Friday, November 21, 2008

Judean People's Front

Since Prof. Crispy was throwing some love my way, I'm going to toss a little back. Once again indulging my hatred for all things psychologimacal, here fucking here.

Gore Vidal once said something to the extent of: Black ghetto kids are way smarter than nice white kids because they realize so much sooner what a sham their education is and act on that knowledge. I've always wondered if that weren't the case with children diagnosed with ADHD, or whatever it's being called at any given second. Perhaps they're just exquisitely sensitive to absurdity. If you were a 6-year-old with a precocious appreciation for the preposterous, Beckettian horror of human existence, you'd have trouble playing nicely with Legos too.

Reading about attempts to describe childhood mental illness without any meaningful attempt to locate or describe the pathology of such supposed illness is deeply frustrating. Arguing about whether to prescribe a stimulant or an antipsychotic is like discussing the relative virtues of bloodletting or applying a poultice.

Posted by IOZ at 3:12 PM | email »
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

bloodletting always kills the disease and sometimes the patient. soz' you have to define "success" here.

4:43 PM
MandT said...

Vidal is also an elegant example that senile old aristocrats are the new black.

4:46 PM
fish said...

One of the problems here is the mislabeling of "medicine" as "science." When MD's with no real training in science try to be scientific, it is more often than not, a complete disaster.

5:14 PM
TGGP said...

I'm with you on the Szaszian theory of mental illness and the Caplanian take on school, but the returns from years of education is actually significant and even higher for blacks than whites. Jumping through hoops as a kid pays off later on, even though in a more ideal world you wouldn't have to. These returns have only increased with time, so academics who study the issue are puzzled why kids (especially those with the most to gain) aren't consuming more education. The most plausible explanation is that people hate school.

5:51 PM
Anonymous said...

Well sure, but now you're applying poultices to synapses, which is completely different.
-- sglover

7:22 PM
la Rana said...

I locate this inquisition of yours somewhere between unoriginal and foolish. Science is nothing more than the logical pursuit of knowledge. It gets difficult when you wander into intangibles, but Crispy has it inside out and backwards. It's not all science and no theory; it's all theory and no science. Everyone has a different idea and they are wandering around in search of validation. Which can be said about everything at somepoint.

Some psychology and some psychologists make nutty claims on insufficient or inscrutable evidence that ultimately amount to nothing. This distinguishes psychology from the rest of the world how?

7:29 PM
Christopher said...

The most plausible explanation is that people hate school.

When I was in grade school, they used to have a "Talented And Gifted" program that I got to join because I'm awesome. Basically, the people who did really well in class were bussed off to somewhere else to do more interesting, advanced work, so we weren't stuck going over stuff we already understood.

Eventually, people got tired of paying for us to actually learn, so that program was canceled, and the new TAG program consisted of extra, more complicated homework we could do on our own time.

I was boggled at how they could expect us to buy that bullshit. They switched from making school less boring to keeping school boring, and giving us interesting things to do after school.

I was a kid. I had a Super NES. I did not need their help to fill up my free time, and the idea that I could be good at schoolwork but still prefer video games and squirt gun fights just seemed to completely baffle the adults in charge of the program.

To this day it still pisses me off.

8:46 PM
Anonymous said...

listen, my friend was a fan of beckett from a very early age, had a tendency to stare out the window and draw pretty pictures -- they had him on ritalin and a few other speeds for years and years, until they found out he was schizophrenic.

i'm a little suprised at all the school-love pouring out here.

11:31 AM
Anonymous said...

IOZ, I both agree and disagree.

Just recently I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Be a Szasz fan if you like, I find ADHD a helpful frame for thinking about my life, and the drugs really are life improving.

Retrospectively, ADHD fits as a description of my experience as a kid in primary school quite well. I couldn't concentrate on the teacher, so I almost always had an unrelated book open in my lap as he/she lectured on at a rate suited to a sub-par student.

