Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ford Prefect on January 12, 2010, 05:16:43 pm
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html)
I know better than to provide article summaries here. Suffice to say, it's absolutely worth your time.
-
Ford is right, definitely worth the time to read. Very thought-provoking.
EDIT: I might post some of said thoughts, but I want time to chew on them a bit more first. :)
-
oh good job.
-
Very interesting stuff. Good post, would read again!
-
I approve the tactful responses here. Thought provoking article definitely.
Lets apply some common sense before we decide to document those thoughts here though.
;)
Be good.
-
It's news to me, but I am not in the least bit surprised.
-
I've read things like this before, but not in such great detail. Inspired to do more research later. Article bookmarked.
-
It brings to mind Nietzsche's (in)famous declaration of the death of God. Science has become the religion of a people driven to collective neurosis by a couple of centuries of profound existential crisis. The way we view science, the expectations we place on it and its relationship to our lives, has very little to do with actual scientific inquiry, and a lot to do with filling the void left by the shift to our presently naturalistic view of the universe. We proudly tell ourselves and others that we derive our understanding of the world from what science tells us, but I think the paradigm that's really at work is the measuring of what confronts us against some ideal of quasi-scientific truthiness.
The aspect of this ideal relevant to the article is our fetish for notions of human universality. We've decided that anything important that can be said about people can be said about all people, so essentialism smacks of "real science," while culturally determined variation is judged to be peripheral window dressing. We forget, of course, that everything is subject to science because we don't really care about scientific inquiry; we care about having a mantra to repeat, preferably to those who vehemently disagree.
-
Quite so.
A great deal of research in medicine and psychology has been carried out mostly on white First World citizens. That has to be a handicap to generalizability.
-
Speculative statement:
The majority of modern psychology was founded on research done on the aforementioned demographic. Over a hundred years worth, it wouldn't be advised to apply techniques not geared towards mindsets which develop in a different (not necessarily lesser) quality of life.
-
Quite so.
A great deal of research in medicine and psychology has been carried out mostly on white First World citizens. That has to be a handicap to generalizability.
Human psychology is human psychology, we still have the same brains, and those brains are prone to the same set of malfunctions. The example of anorexia in HK, even though the original cases were somatic, they still existed (although they were expressed differently). There's several things that could cause it in addition to simple societal pressures. The likely rise of anorexia in Hong Kong during the 90's could very well have been a result of increasing amounts of "thinner is better" social pressures.
A couple quick examples from the article:
In some Southeast Asian cultures, men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia;
This sounds quite a bit like having two different personalities.
men in the region also suffer from koro, which is characterized by the debilitating certainty that their genitals are retracting into their bodies
This is not culture specific, I've heard of exactly this same thing in Africa (where they believe a witch/warlock put a spell on them so they have their families take turns holding onto it while they sleep). What do these areas have in common? Often bad education and rampant superstion.
Across the fertile crescent of the Middle East there is zar, a condition related to spirit-possession beliefs that brings forth dissociative episodes of laughing, shouting and singing.
Classic bi-polar. One minute you're normal, the next minute you can't control yourself.
EDIT: Correction, probably more like just "manic". I could be mistaken though, but it is better to ask a professional.
I'm not a psychologist by anymeans, but alot of this sounds really fishy.
-
I'm not a psychologist but I am the owner of an A-level B+ pass.
That was a while back though. But I learned never ever judge based on what you've heard from an indirect source or even initial impression. Like treasure hunting, you yield the best results after getting close and digging for a while.
-
What is a "B+ pass"?
-
I think it means he passed the psychology A-level examinations with an overall grade of B+ (think of it as a "high B").
Or he might be being modest, since "B+" could be interpreted as a grade that is higher than a B, i.e. an A grade. (From what I've heard, the grades awarded for those qualifications usually don't include plus or minus suffixes, but I could be wrong about the psychology one).
I'll definitely give that article a read.
-
Kosh, I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not saying that existing psychological theories are inapplicable; it's simply that a lot of psychology is based upon western culture and paradigms, which do not necessarily have to be universal, and that because of the education method, there is a massive dearth of data on how psychological issues are caused by other cultures and paradigms.
Also, the article brings up a very good point that treating mental disease as a biological disease causes people to shun them, much like how people will avoid plague-bearers. It also brings up how different cultural methods of treating mental disease are often effective; is our current method of therapy always the best way, after all?
-
Yeah, Kosh, you're missing something important.
