1

Hmm, I'm not sure Army Strong is a step up from Army of One. The slogan "Army of One" appealed to you as an individual. Now, we have strength without individuality.

2

I agreed with the Szasz's general thesis in the mid-1970s when I was a practicing clinical psychologist, I agreed with it when I left the profession in disgust for a scientific career, and I agree with it today. Tying this up with the commentary on homosexuality, a simple look at the evolution of the clinical view homosexuality - regardless of one's personal opinion about it - clearly shows that in many cases the diagnostic categories in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are bogus. Malaria was malaria in the 1700s, is malaria today, and will be malaria in 2100 if there are still humans to have it. Many psychiatric "diagnostic" categories have no such objective basis and have always been subject to the political winds.

If you haven't read Szasz and you're interested in mental health, do so. Other interesting old books are Methods of Madness by Braginsky, Braginsky and Ring (1969) and The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, but I forget the author.

The best recent book that should be read by anyone who pays, directly or indirectly, insurance premiums that cover mental health treatment is House of Cards: Psychology and Psychaitry Built on Myth by Robyn Dawes (1994), former president of the American Psychological Association and one of the most brilliant clinical psychologists of the last half-century.

3

Many psychiatrists found [Szasz's] view to be, well, crazy. That view, however, appears to be changing . . .

Not exactly. Szasz's critique was against psychiatry as a profession, in the whole - not schizophrenia as a particular diagnosis. While I suspect there is a much more critical perspective on psychiatry prevalent among philosophers of medicine today than 20 or 40 years ago, Szasz's followers are still few within the profession itself.

The redefinition of schizophrenia, however, is just part of an ongoing process of making psychiatric diagnosis more exact. This project is precisely opposite in perspective to Szasz, who thinks the profession is irredeemable; it has also been going on for a long time, and is not new, and was not prompted by Szasz. The term "schizophrenia" has been gradually narrowing for more than a decade, with more and more-specific diseases identified that were once all classified under the vague, catchall definition of "schizophrenia". The import of the article you quote is that these researchers feel that the remaining content of that category should be reclassified because the term "schizophrenia" is too fraught with old meanings and misconceptions - but they do not deny that there are such things as mental illness at all, or that some of what used to be called "schizophrenia" is, in fact, a form of mental illness that deserves its own diagnosis.

The quote about hallucinations is just odd: of course it's true that delusions and hallucinations may be reactions to troubling events, but often they are not - nobody denies that such signs are real, or are related to mental illness, in many cases.

The more relevant quote from that article is: "['Schizophrenia] groups together a whole range of different problems under one label -- the assumption is that all of these people with all of these different problems have the same brain disease" - and that assumption is what they are fighting by reorganizing the diagnostic categories, not by eliminating the notion of mental illness entirely.

4

"...Szasz's followers are still few within the profession itself."

Well, duh. I also suspect that converts to Allah are few within Christianity itself, or converts to pacifism are few within the infantry itself. We also know that converts to lasciviousness are few within the ranks of the chaste.

The DSM is, by and large, a joke. I have personally reviewed case histories where every single mental health professional, PhDs and MDs all, came up with a different "diagnosis". The DSM exists to have a "diagnostic" category usable by the government and insurance companies for payment. Moreover, the very "well, let's try this..." approach taken to the administration of drugs exemplifies this. With the few exceptions like lithium for bipolar and the SSRI class of drugs for depression, most psychiatric drugs are blunderbuss approaches, with the emphasis on "blunder". It would be funny and amusing to watch if children were not being drugged by the tens of thousands for an idiopathic "disease".

Of course, this all started with that quack Freud (shamans had been interpreting dreams for centuries before he got into the act), and don't get me started on Walter Freeman and his ice pick lobotomies end electroconvulsive therapy (which is still being done today).

Are there lunatics? Yes, of course. Visit San Francisco if you have any doubt. They're begging and threatning passersby everywhere on the street. I refuse to go back and walk through the filth and fight the loons, and I used to love visiting SF. Does psychiatry have an answer, or even the slightest idea what causes all this suffering or how to treat it (except with a chemical sledgehammer upside the ol' noggin)? The short answer is no.

