I do not have a lot of faith in the profession of psychiatry. I am familiar with the work of Jung, and only somewhat with Freud, and I regard them both as brilliant men and trailblazers. Freud came to the conclusion that children abused before the age of five would not remember that abuse even as it affected them for life. I think that is a brilliant insight.

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is taken from the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition. I am somewhat confident that it is a real thing, and in fact have a been exposed to it both at work and in my personal life. However, psychiatrists are pill dispensers first, diagnosticians second, and the DSM contains hundreds of disorders that have been voted on by members of the profession. I don’t buy that, don’t buy any of it, don’t imagine that there is ADD or defiant personality disorder or anything else. There are just people in pain.

Continue reading “Psychiatry: a useless profession” →

Two years ago in March I was on a bird walk with a group of people, and was just coming to grasp the intensity of the propaganda storm that was coming our way. I still believed in “viruses” per se, but not in Sars-Cov-2 and said as much as I walked along with the group leader.

He said “Are you a scientist then?” He was implying that mere mortals were not qualified to express any doubt about “scientists.” I was not prepared for that question, and my “No” response cost me the argument. I was flummoxed.

I haven’t watched news for decades, but I do know that news readers emphasize that certain people they interview are “experts.” What does the word even mean?

That’s the official definition. But I don ‘t think that is how the word is used in practice. In real life, I think the definition of “expert” is as follows:

A person whose opinion relieves all others of the need to think.

That is how experts are used in the news media. They don’t bring in experts to clarify, as in any matter of complexity, there are going to be differing views. Then, as with Dilbert above, it is up to us to decide which expert to trust.

Continue reading “Expert texpert” →