Quite so.
A great deal of research in medicine and psychology has been carried out mostly on white First World citizens. That has to be a handicap to generalizability.
Human psychology is human psychology, we still have the same brains, and those brains are prone to the same set of malfunctions.
Any psychological condition is a product of genetic and environmental factors. The genetic factors may be fairly generalizable, but the environmental factors are not. If our research is based on samples all drawn from the same environment (white First World citizens), then that limits their generalizability to white First World citizens.
Our research so far has not been based on a representative sample of all humans. This is a problem for generalizing the results to all humans.
-
It's rather annoying that we have these things called "eeeethics", where we can't just stick a couple hundred thousand people in several closed environments and then set up different cultures in each with their own collective baggage. Maybe tell each of them that the world has been consumed by nuclear fire and they have to live in a certain way to survive.
And since this is the Internet... I know this is ridiculous. I am being facetious. Just FYI.
-
We could totally give it a shot.
We already have a lot of evidence that many psychological mechanisms behave differently in collectivist (largely Eastern) than individualistic (Western) cultures. This is a problematic finding in a lot of ways.
-
my opinion of shrinks is that none of them know what the **** their doing. so this doesn't surprise me at all.
-
Therapeutic psychology, clinical psychology, and research psychology are very different fields in terms of their 'hardness'.
-
I used to think therapy worked like in the movies where the doctor gives two ****s. :< IRL, pills are your doctor.
-
Any psychological condition is a product of genetic and environmental factors.
People will still respond to similair types of pressures in a similair manner. We are still hardwired to have the same basic responces, even though they may be expressed in a different channel.
Kosh, I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not saying that existing psychological theories are inapplicable; it's simply that a lot of psychology is based upon western culture and paradigms, which do not necessarily have to be universal, and that because of the education method, there is a massive dearth of data on how psychological issues are caused by other cultures and paradigms.
Why wouldn't they be? Most people have to be concerned with a very similair set of problems (family, society, work, retirement). The social pressures might be different but not enough to invalidate decades of research.
Also, the article brings up a very good point that treating mental disease as a biological disease causes people to shun them, much like how people will avoid plague-bearers. It also brings up how different cultural methods of treating mental disease are often effective; is our current method of therapy always the best way, after all?
In a lot of those cultures people with mental illness are already shunned, and that is their traditional method for dealing with it. It's really a choice between our way or nothing, although some fine tuning of certain therapy methods (for some people sitting alone in a room with a stranger is not desirable) might be a good idea but the underlying research is still valid.
-
The underlying research is not definitely valid, because it was not performed on a representative sample.
We stress out about this a lot in my lab. Unfortunately we don't really have a way to get better samples.
We are still hardwired to have the same basic responces, even though they may be expressed in a different channel.
Maybe, but we don't know what is a product of hardwired responses, to what degree they are modified by the environment, and to what degree they are simply a product of environmental factors.
Don't substitute opinions for scientific fact. (Ironically, that's what this article is largely about - a plea for good research methods.)
Why wouldn't they be? Most people have to be concerned with a very similair set of problems (family, society, work, retirement). The social pressures might be different but not enough to invalidate decades of research.
Ah, but in fact, we find quite different experimental results in collectivist vs. individualist cultures. Some factors are universal, others are not.
-
Out of curiousity how much have you been overseas? And I don't mean in a western bubble, I mean having little to no contact with other foreigners and working in a similair environment as "the natives"?
-
Not at all, by those criteria.
Fortunately, the researchers whose papers we read have been, as have our painstakingly collected data sets and experimental results.
This isn't sociology or anthropology here - we don't gather data by talking to people and making field observations.
-
Kosh:
Of course, we can become psychologically unhinged for many reasons that are common to all, like personal traumas, social upheavals or biochemical imbalances in our brains. Modern science has begun to reveal these causes. Whatever the trigger, however, the ill individual and those around him invariably rely on cultural beliefs and stories to understand what is happening. Those stories, whether they tell of spirit possession, semen loss or serotonin depletion, predict and shape the course of the illness in dramatic and often counterintuitive ways. In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host.
(That's from the article, the entirety of which I assume, of course, you read before raising objections to its premises.)
-
freud had to bat**** insane to even get a grasp on the mind. makes me question if the problem of fixing crazy people is even remotely compatible with the scientific method.
-
It is, but Freud isn't.
