On Paul Minot: How Psychiatry Lost Its Mind...and Where It Might Be Found

Notes- [in progress]

p. 2: "How much medical knowledge could we really have about psychiatric disorders, if we have no scientific understanding of how healthy thoughts and feelings are generated?

p. 3: ...a pattern of signs and symptoms.....In the absence of any known cause maladies are referred to as "disorders"- as are all of psychiatry's diagnoses. Without a definitive cause to identify and correct, disorders often lack any definitive treatment."

These are symptoms, as is "congestion," with various causes.

p. 27 The trouble is that the mind or soul is not entirely observable- "science" rest on assumptions that are not established by science- such as the value of science. How will one establish by science that the end or goal of psychiatry is to "understand" our patients, not to medicate them, "to promote their own understanding of themselves?" (p. x).

p. 26: Science, then is not necessarily "dedicated to destroy faith" because faith is a contaminant in the scientific process." Though OUR science may well be so designed. This is a long topic, because "faith" first appears inseparable from tradition, which is upheld by the preambles to the laws, the account of the cosmos that supports the law- and this account as it is received in its imaginary or poetic form is refuted by the appeal to nature.

Epistemology: I am again impressed with this:

"...truth can often be difficult to discern. But an untruth is easier to detect, as long as you keep your eyes and mind opento the possibilites. I cannot possibly tell you the whole truth of psychiatry, because much of it remains a mystery beyond our comprehension But I am very sure about the untruths that have driven me to the task of writing this book" (p. 10).

What we have are hypotheses. One can know what follows from first principles, by logic. And one can know when a thing is false, a refutation, as by a single example, such as a black swan. But the first principles are simply seen- they are the conclusions of deductions nor are they known by induction. Socrates and Karl Popper agree on something that is the basis of dialectis- the true precursor of scientific method, because knowledge grows by conjecture and refuration. Science is based upon all sorts of assumptions regarding the what and functions of things- and men- that simply cannot be known by data, because it is not percieved by the senses at all, but by the mind. How these hypotheses are or are not related to physical science- does the invisible soul not have a nature?- must be addressed to include or exclude psychiatry as a science.

What we have are questions, and as when a thing is refuted, we do know something, the questions are said to be solicited by what is, and to presuppose knowledge. We know all sorts of things, it seems without knowing that we know, what we know oor when we know,. When one gazes on a question or problem, the and CARES, the mind of itself produces hypothesis- to our great delight, but we do not even make these hypotheses intentionally. Shakespeare did not create the genius of Shakespeare, as Strauss said. The causes of the human must be higher than that mind, as nothing- especially not order and meaning- can come from nothing.

A true hypothesis cannot be refuted, nor can a false hypothesis be truly proven or demonstrated. Reductionist science likes to exclude unrefutable hypotheses, but as said, find it must proceed on the basis of unprovable hypotheses. Our psychiatry gets its assumptions from outside the science- from either common sense, tradition, a philosophic ethics or fashionable opinion. One favorite of mine is: What if justice is, or is necessary to the health of the soul? And we do not know what justice is? It will be odd to say that the knowledge of the health of the soul is outside the science, but the hypothesis is not refutable because it is true in some sense- if we are left to find that sense.

Our psychology and psychiatry cannot study the ends of man, but produced methods and means to one assumed goal after another, technologies" (p. 28-28), one method after another, some useful in the pursuit of any goals what- tyranny as in Russian psychiatry, wealth or power, etc. The behaviorism of B.F. Skinner was such a means or instrument useful in this servile "science." Each psychologist makes a different method- psychoanalysis, analytic psychiatry, E.S.T. etc, to attain a vague and unexamined goal self esteem, wholeness, self actualization, openness, or something of the sort, yet new a different from the last. The eclecticism and theoretical weakness of humanistic psychology has left psychiatry prey the new movement of neuro-pharmacological psychiatry- therapy is simply too expensive and time consuming. In the past, psychiatry was skewed by the practical truth that only the suburban upper middle class and the rich could afford "therapy," a word comes from a purging. [The two ways of addressing the passions are by a purging and by character formation.] The epidemic of suicides is already far beyond what can be practically treated with counselling. A further problem is that those capable of the study seem to be far fewer than medical doctors- who are always in peak demand.