Paul Meehl, co-developer of the MMPI (probably the most widely used statistically validated test in clinical psychology), said "It has ethical implications if I employ a diagnostic procedure which has repeatedly been shown to have negligible validity to make life and death decisions about people and collect the patient's or the taxpayer's dollar for doing so." (1986)

Clinical psychology is so effective that if you recruit a group of college professors not trained in psychology and a group of licensed professionals, assign clients to both groups, and do a followup clinical outcome study, you will find no reliable difference in outcomes between the two groups of "therapists". (Strupp and Hadley, 1979, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1125-1136)

5

Pope Benedict says that limbo does not exist. I’m glad to see that cleared up. Now about purgatory….

I recall having an animated discussion about this with a woman I used to work with. Limbo is interesting to me because it is derived much like an mathematical theorem. Baptized go to heaven but God wouldn't throw innocent souls to damnation therefore babies who don't get to be Baptized cannot go to hell so maybe there's some other place or status for them.

When I read how the Catholic Church confronted this question I was impressed with their answer. Basically they decided God's mercy wins out and condemmed the notion that unbaptized babies were sent to hell. They never actually endorsed Limbo, though. They said that Catholic could believe in it if they wished but there was no definitive answer either way.

Homosexuals
As clichéd as it's become to use the phrase, "love the sinner, hate the sin", this is precisely what it should mean when it comes to homosexuality. There are no "homosexuals"; there are only people who have a homosexual orientation and/or engage in homosexual behavior. We can embrace them fully as persons while rejecting the sinful behavior.

But there is clearly an orientation. A person may be hetrosexual and never engage in hetrosexual sex even once in his lifetime. Yet his attraction towards women impacts his behavior. See for example the Medevil idea of 'courtly love' which never ever actually expressed itself in sex between men and women but was predicated on opposite sex attraction.

Pretending homosexuality doesn't exist or if it does it only exists as a particular kind of 'weakness towards sin' has been shown again and again (Mr. Foley is a prime example) to be a receipe for broken families, self-loathing and destructive behavior.

Shrinks:
Well, duh. I also suspect that converts to Allah are few within Christianity itself, or converts to pacifism are few within the infantry itself. We also know that converts to lasciviousness are few within the ranks of the chaste.

Well yea but certainly while they are taking the position that modern psychology is non-scientific they are NOT arguing that people do not have mental problems and do not need help with them. To argue that hallucinations are always caused by troubling events basically assumes that people suffering from hallucinations need help to deal with them. In fact, that sounds a lot like Freud as opposed to modern psychology that often suspects hallucinations are not caused by bad events or 'repressed memories' but by chemical imbalances in the brain that can be fixed with advanced medication.

6

iMonk weighed in on this issue a while back, too. I don't know Ingrid, don't read her stuff, so I'm taking her quote in isolation--maybe she is a Pharisee, I don't know.

But dealing with just the quote included here, I think she has a point.

Are you (and iMonk) taking the position that the way we dress means nothing? That freedom of expression is total, and we have no obligation to be modest in how we dress? There is plenty of gray in this issue, but I get the sense that you are dismissing her point out of hand. Please clarify.

7

Are you (and iMonk) taking the position that the way we dress means nothing? That freedom of expression is total, and we have no obligation to be modest in how we dress? There is plenty of gray in this issue, but I get the sense that you are dismissing her point out of hand. Please clarify.

I'll let Joe speak for himself but I would say that our dress carries meaning only in the social context in which we present ourselves. A bikini or even going topless may be trivial at a beach (in Europe) but to show up at work in it would be a scandal. In many situations jeans communicate nothing bad but there are still some formal occassions where showing up in them would communicate either contempt for the host or, more likely, indicate that you're a fool.

8

Christian stances toward gay and lesbian people are primarily motivated by prejudice, not love.

"Hate the sin and love the sinner" is no more than an attempt by people who are prejudiced to give themselves some kind of moral cover so they don't have to admit and think of themselves as prejudiced.

The actions and attitudes of Christians toward gay and lesbian people for the last few thousand years have not exactly been full of compassion, understanding, and loving acceptance. Instead its been a history of persecution and hate-filled rhetoric and violence. This continues today. When jerks like Dobson say that marriage is "under attack by the forces of hell itself", we know who he is talking about. In fact hatred of gay people is one of the values many Christians in the US share with Islamists at home and abroad.