-
makes me question if the problem of fixing crazy people is even remotely compatible with the scientific method.
it requires hugs
and cocaine
-
yay! cocaine!
-
Out of curiousity how much have you been overseas? And I don't mean in a western bubble, I mean having little to no contact with other foreigners and working in a similair environment as "the natives"?
If you're gonna claim that other cultures are basically the same as the sample used I'm gonna call bull**** on you.
And I'm in a far more culturally alien situation than you are. :p
-
Out of curiousity how much have you been overseas? And I don't mean in a western bubble, I mean having little to no contact with other foreigners and working in a similair environment as "the natives"?
If you're gonna claim that other cultures are basically the same as the sample used I'm gonna call bull**** on you.
And I'm in a far more culturally alien situation than you are. :p
I'm not, but what I'm claiming is the differences are usually more slanted towards organizational structures and expression of psychological problems, not always the underlying causes (especially with somatic conditions). Intense exam pressure for example leads to higher rates of suicide, this is true anywhere that pressure exists. However, some of the somatic conditions (like the amazing shrinking penis syndrome) seem to be based on local superstitions and bad education but the underlying problem (an irrational belief that something is is real when it isn't) is quite similair.
I am wondering how are you more culturally alien than I am. :p
We stress out about this a lot in my lab. Unfortunately we don't really have a way to get better samples.
You could go to some of these areas and temporarily set up shop, then pay some of the locals to participate in a study. Either that or hire recently arrived illegal immigrants in the US. :p
The underlying research is not definitely valid, because it was not performed on a representative sample.
That is a good point.
Maybe, but we don't know what is a product of hardwired responses, to what degree they are modified by the environment, and to what degree they are simply a product of environmental factors.
Don't substitute opinions for scientific fact. (Ironically, that's what this article is largely about - a plea for good research methods.)
So, you are saying that research is lacking. Is my interpretation correct?
Ah, but in fact, we find quite different experimental results in collectivist vs. individualist cultures. Some factors are universal, others are not.
Ok, perhaps you could provide some studies for me to look at. I'm up for it.
Fortunately, the researchers whose papers we read have been, as have our painstakingly collected data sets and experimental results.
Ok, like who?
-
ok, so what I'm getting from this thread is some people are of the opinion that non-westerners have genetic level differences that manifest in differences in how their minds work, I have suggested the possibility (I'm not of the opinion that it's true, only that it might on some small trivial scale be possible) of this on occasion and was called a racist, but now that it is western medicine that is in question well it's obvious that the white man's medicine is inferior.
-
No, that's not what the thread is suggesting. Not once have genetic level differences been suggested.
This is what's being suggested:
Kosh:
Of course, we can become psychologically unhinged for many reasons that are common to all, like personal traumas, social upheavals or biochemical imbalances in our brains. Modern science has begun to reveal these causes. Whatever the trigger, however, the ill individual and those around him invariably rely on cultural beliefs and stories to understand what is happening. Those stories, whether they tell of spirit possession, semen loss or serotonin depletion, predict and shape the course of the illness in dramatic and often counterintuitive ways. In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host.
(That's from the article, the entirety of which I assume, of course, you read before raising objections to its premises.)
I assume, of course, that you read the article?
(And for further clarification, no one is suggesting that the 'white man's medicine' is inferior - the article suggests scientific techniques have not been applied as rigorously as they should be.)
-
It's about how mental illnesses are less biologically based than we tend to think they are. Not about how other people have different biology.
-
Well, this thread has certainly been a cultural case study in attention span, if nothing else.
-
Kosh: sorry I missed your request. Try here (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=fulltext.journal&jcode=psp&vol=54&issue=2&format=html&page=323&expand=1) or here (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-4FTMM1G-1&_user=5745&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1166730466&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000001358&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5745&md5=a2384be42831bb972043a3016b6d1932) for a couple randomly selected examples.
These are by no means definitive studies in the field, they're just what I came up with on a quick search. I'll hunt through my texts and my lab's papers to see if I can find any of the big ones.
-
I am wondering how are you more culturally alien than I am. :p
IIRC you're in Nanjing which has quite a few more lao wai than the tiny city I live in.
-
Kosh: sorry I missed your request. Try here (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=fulltext.journal&jcode=psp&vol=54&issue=2&format=html&page=323&expand=1) or here (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-4FTMM1G-1&_user=5745&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1166730466&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000001358&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5745&md5=a2384be42831bb972043a3016b6d1932) for a couple randomly selected examples.
