RoR: Forum

I.N., you have hit the nail head and demolished it!

My belief is this is what causes the anxiety that is readily apparent in O'ism. People forsake the psychic self for the rational. The human brain is not completely rational. While a rational approach can be applied to many areas, there are needs to be fulfilled that cannot be iterated by grinding an issue throught the O'ist thought mill.

The Branden/Rand saga would be a great example. Even with my amatuer knowledge of psychology, alot of issues were readily apparent in "My Years with Ayn Rand." The moral justification of their interpersonal relationships is, for lack of a better word, retarded. Ayn's own denial of her rational self caused her to deteriorate into a "rational state of irrationality that was rational" to her. I believe her amphetamine use/abuse lead to this.

The key is a balance between the two. And to understand that at times you may behave outside the Mr. Spock way of thinking and cut yourself some mental slack. It is wholly healthy. I'm not endorsing emotions as tools of cognition, but rather intuition.

On a side note: is there any literature out there regarding Osim and the mind/body problem?

(Edited by Donald Talton on 8/27, 10:06am)

Post 101

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 10:06am

Jody's wondering if NB got his stuff out of a cracker jack box:

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but don't N.B.'s credentials leave a lot to be desired? I'm like Lindsay, I haven't read him, don't care to read him, and certainly haven't done any background checks into his CV so I could be wrong.

Yup, you're wrong. Oddly enough, I happen to have his CV, but it would be improper for me to show it here. And anyway, the next thing would probably be a request to verify that he didn't falsify that.

How odd that people discuss a man so much when they admit they know virtually nothing at all about his work. What, are you afraid you'll get the cooties? :)

(Edited by Rich Engle on 8/27, 10:08am)

Post 102

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 10:20am

Where on earth did I insult you, by the way?

Oh, c'mon, Michael. You know what you did. Calling someone a Scientologist or a Randroid are fightin' words around here. However, I'm not fighting with you. I am disagreeing with you. Because that's all I'm doing, I have offered to take half the blame for this dust-up and let bygones be bygones. I can do no better. Now it's up to you if you want to be one of Branden's Talmudic heroes.

Andy

Post 103

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 10:29am

Rich-

How odd that people discuss a man so much when they admit they know virtually nothing at all about his work. What, are you afraid you'll get the cooties? :)

My only discussion of N.B. was questioning his credentials and admitting I may be wrong about them. My primary discussion was about psychology and how the burden of proof is on those who are making positive claims.

Cooties aren't bad, it's crabs that are a bitch. :)

Post 104

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 10:53am

Rich,

Your blanket statement literally puts Dr. Phil and Dr. Branden on the same boat, and that alone is something very easy to take apart. Hell, you're putting Dr. Phil and Sigmund Freud on the same boat!

Dr. Phil and Branden are on the same boat, because the amorphous nature of psychology lets them be on the same boat. I think you are very confused on this subject. Your remark about Dr. Phil and Freud works against your case.

Freud did more to ruin the study of the mind than anyone else. Psychiatry is still recovering from his legacy, while psychology is still mired in it. He is responsible for the whole idea of repression as a cause of mental illness, that deep dark forgotten secrets drives undesirable behavior. Today this idea has metastasized into psychology's latest discovery, the repressed memory of trauma. It's an entirely false phenomenon. People do not repress traumas. The real problem some people have with trauma is the inability to forget, or at least put it behind them. The memory of trauma plagues them into distraction. Yet some psychologists lie to a patient and tell him that his problems come from a repressed memory of this or that terrible thing from long ago. By suggestion the psychologist plants horrible false memories in the patient who then wrecks his lives and his families with false accusations.

And that's just one of the disgusting things cooked up by psychology. To the extent that a psychologist accomplishes anything worthwhile, he does so by playing the role of a wise counselor, mentor, or friend who helps his patient see reality for what it is. For psychology to claim that role as a province of life that only its professionals can properly assume is absurd, tyrannical, and ultimately disastrous.

Andy

Post 105

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 11:15am

Pots 1, Kettles 0?:

Calling someone a Scientologist or a Randroid are fightin' words around here. However, I'm not fighting with you. I am disagreeing with you. Because that's all I'm doing, I have offered to take half the blame for this dust-up and let bygones be bygones. I can do no better. Now it's up to you if you want to be one of Branden's Talmudic heroes.

After your statements re: Freud vs. Doc Phil, I'm disengaging. That did it. That post is a Frankenstein job. I'm frightened to imagine what you would have come up with if I had used "Jung" instead of Freud- what, a giant takedown attempt on archetypes and the collective unconscious? When you talk about psychology, you just don't have enough breadth and depth to even work with the big pieces. The other reason you can't is because your viewpoint of psychology is parallel to "All niggers steal TV sets."- it's just a mess within a mess. I'm not up for triage. Burden of proof, my ass. With this, you could have a library dropped on you to no effect.

Post 106

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 11:23am

I think some clarifications are in order.

First, psychology and psychiatry are not the same. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine. It deals with the objective causes of mental illness and prescibes scientifically researched treatments either to cure or mitigate diseases of the brain that cause behavioral problems. Unfortunately, psychiatry like medicine in general has its quacks and scandals. A good example is the recent effort in the United States to cure boys of boyhood by doping them up with Ritalin.

Second, psychology is not a science. At its best psychology it is an objective survey of human behavior. I do not deny that psychology hasn't made any useful observations in this regard. But it lacks the discipline of science to make falsifiable statements about what are the causes of human behavior it observes, let alone cures for undesirable behavior.