So when Christians come around today and claim that they want to show "compassion" toward gay and lesbian people, they are as believable as the President of Iran is when he claims that Iran has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

When Christians have shown, by their actions, not their words, true compassion toward gay and lesbian people for some length of time, say a few thousand years, then, "loving the sinner, hating the sin" may get some traction. Until then its impossible to see it as anything other than a kinder, gentler version of hate.

9

So if I dress up in goth regalia as my everyday attire, am I saying anything meaningful about myself?

10

Speaking of anti-gay prejudiced rhetoric currently broadcast by Christians....

Perkins, FRC:

The ricochets of the Foley scandal continued to whistle overhead this weekend. As a guest on Fox News Sunday I again raised last week's report by CBS's Gloria Borger about anger on Capitol Hill that "'a network of gay staffers and gay members protect[ed] each other and did the Speaker a disservice'" in the Foley scandal. On Friday, an internet site quoted a "gay politico" observing that "[m]aybe now the social conservatives will realize one reason why their agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill." Sunday's New York Times revealed that a homosexual former Clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl, was "among the first to learn of Mr. Foley's" messages to pages. The Clerk's job is described as a "powerful post with oversight of hundreds of staffers and the page program." This raises yet another plausible question for values voters: has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder. This was the first House to pass a pro-homosexual hate crimes bill. The marriage protection amendment was considered very late in the term with no progress toward passage. Despite overwhelming popular approval, the party seldom campaigns as the defender of marriage. The GOP will have to decide whether it wants to be the party that defends the traditional moral and family values that our nation was built upon and directed by for two centuries. Put another way, does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?

Perkins is a bonafide modern-day Witch-Hunter. He obviously lives in what Carl Sagan used to call the "Demon-filled world". Its a place where he feels constantly fearful and threatened. And rather than looking to his own heart for the source of his troubles, he needs to find someone or something he can blame instead.

Everything with him is always somebody elses fault. Is the institution of Marraige in decline? It must be because of the homosexuals. It couldn't possibly be say, the failure of straight people to actually stay married. The fix? Deny homosexuals any recognition whatsoever in civil society. That will fix the marriage problem for sure.

Can't get your poltical agenda through Congress? It couldn't possibly be because your ideas are nuttier than peanut-brittle and that the founding fathers of our country deliberatly placed checks against your particular kind of vengeful populist insanity. No, instead it must be a vast Homosexual Iluminati Cabal pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Where's Lora Croft when you need her eh?

11

Patrick, that's not fair to say that Christians are just motivated by prejudice. We believe God made us and our sexuality to be used in a certain way, and that it's wrong for us to do what he tells us not to. Not only is it morally wrong, it's ultimately harmful to the person, just like every other sin is: lying, adultery, and plain old selfishness aren't fundamentally different.

Proof is usually hard to come by in disputes, but it's easy in this case. There are homosexuals who have renounced homosexual sex because they think it's wrong. Are they prejudiced? It should be obvious that they have done this because they want to do what God wishes, not because they have some kind of prejudicial hostility to homosexuals.

Your statement is actually deeply ironic, because by issuing a blanket denouncement of all Christians as prejudiced and rejecting out-of-hand that their stance is based on their view of God's design, you have revealed that it is your own statement that is motivated by prejudice.

I hope you'll think about these matters with more care. Christian homosexuals who renounce homosexual sex may be sexually ungratified and may have difficulty controlling their desires. But, they live with assurance that it is only a temporary sacrifice, because in the new heaven and earth, all their emotions and inclinations will be renewed to the way God intends them to be, and we will be fully satisfied living the way he created us to.

12

*anything* has to be better than "Army of One"--the world's most amazingly inappropriate, counterproductive, and just plain st00pid slogan.

Cheers,
PGE

13

Actually, the Pope hasn't yet issued a ruling on limbo. Initial reports were inaccurate.

14

Proof is usually hard to come by in disputes, but it's easy in this case. There are homosexuals who have renounced homosexual sex because they think it's wrong. Are they prejudiced? It should be obvious that they have done this because they want to do what God wishes, not because they have some kind of prejudicial hostility to homosexuals.

Indeed there are just as there are plenty of hetrosexuals who have decided to not have sex because they believe it brings them closer to God. While you may reject the Catholic Church's idea of a celebrite clergy choosing a life of chastity has plenty of precedent especially in the early Church.

