To those who questioned this statement of mine, I will clarify what I meant. I didn’t say the SDMB was anti-intellectual. Of course, it isn’t. The SDMB is a hotbed of ideas and many posters are indeed authentic intellectuals who give a lot of thought to their extremely articulate posts. (You know who you are.) I said an anti-intellectual bias runs through the board.
I’m using the term “anti-intellectual” as a thing in itself, defined thusly:
This attitude is illustrated here:
and here
and here
I welcome the fact that professionals and professional organizations are abandoning timidity WRT to the atrocity occurring in the White House, ceasing to mince words, and using clear language instead of euphemisms.
I think this book is comparable to this press release put out by several well-known health care organizations opposing the Graham-Cassidy bill:
I think there is a significant difference between a group of people specifically selected to represent the larger body of their fellow professionals and a group that is self-selected and doesn’t represent anything other than themselves. No?
You didn’t give a link to that quote, so maybe I’m missing something that I would get by reading the whole thing, but that’s my take.
I’m also not clear, even with your (ThelmaLou’s) re-clarification of “anti-intellectual” what you mean by “anti-intellectual” in this case. Could you give a definition? At the moment, it just seems to be “that thing y’all are doing that I don’t appreciate”.
Thanks. I think I was judging it correctly, then. Those folks represent the AMA, among other associations. Do you honestly not see a difference between them and some self-selected group of folks who represent no one but themselves? They are easily dismissed as a tiny minority of health professionals who may or may not reflect the general thinking of those in that profession. That is not to say that they are wrong, but it is to say there isn’t a good way to determine if they are right. Where “right” means what the profession, as a whole, agrees to be a good assessment.
Considering that in my country during the 1920s and 30s the psychiatric profession used to commit simple girls who got pregnant for up to 40 years in institutions *; and that their American brothers considered homosexuality a mental disorder; and that their Soviet brothers put dissidents away for shock treatment, it is difficult to retain much respect for the dignity of psychiatry.
As a child I met one of the ladies, then released in her 70s.
More, that like the Catholic Church, they change their opinions with the tide, and sincerely regret their past persecutions. Until the next time they get the chance to exercise their muscles.
And how is dissing poor old Donnie, ‘doing the right thing’ in compensation for 150 years of institutional abuse ?
I think it’s possible to believe that formally diagnosing Trump from a distance is a bad idea, yet at the same time have a sneaking suspicion that the diagnosis is correct and evidence-based.
As my own example of such evidence, I’d like to present a complete list of the tweets Trump issued in support of Strange, but while I saw a nice clean collection of them a while ago, I can’t find them now, so you’ll just have to take my word for it: there were something like 5 or 6 tweets in all, and of them, 2 or 3 were self-aggrandizement, not actual support of Strange - along the lines of “Strange is doing better in the polls because I, Trump, have supported him.”
That kind of objectively verifiable behavior makes Trump, in the vernacular, an ego-maniac. Can professionals assess the same data set and write up an official diagnosis? Sure they can. I don’t see how it is necessarily helpful to do so, but it’s hard to believe they are totally wrong, and deriding the entire discipline of psychology isn’t an effective rebuttal.
I know, but I can’t bring myself to do anything that resembles looking directly at his twitterfeed…I’m such a delicate snowflake that I need a mediating layer (pun unintended, but apt) between me and the Cheeto from Hell.
I’m not sure it’s “helpful” to do so except insofar as (IMHO) it’s better for people to speak their opinions out loud in public as these professionals have done than it is to skulk around in private saying the President is an embarrassment, clueless, uninformed, stupid, and dangerous while still making excuses for him and supporting him in public, as Pubs in Congress have done.
P.S. “Deriding the entire discipline of psychology” is an example of anti-intellectualism. However, I’m not interested in beating that dead horse. Take what you like and leave the rest. I wanted to make people aware of the book. Mission accomplished.
No. Psychology is guesswork and is not backed by science like, say, oncology or podiatry. The fact that it can be used in partisan political attacks prove that The field is problematic. And attacking it is not anti-intellectualism.
There is no person one would sooner have for one’s own psychiatrist than someone who speaks out aloud about an individual’s mental problems unasked.
Admiration, or ‘intellectualism’ in the OP’s unique view, of psychiatry seems reminiscent of the times between the 20’s and the 50’s, when a horde of chalatans like Humbert Humbert emerged from Europe to persuade Americans their own discipline, be it stringing tin-cans in a collage or machines to collect spiritual energy, had value — equivalent at least to America’s own lunacies, such as the Funeral Industry.
Correction: SOME aspects of psychology are guesswork, but plenty of branches rely on experimental rigor and evidence (read any neuropsychology journals lately?). Psychology as a whole may lag behind other “medical” fields, but before you dismiss it as unworthy of further development, remember it wasn’t that long ago that doctors attributed illnesses to imbalances in the four humors.
The fact that psychology can be used in partisan political attacks doesn’t prove that the field is “problematic.” Much hard science can be legitimately pressed into service for partisan political attacks; the discussion of climate change is an obvious example. If I attack a politician whose policies I’d like to fight by employing scientific fact in the service of what I believe, that doesn’t make the science any less true or objective.