Third, there is a reason why in an over-regulated country like the United States, in most places psychologists are curiously exempt from any licensing to practice their trade. They don't do anything for their "patients" that a wise and sympathetic listener couldn't do. I did not discount the value of counseling, the stock in trade of psychologists. I dispute their false pretense that they are doing science and that their advice is necessarily better than that their patients can get from those who know them better. That false foundation for their craft is what makes it witch-doctoring.

Andy

Post 107

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 11:30am

After your statements re: Freud vs. Doc Phil, I'm disengaging.

Thanks for the update, Rich. The way your comments kept missing the mark, I thought you were already disengaged.

Andy

Post 108

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:09pm

Thanks for the update, Rich. The way your comments kept missing the mark, I thought you were already disengaged

No problem, and no doubt. And thanks for the lucid explanation of how psychiatry and psychology differ. I don't know how we could have gone on without that.

rde
Fuck cognitive therapy, just go rap with your school buds.

Post 109

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:13pm

Andy,
You said:

People do not repress traumas.

That's a pretty bold statement. Do you have any information or references to back this up?
Thanks,
Glenn

(Edited by Glenn Fletcher on 8/27, 12:15pm)

Post 110

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:21pm

Glenn-

Just for kicks, you can always go back into the archives at the Nathaniel Branden Yahoo discussion group and find some decent (and not-so-decent) conversation about the topic.. Repression is a good deal more intricate than just looking at Freud's work, and/or the subject of recovered memories.

rde
Where the heck is Walter Foddis when you need him?

Post 111

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:28pm

Jody,
You appear to attach some importance to credentials. What credentials did Ayn Rand have after all? I think you're capable of trusting your own judgement a bit more than you presently do. NB does have PhD credentials, but who cares? The most important credentials sometimes are the ones you attribute to someone yourself. -Steve

Post 112

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:29pm

Thanks, Rich, but I think I'd rather see something a little better "refereed".

Glenn

Post 113

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:47pm

Andy,
I share alot of your sentiments about psychologists. It's virtually impossible for them not to influence patients/clents to some degree with their own mixed and conflicting value premises. Many of them are probably worse than witch-doctors. I would forget the fact that Dr. Branden is a psychologist and think of him more as "Dr. Bootstraps". -Steve

Post 114

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 12:51pm

Donald found enough flat on the nail to give it another good smack:

My belief is this is what causes the anxiety that is readily apparent in O'ism. People forsake the psychic self for the rational. The human brain is not completely rational. While a rational approach can be applied to many areas, there are needs to be fulfilled that cannot be iterated by grinding an issue throught the O'ist thought mill.

Objectivism confines itself mainly to the intellectual center. What it does there, it does well, given that confine. One place where it is underdeveloped is in the integration of the intellectual, physical, and emotional centers. For that matter, even having consciousness of such a model. Objectivism does not look at man as a three-brained creature, or, if it does, it doesn't think much about what that means. If that is not taken into account, and worked on, it retards the process of developing awareness.

By example of awareness I can say that you can study Objectivism all you want, and it won't do much to improve the fact that you cannot sit still, clear your mind, control spontaneous body movements, be conscious of how your body feels to itself, and the surroundings you are in for maybe even less than a minute without the mind starting to associate. Objectivism does not address integration at the skin level.

Objectivism has not traditionally addressed areas such as emotional intelligence (work such as that by Daniel Goleman, another one of those zany psychology guys). For my money, this has something to do with why some Objectivists are inefficacious in the area of interpersonal skills.

It is much easier for an Ortho-O'ist to dismiss views like I outline above as being irrational, or pseudo-science. And, in that world, the world of intellect only, they are.

My belief is that when there is the anxiety you talk of (and it is there, along with other displays reflecting discomfort or frustration), it comes from finding out that Objectivism, for all its virtues, is not a one-stop solution after all.

rde
There are no free lunches.

Post 115

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 1:14pm

Glenn,

That's a pretty bold statement. Do you have any information or references to back this up?

What do you think post-traumatic stress syndrome is all about? As for doing your research for you, I don't know why you can't google this subject as easily as I can. Even so, I have a couple of links to recommend:

http://www.skeptic.com/02.3.hochman-fms.html

http://www.psych.org/edu/other_res/lib_archives/archives/200002.pdf

The first is an easy-reading primer on the subject of so-called recovered memories and the very real false memory syndrome quack psychologists induce in patients. The second is the American Psychiatric Association position paper on recovered memories. As you can see, the APA is backing away from the quackery of recovering repressed memories. Little by little psychiatry is emerging from the dark shadow of Freud.

Andy

Post 116

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 1:24pm

The series of groundbreaking books Barbara B. Brown wrote [New Mind/New Body, Stress and the Art of Biofeedback, Supermind, and Between Health and Illness] deal with a lot of that area, Rich.

Post 117

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 1:25pm

Fuck cognitive therapy, just go rap with your school buds.

Bingo, Rich! Instead sobbing on the shoulder of some stranger and then paying him for the privilege, I'll take my problems, if can't solve them myself, to the people who know and care about me. If you think a psychologist's advice for life's problems is superior because he hangs a diploma on his wall, you are suffering from credentialism. To be enamored with someone's claim to authority is an odd thing for an Objectivist, who should have a gimlet eye to bore through the facade of credentials.

Andy

Post 118

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 1:31pm

Steven,

I would forget the fact that Dr. Branden is a psychologist and think of him more as "Dr. Bootstraps".

I think that would be the best way to use any psychologist. Forget the credentials and don't rely upon his counsel because he claims to be an expert. Value his advice as you would anyone else's. Does it make sense? If so, use it. If it doesn't, don't let that diploma on the wall fool you into thinking you should.

Andy

Post 119

Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 1:51pm