1/ One of the most powerful constructs I know: supervenience. It explains why knowledge at one level of analysis can be irrelevant at another. For example: When you watch a movie on a screen, you are seeing arrangements of pixels. The movie is 100% dependent on pixels and
2/ cannot exist apart from them. But knowledge of pixels is irrelevant to understanding a movie. We can know everything there is to know about pixeIs and have no concept of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and their battle between good &. evil. Movie SUPERVENES on pixels.
3/ Likewise, mind supervenes on brain. Mind depends on brain and cannot exist apart from it. But it does not follow that knowledge of brain helps is knowledge of mental life & emotional life. They are different levels of analysis requiring different concepts and methods.
4/ NIMH, under direction of Tom Insel—whose own research background was vole brains—made assumption that all mental suffering is "brain disease”& neurobiology will unlock cure for all manner of mental & emotional suffering. They bet farm on this & failed spectacularly.
5/ Now Insel says, “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on neuroscience and while I succeeded in getting lots of cool papers published at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in improving recovery from mental illness.”
6/ No, they didn’t move the needle. That $20 billion gamble has not improved the life of even one single patient. Not one. There is no biological test for any mental health condition. There are no new or better treatment for anything. But hey, what’s $20 billion among friends?
7/ NIMH never heard of supervenience or didn’t understand it. Neurobiology is one level of analysis & mental life another. Thoughts & feelings must be studied at their own level of analysis—that is the subject matter of psychology. Brain is the subject matter of neurobiology.
8/ NIMH bet farm on naive biological reductionism, assuming—without scientific basis—that neurobiology would answer questions at both biological & psychological levels. Like saying there is no reason for film studies because engineers making strides in visual display technology.
9/ Twenty billion reasons say this was wrong. Here's the takeaway: psychology must blaze the trail for psychological treatments using psychological concepts and methods. It's an intellectual/scientific/clinical dead end to ape concepts/methods of medicine or any other discipline.
10/ Psychology should not be more like medicine. Psychology should be LIKE PSYCHOLOGY. Psychologists contribute most to understanding/treating mental suffering by being first-rate psychologists, not by aspiring to be second-rate MDs.
11/ This is why new @APA clinical practice guidelines that evaluate & recommend psychotherapies based on Institute of Medicine (IOM) criteria are absurd. IOM criteria were designed to evaluate biological interventions like medication. Psychotherapy is nothing like medication.
12/ It does not elevate psychology to ape methods of pharma research, it debases & debauches it. Highly misleading to public to discuss emotional suffering using concepts applicable to medical disease, and therapy brands as if they are like medications. False at every level.
13/ We should educate the public that PSYCHOTHERAPY IS LIKE PSYCHOTHERAPY. We should educate public to know what good therapy is. We should research therapy process and outcome using our own psychological methods, focusing on how people change and lives change.
14/ We should use our own concepts & methods to study outcomes meaningful to patients & clinical practitioners. Real therapy is not about DSM "disorders" & real outcomes not reducible to DSM symptom lists. No excuse for debasing therapy by forcing it into medical Procrustean bed.
15/ Just ONCE, can psychology lead, not follow? Just once, can psychology organizations @apa @psychscience stop positioning psychology as handmaidens to medicine & 2nd class citizens in healthcare? Can they stop stooping & settling & debasing psychology?
16/ Can we contribute to the world as PSYCHOLOGISTS, using psychological concepts and methods? Can we be PROUD to be psychologists again?
EOR (End of Rant)
EOR (End of Rant)
