Description
I must confess I regard EST psychologic/psychiatric training as pseudoscience and truly I hold those who pocket money from TA, EST, Couples Therapy in as little esteem as I do the practitioners of frontal lobotomies, deep sleep therapy, insulin shock therapy, PTZ therapy, electroconvulsive therapy Christian Science, coffee enemas, vegetable smoothies, and "naturopath alternative medicine" in order to be "fully present"; to help their customers "to access their feelings (humanistic orientation), including anger, sadness, joy, and love"; to explore with their customers "how their lives, past, and present (psychodynamic orientation), shape the feelings they experience" and "to choose their meaning (existential orientation) in as full and creative ways as possible." Running past hippie areas of Wailuku, Maui, I saw a sign on a second floor window suggesting one can cure cancer with coffee enemas and by drinking a lot of vegetable smoothies and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). I don't buy a word of it. Appendices 1 through 10 provide a balanced presentation of prefrontal lobotomies, ECT, EST, TA and couples-therapy. A few of these "people of science" acknowledge two things: One, that while antidepressants and other treatments "work," they don't know why they work. And two, that they know very little about the human brain. Psychiatrists with a medical degree and psychologists who did not study long enough to earn one are people who deal with popular hypotheses surrounding intangible phenomena as though they are scientific fact, and their strategy for prescribing opioids and other drugs is basically throwing mud against the wall to see what sticks. Never mind what seems like a high potential to cost people their sanity and even lives. Among my acquaintances, is one annoyingly whiny, and easily able to suck the joy out of just about anything, but she comes across more as "neurotic" than anything else. She worries a lot...which is classified as an "anxiety disorder" in the psychological world. Her shrink changed her medication because another one she was taking wasn't working anymore. "Oh, well she was depressed before she took them, so it merely got worse because the medication wasn't effective for her and it continued to progress. It wasn't the new medication that caused it." She made half-hearted suicide attempts a few times, and in each one of those occurrences, it was when she had started taking antidepressants. After her last one a few years ago, it dawned on her that it was probably the new pills that were making her depressed to that extent. She stopped taking them and hasn't gone into a place that dark since. There seems to be consensus that Electroconvulsive Therapy ECT is a "safe, effective treatment" and that it "works most of the time." Yet the psychiatrists and psychologists have maybe one or two small studies that actually support that, and the studies are contradicted by other studies that show much lower rates of success. Yet they go around stating it as though it is fact. "It works 85% of the time!" Where was this ever established? They try to downplay the memory loss, making claims that it's only temporary and only involves short-term stuff. Yet anywhere on the internet where anyone is asked about their Electroconvulsive Therapy ECT, they almost invariably mention they suffered memory loss, and a large number say it was permanent. And they no longer function at the same level. Yet here we have these "professional men and women of science," who have prescribed pre-frontal lobotomies and Electroconvulsive Therapy ECT proclaiming it is awesome and magical and wonderful, and that the side effects are somehow "minimal." Do they rationalize, who would really want to remember how to speak in basic English? Who would want to remember big moments in their lives? Who would want to have the capacity to remember things someone told you a minute ago, or something you just read (if you can still read) or saw on the television?