However the fact is many, many Christians insist on pretending gays do not exist. That it is just a lifestyle choice or nothing more than a weakness to a particular sin. In other words the dominante viewpoint among many Christians is that gays are somehow defective humans for whom it would have been better if they never existed or if they must insist on existed should pretend they are straight and live forever alone.

You're not going to sell the idea of a chaste life to someone when you begin with the premise "I'd rather you not have ever come into existence and it disgusts me to even address you" yet that is the underlying message many Christians send out when they discuss homosexuality.

15

Patrick, that's not fair to say that Christians are just motivated by prejudice. We believe God made us and our sexuality to be used in a certain way, and that it's wrong for us to do what he tells us not to. Not only is it morally wrong, it's ultimately harmful to the person, just like every other sin is: lying, adultery, and plain old selfishness aren't fundamentally different.

Proof is usually hard to come by in disputes, but it's easy in this case. There are homosexuals who have renounced homosexual sex because they think it's wrong. Are they prejudiced? It should be obvious that they have done this because they want to do what God wishes, not because they have some kind of prejudicial hostility to homosexuals.

The reason I think they are prejudiced is because I've never met a Christian who started being prejudiced toward gay people after they had studied Romans whatever.

In other words, if they had never read even a single word of the Bible, they still would have their unfounded and biased negative feelings about gay and lesbian people. That should be a Christian's first clue as to whether their feelings are based on prejudice, or Biblical interpretation of God's law.

And homosexuality is not inherently harmful to any gay or lesbian person. By your reasoning, being black would be inherently harmful to someone. Being black or gay or both is a neutral state.

16

It’s like saying, I’m a member of the KKK, but the ACLU is just so terrible I don’t have any choice!

Uhh, no, it's not at all like that. Because in American politics, there really are only two viable choices, and opposition to one often really does amount to implicit support for the other in practical terms.

Further, the author is making the comparison as if to say the Democrats are far worse than the Republicans on the issue, which may be true if your only concern is the legality of the issues in question. But on abortion, for example, the actual incidence of abortion experienced its sharpest drop under Democratic control, in the mid-1990's.

17

Thanks for the plug, Joe.

As for the critique offered by the fellow above, I think we can spot a problem.

Okay, so abortion dropped during Bill Clinton's reign. This would be what is called co-variation. A Democrat was in the White House. Abortion dropped. Question: Can you show any causation to explain the covariation?

Exactly what actions did Clinton take to reduce the number of abortions? Last I recall, he was busy vetoing partial birth abortion restrictions, so he wasn't cutting down on those. I can't think of anything else he did to cut down on abortions. He didn't pass his health care legislation and welfare numbers actually went down when he signed GOP legislation to reform welfare. What's the causation between Clinton and reduced abortion?

A far better explanation would be that the pro-life movement (and ultra-sound technology) was finally getting its message through the public and was actually changing minds about abortion.

18

Exactly what actions did Clinton take to reduce the number of abortions? Last I recall, he was busy vetoing partial birth abortion restrictions, so he wasn't cutting down on those. I can't think of anything else he did to cut down on abortions. He didn't pass his health care legislation and welfare numbers actually went down when he signed GOP legislation to reform welfare. What's the causation between Clinton and reduced abortion?

Since nearly half of abortions are due to improper use of birth control an open stance in favor of contraception education probably helps the abortion rate go down. I believe the data shows that some East European nations that legalized both birth control and abortion at the same time (under communism their leaders outlawed both thinking the route to power was to pump up the population) abortion rates actually fell.

A far better explanation would be that the pro-life movement (and ultra-sound technology) was finally getting its message through the public and was actually changing minds about abortion.

Probably not unless you mean the harassment of doctors made it more difficult to find abortion providers in many areas. I suspect demographics here probably trumped political action. As the population gets a bit older they tend to be more responsible about sex for obvious reasons...plus they also become less fertile so even when they aren't pregnancy results less often. The fear of AIDS and the drive for safe sex probably also had the side effect of reducing many unintended pregnancies.

Many people noticed that oral sex and other types of non-intercourse sexual activity became very popular especially among the young in the 90's. Some snidely argued this was due to the Clinton-Monica nonsense ('cause teens just love to watch CSPAN that much). More likely it was probably due to that fact that oral sex works nicely to get people off with zero risk of pregnancy and greatly reduced risk of STDs.