So:
1) I was realizing very early on that the material being taught was boring, dumbed-down and/or irrelevant and decided to self educate. As a result, I got a much better education than most.
2) I was doing something similar in "talented and gifted" type programs, though possibly to a lesser degree. No environment could have been stimulating enough to attract my full attention (with the possible exception of Street Fighter II).

#1 and #2 were not incompatible descriptions of what primary school was like for me, and I suspect that's true for a lot of current primary schoolers as well.

Yes, ADHD is overdiagnosed, and I'd be worried about any kid who wasn't a bit manic, and symptom-grab-bag psychiatry still seems to know little or nothing about what makes brains dysfunctional. None of that establishes that some people aren't really crazy, myself included. Current psychiatry is methodologically broken, arrogant, and basically bribed by drug manufacturers, but at the moment it's the best we've got.

3:35 PM
Anonymous said...

"...the drugs really are life improving."

find me an addict who disagrees.

"I couldn't concentrate on the teacher, so I almost always had an unrelated book open in my lap as he/she lectured on..."

you found school so boring that you couldn't pay attention. from this you deduce that your brain was malfunctioning?

after granting every point our host made, you then said: "None of that establishes that some people aren't really crazy, myself included."

i don't believe anyone is arguing that there is no such thing as insanity. it's not that i necessarilly doubt your diagnosis; nor do i think that behavioral disorders are a wholesale fabrication. that said, you have done a very poor job of establishing that you are "really crazy".

also, there are life improving drugs that are actually cool.

2:04 PM
Anonymous said...

reply from anon to anon,

"find me an addict who disagrees."
If booze improved my job performance I would self medicate with scotch at dawn.

"you have done a very poor job of establishing that you are "really crazy."
Terribly sorry sir, I was not aware that I have anything to prove to you. But since you have demanded evidence, a full medical history and a stool sample shall be delivered to you at your earliest convenience.

12:44 AM
Dunc said...

Hmmm.... Whilst I do suspect that a lot of kids diagnosed with ADHD are just fucking bored, that's certainly not all there is too it. For one thing, being unable to sleep for days on end is definitely neither normal nor healthy. Being unable to concentrate on the teacher is one thing, but when you keep finding yourself doing crazy and dangerous things at all hours of the day and night with no idea why, you've probably got a more serious problem.

9:22 AM
Phil said...

Agree with the last para of the post. And the previous comment referencing Szasz. Although the term pathology is perhaps a bit extreme. Lots of things where the pathology is poorly understood are real enough.

I do have an issue with the notion of a 6 year old with a Beckett based horror of human existence though. Precocious would be the least of it.

2:32 PM
Anonymous said...

...still waiting for that stool sample.

anyway, i said "establish", not "prove". but if you're gonna argue that you had no interest in establishing what you were saying, maybe the brain drugs aren't such a bad idea after all.

10:22 AM
Anonymous said...

Anon,

You have said you are aware that some people have debilitating mental problems. Good. I'm not sure why you feel the need to doubt me when I say that I'm one of them. Why do you think I'm not speaking in good faith?

My point was that belief in the existence of ADHD is not incompatible with recognizing that our schools are really boring. Does that even require further argument? We can disagree about how to diagnose the kids with big problems, how to treat them, how to improve our schools, etc., but my point was the very simple claim that there is no contradiction here.

The point I was making did not depend on my example; I offered a bit of my history because I thought it might be interesting to you. You've decided to reply with a string of personal attacks. You've called me an addict, and now claim that I am unable to make a valid argument by reason of insanity. Charming.

There's a lot of stigma around mental illness -- that's why I'm posting anonymously. Thanks for reminding me why I still need to do that.

"...still waiting for that stool sample."

Would you like it delivered ballistically?

3:51 PM
NutellaonToast said...

Heh, the idea that educational institutions are ridiculous was indeed obvious to ANYONE at the age of 15.

The smarter ones are the ones that realize, you can't do shit about it and you're better off just smiling and nodding.

As much fun as your little revolution on the blogosphere is for you, you do realize you have a fucking job like the rest of us, right? What, you mean revolutionaries gotta eat?

4:42 PM

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