Psychiatry affects human psychology: e.g., ‘bipolar’ children

Prof. Joseph Biederman, MD
Prof. Joseph Biederman, MD
Although I really enjoy psychology, like many anthropologists, I feel a deep ambivalence about some contemporary psychological theory and research.

Some of these problems are trivial and tendentious, to be honest, more the effects of pushing our own disciplinary preferences in the way research is presented or semiotic hair-splitting in theoretical terms than substantive concerns. But there are some more profound issues, touched on in recent posts like Daniel’s Neurotosh, Neurodosh and Neurodash and my post, Bench and couch: genetics and psychiatry. Ironically, I was reminded of one of the more serious issues while reading a piece a few weeks ago by psychologist and psychologist-sceptic Bruce Levine on Alternet, The Science of Happiness: Is It All Bullshit?

In a meandering way, this post is a reflection on one of anthropology’s consistent criticisms of psychology; the often unacknowledged role of psychiatry in shaping psyches. That is, the difficulty of studying a phenomenon when one is helping to create it and one’s theories influence your subjects’ accounts. When psychology is successful in breaking through into popular awareness, it becomes entangled with its subject, a kind of folk theory operating in the same space that psychologists seek to study. So this post is a kind of neuroanthropological reflection on clinical psychology as both research enterprise and world-making project, and the way the two come into conflict.

Specifically, Daniel’s post on Neurotosh and Levine’s story of John Stewart confronting Harvard happiness researcher, Prof. Tal Ben-Shahar, reminded me of the recent scandal surrounding psychiatrist Prof. Joseph Biederman. Biederman took large unreported consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies who manufactured anti-psychotic medicines while he was simultaneously encouraging psychiatrists to diagnose children with bipolar disorder, and then to prescribe their young patients anti-psychotic medicines. Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) held hearings on the financial conflicts of interest as reported in The New York Times in Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay, by Gardiner Harris and Benedict Carey. (For an earlier critical article, see the Boston Globe piece, Backlash on bipolar diagnoses in children.)

Continue reading “Psychiatry affects human psychology: e.g., ‘bipolar’ children”

Neurotosh, Neurodosh and Neurodash

Neurotosh. The best word from the entire Montreal Critical Neurosciences conference! There was Cordelia Fine, capturing perfectly her frustration at the manipulation of data and science in the service of stereotypes. Just pure neuro-nonsense.

The neurotosh in question was Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain, an excellent representative of the neurosexism sold in recent popular books. It is popular, a bestseller translated into many languages, and it is simply bad science. In Nature Rebecca Young and Evan Balaban describe the book as “dressing the [gender] myth up in new clothes” and selling a “melodrama,” noting that “The Female Brain disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance.”

Cordelia Fine took us step-by-step through several passages, examining the supposed citations and supporting evidence. Gender differences were confirmed by (a) studies with only women, (b) studies on a different topic entirely, and (c) personal communication. Ouch.

Plenty of other people have gotten on the bash-Brizendine-bandwagon, helping to undermine the moral authority that Dr. Brizendine wields through her academic credentials and “scientific” claims. Language Log has several critical analyses of the gender difference claims about language (see here, here and here). Mother Jones takes Brizendine to task on her approach to medicine. The most popular Amazon reviews of the book lead with titles calling The Female Brain “disappointing” and “nonsensical.” Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks gets in on the pile-on-party as well.

Still Simon Cohn, a British anthropologist at the meeting, was rather nonplussed at Cordelia’s agonizing over the data and methods and claims made by Brizendine. As Simon said to me, “It’s called ‘The Female Brain.’ Doesn’t that tell you everything right from the start?” His point was that knowledge gets turned in the service of ideology and profit and power all the time.

Continue reading “Neurotosh, Neurodosh and Neurodash”

The Immanent Frame on the Cognitive Revolution

The Social Science and Research Council hosts a group blog called The Immanent Frame. There they have been hosting an excellent series called A Cognitive Revolution?

The two most recent posts have been Which Cognitive Revolution?, a reflection that builds off David Brooks’ neural Buddhism essay to examine the rise in cognitive research on religion, and The Aesthetics of Neural Buddhism on the aesthetic impulse (even impossible dream) behind the desire for these sorts of “theories of everything.”

Earlier posts include Medical Materialism Revisited, A Religious History of American Neuroscience, and Cognitive Machinery and Explanatory Ambitions. Plus a few more.

SSRC has also started a series of podcasts entitled Societas. They are up to four now, mostly on politics, including Breaking Out of the Iron Cage on Barack Obama, Max Weber and charisma and All Politics Are Identity Politics? on the relationships between politics, possible identities and the search for and imposition of social categories.

Round Up of Wednesday Round Ups

The first twenty Wednesday round-ups quickly evolved into a format of summarizing different links by themes. So here are the past twenty weeks with the covered themes indicated next to the link. Have fun exploring. I have.

Wednesday Round Up #20 Brain Health & Illness, Addiction, PLoS One Papers, General, Evolution

Wednesday Round Up #19 Education, Health, Anthropology, Mental Health, Language

Wednesday Round Up #18 Experimental Philosophy, Morality, The Brain, Addiction, Nature/Nurture, Evolution, Animals

Wednesday Round Up #17 Inequality, Anorexia, Decision Making, Politics, General, Evolution, The Brain

Wednesday Round Up #16 Biocultural Synergies, Psychiatry, Brain Stuff, Marriage, Genetics

Wednesday Round Up #15 Anthropology, Elitism in the US, Decision Making, Gender in the US, Everyday Life, General

Wednesday Round Up #14 Memory, Prefrontal Cortex, Consumer Life, More on the Brain, Education

Continue reading “Round Up of Wednesday Round Ups”

Colombia, Peace and Progress

On Sunday the 20th of July, millions of Colombians gathered to march for peace around the world. The streets of Bogotá were packed.

In Paris Juanes, Ingrid Betancourt and others held the concert Paz Sin Fronteras

After the dramatic rescue of fifteen hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, Colombians look to the future. Juan Manuel Santos, the minister of defense, has co-written an editorial in today’s New York Times. NPR covered the march for peace. And El Tiempo, Colombia’s leading newspaper, celebrates the 20 de Julio through extensive coverage and even photos and videos that readers have uploaded from around the world