19

Tgirsch But on abortion, for example, the actual incidence of abortion experienced its sharpest drop under Democratic control, in the mid-1990's.

Hunter is right. Abortion has been dropping for more than 20 years. If you want to say that the “sharpest drop” occurred under Clinton than you could also say that the total rate has been the lowest under Bush. Neither, in my opinion, deserves credit for it, though, since there is little correlation between their policies and abortion.

http://www.factcheck.org/article330m.html

20

the stupidity of a comment like Tgirschs' is all too common. But what can you expect from someone who is on the side of politics as religion? Dems and liberals have been constantly pointing at Clinton for good things that happened during his administration when most of those good things happened spite of him. They believe in "good government" rather than government as a necessary evil and it leads people, who appear to be intelligent, like tgirsch and Boonton, to also appear stuck on stupid.

21

Why so much hate jd? It's almost as if you have made the Republican Party your religion and GW Bush as your savior. Certainly your life can't be that pathetic, can it?

Anyway speaking of giving themselves credit for good things that happen during their administration I saw Bush patting himself on the back because gas prices were going down! Sad. I thought I was quite open in explaining why I thought most of the decline in abortion rates was due to non-policy factors during the Clinton administration.

22

Also even sadder is the pathetic attempts to credit this administration with anything good that happens (low gas prices) but then blame Clinton for anything bad that happens no matter how squarely on Bush's watch (Korea).

23

Hunter:
Exactly what actions did Clinton take to reduce the number of abortions? Last I recall, he was busy vetoing partial birth abortion restrictions, so he wasn't cutting down on those.

Taking the latter remark first, I thought it was we liberals who assume the way to solve problems is by passing legislation and increasing government oversight, not you conservatives. Worldwide statisics consistently fail to show any correlation whatsoever between the legality of abortion and the incidence of abortion. People who want abortions will get them, legal or not.

As to the former, as has been pointed out, promotion of comprehensive sex education comes to mind. So does support of legislation expanding access to birth control, including requiring contraceptives to be covered under federal employee health plans.

Joe:
Abortion has been dropping for more than 20 years. If you want to say that the “sharpest drop” occurred under Clinton than you could also say that the total rate has been the lowest under Bush.

In this case, we're both right. The abortion has been dropping for more than 20 years. The sharpest drop did come during the Clinton administration, while the Democrats also controlled the house (despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about lax morality at the time). And the rate is now even lower than it was at any point during the Clinton administration. But it's also true that as the Bush administration and the Republican congress have railed against abortion and sex education, the rate of decline in the abortion rate has flattened significantly.

On the FactCheck article, perhaps I was unclear, but I never stated nor meant to imply that the abortion rate increased under the current administration. And if you click through from your FactCheck link to the cited AGI study, you'll see that what I'm saying here is correct, at least statistically.

jd:
Dems and liberals have been constantly pointing at Clinton for good things that happened during his administration when most of those good things happened spite of him.

You're mistaking me for a big Clinton fan. I wasn't at the time, and even with my rose colored glasses on now, I'm only lukewarm for him. As to your allegation, I'd like to enter into evidence the conservative/Republican deification of Reagan.

Also, what Boonton said.

24

Here's something new: Conservative calls liberals stupid (after stipulating their intelligence) based on stupid statement. Liberal accuses conservative of hatred. You just can't help yourself, can you, Boonton?

Even if I accept as fact that Bush was patting himself on the back for lower gas prices (which I doubt), I really can't blame him for it. You see, Karl Rove told him that 22.4 percent of Democrats actually believe that the president controls gas prices (It worked for Clinton, right?). It's just not that hard to get a sizable number of Dems to vote for you, if you're willing to take credit for something for which you have no reason to take credit.

Of course, we all know that Bush really does control gas prices, because he's an oil man and Cheney's an oil man and Halliburton and the Carlyle Group and the New World Order and ...it's really hard to get a grip on what that damn Bush admininstration is up to. It's enough to make an intelligent liberal say something stupid.

25

Here's something new: Conservative calls liberals stupid (after stipulating their intelligence) based on stupid statement. Liberal accuses conservative of hatred. You just can't help yourself, can you, Boonton?

No I just called you stupid and full of hatred.

26

Race and sexual behaviour are not comparable things. Thats like saying that being Asian is the same as being a rapist. Er...no.

Sexual behaviour is never nuetral.

27

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