Posted by Rzip on January 18, 2001, at 23:10:52
I think this post also belongs in Psycho-Social-Babble. It is in response to Dr. Bob's article debate. The original copy of this post is on PB-Administration.In the academic world of psychiatry, establishing validity for categorizing illnesses is acknowledged to be extremely challenging. For instance in the DSM-II (1970s), there were eight mood disorder categories. In the current in-use version of DSM-IV however, the figure for mood-disorder categories reach well into the 2,000s. It would be great if the advances in relating psychiatric diagnoses to direct concrete etiologic causes would have progressed at such a rapid rate:-) Psychiatric illnesses probably will never be classified at such a high validity as that of the somatic diseases. As one of my professors pointed out in class today, "How does your dopamine system feel today?" is a impossible and therefore silly question to ask any patient. On the other hand, it is very appropriate to ask a patient with a broken arm how his/her arm is feeling.
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> Now, you ask yourself, what does this have to do with Dr. Bob's article (which I have not been able to read, yet). Well, my answer is that it has everything to do with Dr. Bob's reason for writting and submitting the article. You see, my friends, there is no finer and purer intention to be a researcher than the devotion to the life of the mind on the part of the scientist.
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> I admire Dr. Bob from both an affective and an intellectual frame of mind. It is from this intellectual orientation that I am writing to you guys today. The field of psychiatry is challenging to work in because of the great amount of indirect approaches associated with it. The only way we can really study the mind is to surgically implant lesions and electrodes in the mind of the subjects of interest. Since it would not be ethical to do this in human subjects, we will have to resign ourselves to observing the correlates or actions deriving from the mind.
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> What I wish to point out is that I observe Dr. Bob's intention for establishing PB to be purely and solely based on his intellectual devotion to his field. Like I said before, I have not read the article, however, I am going to assume that the theme of the article is to illustrate the effects of supportive or positive experiences have on depressions or other affective disorders. There is an attachment theory out there that runs something like this: Early negative or aggressive pattern of relationships steming from the parents to that of the infant imprints biological stimulants within the infant's brain such that upon puberty, the biological signals will produce the on-set of depression. The exception to this rule is that if the infant receives positive (supportive) re-inforcement growing up, the biological aspects of the brain can be "re-wired" to off-set the bad family influence. So, I kind of see Dr. Bob's PB site as the reinforcement of the set of positive/supportive experiences that is necessary to SLOWLY affect the biological aspects of the brain. In doing so, whether or not my assumptions are valid, Dr. Bob has shown to be a good role model by actively living out the Life of the Mind; which in my mind (pun not intended), equates to a good researcher and more importantly, a valuable human being.
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> Finally, I would like to express my shock to the lack of appreciation for the means and service that Dr. Bob has provided.
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> Instead, we should be extending a sincerely Thank You and Congratulations to Dr. Bob for his work.
poster:Rzip
thread:4059
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010105/msgs/4059.html