, m’dear… The problem is *you* … You’re just an endless neurotic whinger..”
No psychiatrist has any incentive to ‘cure’ their meal tickets patients. Just as you should never ask a barrister “Do you think I have a case?”
dearieme
15 days ago
His photo: he looks like the sort of chap who, in an earlier generation, would have been a Soviet spy.
dearieme
15 days ago
One of the great mysteries in life is the wisdom of the Man in the Pub. On Economics, his wisdom is typically zero – which is odd because he necessarily has lots of experience in an economy.
But on Psychiatry his wisdom is complete – he rejects it entirely, viewing it as bogus and exploitative. Yet his experience of it is almost always non-existent.
One of the great mysteries in life is the wisdom of the Man in the Pub. On Economics, his wisdom is typically zero – which is odd because he necessarily has lots of experience in an economy.
I’d still give the Man in the Pub points over most economists.
The Original Jim
15 days ago
The older I get the more I think the Stoics had it right. Life is hard, deal with it.
Well you’re going to have to stop doing that, pet, because he isn’t your estranged father. Nor are all other men. Get over it. He’s not coming back. Move on. That’ll be 25 guineas.
More money than sense, as my dear old Mum used to say.
philip
15 days ago
Back in the day (1950s?) psychiatry was a dying profession and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was a slim volume. Consulting a shrink was a passtime restricted mainly to rich New York jews.
Then psychoactive drugs were invented and all sorts of new conditions appeared, treatable with drugs. OCD, bulimia, anorexia, gender dysphoria etc.
Now you can’t throw a half brick down a hospital corridor without hitting a psychiatrist and the DSM is a door stopper.
Stop it! Save the NHS!
Well, it worked with school leaving age. After the baby boom recruited more teachers, the boom passed, we don’t need as many teachers, but We’ve Got To Save Our Jobs! Increase school leaving age to 16. And then again 15 years ago, school-age population is dropping, We’ve Gert To Save Our Jerbs! increase school leaving age to 18. Now there’s moves to preserve the jobs, ahem, extend compulsary education to 21.
Grok, how many state mental hospitals did Britain have in 1950?
How many now?
Psychiatry is a valid field of medicine, even though it struggles with the slipperiest of intangibles. But a talking cure and bum drugs is better than no cure or bum drugs. But if you’ve ever tried benzodiazepines, they are incredible. Just very moreish and a bitch to get off. SS and SN RIs are the usual long term prescriptions.
Not that either trick cyclists or pharma offer a cure, they give you a coping mechanism. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together to use whatever coping mechanisms can get us through this thing called life.
How did my grandfather’s generation deal with mental elf? It was social death and family shame to be committed to a mental institution. Yet every big town had a loony bin. Most people treated their WW2 PTSD or depression or anxiety with heavy drinking. Healthy?
Those suffering from shell-shock in 1917 were invalided to Blighty and the ones who didn’t recover in a mainstream hospital ended up in a loony bin. I don’t think they were concerned about “social death”.
I was reading a record of a man invalided in 1914 with shell shock. Spent 3 months in loony bin in Newcastle. Resumed his army career ( but as B class so he couldn’t fight at the front ).
I think it was Virginia Bottomley who closed the bins.
We had two big hospitals in Tooting for nutters : one is now an industrial estate, the other became aTescos.
Bloke in South Dorset
14 days ago
Tanya’s OK.
Know her slightly (friend of a friend sort of thing, meet her occasionally).
She’s no more insane than the average middle-class university-educated woman (and less so than the average North London version of the species).
It’s just that female journalists tend to write about themselves (even when they’re ostensibly writing about something else), so their insane side is on full view.
It sounds to me as if the therapy isn’t working. Maybe it’s time to try something else, getting an effing life maybe?
Oy vay
Tanya Gold is part of that Special Breed : Jewish ( usually American ) women who make a living out of telling us about their angsts and hang ups. Her Speccie columns were all in this vein.
Ruby Wax is another, but at least she’s funny with it.
Talk to the couch ‘cos the face ain’t listening.
She can actually write when she gets out of her own way but most of it is narcissistic neurotic wibbling.
I am sure the good doctor has made a very comfortable living out of his racket but can you imagine how tedious it must be to spend your career listening to self-obsessed dullards?
My best friend has done that. It’s turned him into an affluent, deeply cynical Corbynista. Both of his kids are “queer”. Funny old world.
Yep. I thought of my poor music teacher stuck with giving my sorry ass lessons my parents INSISTED I take. 45 minutes a week of me hacking around with a coronet.
He didn’t argue with my parents. He took the money.
I’m posting a link to utube. I know most people don’t click on links, but this one is worth it. All you need to know about analysis in six minutes. Click it, yo will not be sorry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5nvQ1Pdhw
Oh brilliant!
What a genius that man was.
That’s very good and reminded me of the story of the hairdryer told by Scott Alexander, formerly Slate Star Codex.
TLDR:
High powered woman has obsessive compulsion about leaving her hair dryer on at home, so bad that she has to keep driving home to see if it is off. It’s destroying her career and life. After much failed treatment young psychiatrist suggests she takes it with her and that’s enough to return her life to some normality.
Cue big dispute in psychiatry:
Full story, which isn’t too long:
https://benedante.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-hair-dryer-incident.html
You remind me of my whining to my doctor many years ago that my knees were starting to ache when I put my pants on.
He just said ‘Put them on sitting down!!’
Tommy Cooper: “Doctor, it hurts when I raise my arm like that.”
Doctor: “Well, don’t raise your arm like that.”
