The tragedy that Rachel Aviv documents is still ongoing.
In a recent long article, the Guardian UK newspaper, excerpts from Rachel Aviv’s book were printed. The tragedy she describes is still ongoing. My comments follow below.
Forty years ago, Dr Ray Osheroff sued a US hospital for failing to give him antidepressants. The case would change the course of medical history – even if it couldn’t help the patient himself.
by Rachel Aviv
Adapted from Strangers to Ourselves: Stories of Unsettled Minds by Rachel Aviv, published by Harvill Secker on 20 October and available at guardianbookshop.co.uk
The tragedy that Rachel Aviv documents is still ongoing.
Damage is continuing to be done by both sides. The DSM-III which, in 1980, so clearly demarcated the divorce between talk-therapy and drugs, continues to dominate, and to distort mental health. The stories of drug damage are legion, and generally ignored. Iatrogenic disease mounts, from ADHD onwards. The divorce is now between dyed in the wool doctors, born and bred to drugs, and the majority of patients who would prefer a way out of their emotional problems without having to recourse to chemicals.
Two points strike me – first – ‘The medical director of the APA declared that the new DSM represented a triumph of “science over ideology”.’ Both patients and doctors still suffer grievously from this abuse of ideology for ideology’s sake.
Secondly – “Perhaps the only improvement was Ray’s portrait of his own father, who had been absent in early drafts. Now he revealed that his father may have abused him.” My experience of trauma, and child abuse, would indicate that this was the one stone left unturned. It could not be addressed either by the patient himself, nor by the psychoanalysts who treated him initially. Freud himself had no resolution for abuse by fathers – as Alice Miller pointed out. So those sticking most tightly to Freud, miss the point too. Those swallowing pills ignore it entirely, on principle.
My problem is that having found a practical workaround, over the decades, my position falls foul of both schools. My hope is that by establishing a position of some eminence in a parallel field, perhaps in education or prions, then this more balanced way through might gain wider credence. Meanwhile, there is no meeting of minds.
There can be no question that trauma plays a key role in psychiatry – but it has yet to establish itself, or even dent either of the two well established schools of thought, so tragically, and inconclusively portrayed here. This contention is something which is ongoing, and likely to remain so.
Tuesday, 11 October 2022
Professor Bob Johnson,
MRCPsych MRCGP MA (Psychol), PhD(med computing), MBCS, DPM, MRS
Dept of Education & Psychology
University of Bolton, BL3 5AB, UK.
e-mail DrBob@TruthTrustConsent.com www.DrBobJohnson.org
GMC speciality register for psychiatry reg. num. 0400150
PO Box 5609, MANCHESTER, M61 0WH, UK.