Or wear shorts instead.
He should have suggested you wear a skirt. (Or kilt).
Thank you Charles!!!
I have been in therapy for 30 years
I always remember the scene in ‘Frasier’ where Daphne, Frasier’s father’s physio, says: ” It’s not like I’m a psychiatrist where it doesn’t matter if my patients never get better…”
I got the feeling the main role of psychiatrists is to let you down gently, that there is no cure. Only coping mechanisms.
But why do you feel that is?
Dunno about the genuinely mentally ill, but for the unhappy, worried well the purpose of therapy is to put your feelings into context and teach you those coping mechanisms. If you learn and apply them, many actually work.
For this to happen the therapist actually has to know what they’re talking about, and not just be full of mystical shit. This is rare.
Much therapy is just witchcraft in an office setting. Also, it only works if you believe it, like Scientology.
As long as we’re running with the Granny Weatherwax form of witchcraft, yes. Works too.
On the actual drugs and needs bit I defer to Steve. Tanya is whingeing about how life ain’t perfect, which is a very, very, different thing. I’ve had the glums, which is just a part of life. An uncle was schizophremic, a cousin is currently in his third (at least) visit from the Black Dog. Both entirely, wholly different from the glums. As Steve says, drugs are great for real problems. The others, well, life eh?
And in 30 years of therapy no-one has ever said to this ….female…. :
“Sorry, m’dear… The problem is *you* … You’re just an endless neurotic whinger..”
No psychiatrist has any incentive to ‘cure’ their
meal ticketspatients. Just as you should never ask a barrister “Do you think I have a case?”His photo: he looks like the sort of chap who, in an earlier generation, would have been a Soviet spy.
One of the great mysteries in life is the wisdom of the Man in the Pub. On Economics, his wisdom is typically zero – which is odd because he necessarily has lots of experience in an economy.
But on Psychiatry his wisdom is complete – he rejects it entirely, viewing it as bogus and exploitative. Yet his experience of it is almost always non-existent.
Nowt so queer as folk.
That is *why* his experience of it is non-existent.
One of the great mysteries in life is the wisdom of the Man in the Pub. On Economics, his wisdom is typically zero – which is odd because he necessarily has lots of experience in an economy.
I’d still give the Man in the Pub points over most economists.
The older I get the more I think the Stoics had it right. Life is hard, deal with it.
Unfortunately one of the current fashions is for ‘Stoic’ therapists:
https://aureliusfoundation.com/stoic-wellbeing-individuals/
I am projecting my estranged father on to him
Well you’re going to have to stop doing that, pet, because he isn’t your estranged father. Nor are all other men. Get over it. He’s not coming back. Move on. That’ll be 25 guineas.
Oh, it’s Tanya Gold. Silly fat lefty. Hardly surprising.
More money than sense, as my dear old Mum used to say.
Back in the day (1950s?) psychiatry was a dying profession and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was a slim volume. Consulting a shrink was a passtime restricted mainly to rich New York jews.
Then psychoactive drugs were invented and all sorts of new conditions appeared, treatable with drugs. OCD, bulimia, anorexia, gender dysphoria etc.
Now you can’t throw a half brick down a hospital corridor without hitting a psychiatrist and the DSM is a door stopper.
Stop it! Save the NHS!
“psychiatry was a dying profession”: I’ve recently seen a similar argument for gender dysphoria – invented to save psychiatrists from ruin.
Well, it worked with school leaving age. After the baby boom recruited more teachers, the boom passed, we don’t need as many teachers, but We’ve Got To Save Our Jobs! Increase school leaving age to 16. And then again 15 years ago, school-age population is dropping, We’ve Gert To Save Our Jerbs! increase school leaving age to 18. Now there’s moves to preserve the jobs, ahem, extend compulsary education to 21.
Grok, how many state mental hospitals did Britain have in 1950?
How many now?
Psychiatry is a valid field of medicine, even though it struggles with the slipperiest of intangibles. But a talking cure and bum drugs is better than no cure or bum drugs. But if you’ve ever tried benzodiazepines, they are incredible. Just very moreish and a bitch to get off. SS and SN RIs are the usual long term prescriptions.
Not that either trick cyclists or pharma offer a cure, they give you a coping mechanism. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together to use whatever coping mechanisms can get us through this thing called life.
How did my grandfather’s generation deal with mental elf? It was social death and family shame to be committed to a mental institution. Yet every big town had a loony bin. Most people treated their WW2 PTSD or depression or anxiety with heavy drinking. Healthy?
Those suffering from shell-shock in 1917 were invalided to Blighty and the ones who didn’t recover in a mainstream hospital ended up in a loony bin. I don’t think they were concerned about “social death”.
No, they wouldn’t be. It’s other people who judged.
Mostly wrongly
Earlier even.
I was reading a record of a man invalided in 1914 with shell shock. Spent 3 months in loony bin in Newcastle. Resumed his army career ( but as B class so he couldn’t fight at the front ).
I think it was Virginia Bottomley who closed the bins.
We had two big hospitals in Tooting for nutters : one is now an industrial estate, the other became aTescos.
Tanya’s OK.
Know her slightly (friend of a friend sort of thing, meet her occasionally).
She’s no more insane than the average middle-class university-educated woman (and less so than the average North London version of the species).
It’s just that female journalists tend to write about themselves (even when they’re ostensibly writing about something else), so their insane side is on full view.
“She’s no more insane than the average middle-class university-educated woman”
Thats a pretty high bar there, coming underneath it isn’t exactly that difficult.