These are by no means definitive studies in the field, they're just what I came up with on a quick search. I'll hunt through my texts and my lab's papers to see if I can find any of the big ones.
I'll read them and post a reply about it in a few days.
IIRC you're in Nanjing which has quite a few more lao wai than the tiny city I live in.
True, although I don't really have that much to do with the laowai that live here.
-
Yeah but you probably don't get people starring at you open mouthed when you walk down the street. :p
-
freud had to bat**** insane to even get a grasp on the mind. makes me question if the problem of fixing crazy people is even remotely compatible with the scientific method.
[hyperbole]The only thing Sigmund Freud was right was the significance of the libido )and I'm not even sure he made the logical connection between it and evolution). All of his other nonsensical stuff was the result of being a druggy.[/hyperbole]
-
Actually I do, from my impressive overwhelming height as well as my foreign-ness.
-
It's about how mental illnesses are less biologically based than we tend to think they are. Not about how other people have different biology.
I wouldn't say less biologically-based. The overwhelming evidence is that the majority of mental disorders have an organic basis - some kind of physical or chemical change in the brain.
What differs across cultures is how those changes manifest, are recognized, and understood by various populations. Koro is a particularly well-documented case, but the underlying problem appears to be an anxiety disorder - it's symptoms just aren't recognized in Western culture because that's not one of the ways anxiety disorders tend to manifest here. In all our great wisdom, we then classify it either as irrelevant (less so now than ever before), or as a different type of disorder.
The problem that the article refers to is that Western understanding of mental illness is being forced upon other cultures. In some cases, this may be a good thing - mental illnesses are not always treated with compassion, and people suffering from them are often shunned, imprisoned, or killed. Western society has made a reasonable attempt to curb those responses as a result of scientific understanding. The problem is when we export our recognized symptoms of disorder to another culture, overwriting theirs. Not only then does the disorder itself lose it's cultural understanding, but it may lose the cultural treatment and even increase the severity of the symptoms (as in the anorexia case).
The problem, as usual, is getting the biology and psychology of mental illness to fit together. The biology of mental illness is quite similar across the board (near as we can tell with what cross-cultural and genetic studies that have been done, at any rate). It's how the symptoms manifest and are understood by collective society that differs, and arguably calls for different methods of understanding and treatment by clinicians. Funny thing about mental illness - unlike many diseases, treating the symptoms while virtually ignoring their cause can effectively relapse or even cure the illness - a rare case where mind over body actually works.
-
I didn't mean not biologically based. Just less biologically based. In that (exactly what you said) the same problem manifests very differently based on environment.
-
Kosh: sorry I missed your request. Try here (http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=fulltext.journal&jcode=psp&vol=54&issue=2&format=html&page=323&expand=1) or here (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJB-4FTMM1G-1&_user=5745&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1166730466&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000001358&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5745&md5=a2384be42831bb972043a3016b6d1932) for a couple randomly selected examples.
These are by no means definitive studies in the field, they're just what I came up with on a quick search. I'll hunt through my texts and my lab's papers to see if I can find any of the big ones.
In the second one the URL was broken and the first one was behind a paywall.
-
Haha, jeez. I always forget I'm on a lab connection.
-
Although I don't really have anything to add to this discussion at the moment, I have to say that the article was indeed an interesting and enlightening read.
-
Haha, jeez. I always forget I'm on a lab connection.
Nice. :p Anyway, I generally agree with what MP-Ryan said.
-
Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.
-
Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.
Indeed. It looked like zack might have taken the wrong interpretation of the article based on the initial comment (which is what I was clearing up), but as it turns out she got exactly the right idea.
So, just so nobody gets the wrong idea here - if you agree with me, you're agreeing with the original article (and the body of research to date, so it's probably best if you agree anyway :P)
-
Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.
Part of how the article was presented didn't make it seem that way, espcially given the anti-science attitudes that often end up in the humanities.
-
Well, what he said was completely compatible with the original article - in fact, it was basically a summary of its points.
Part of how the article was presented didn't make it seem that way, espcially given the anti-science attitudes that often end up in the humanities.
The article is written by a scientist.
Sorry - it mostly consists of interviews with scientists. The article is a plea for better science. More rigorous methodology.
-
From the bottom of the article:
Ethan Watters lives in San Francisco. This essay is adapted from his book “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,” which will be published later this month by Free Press.
An earlier version of this article misstated the publisher of Ethan Watters's book. An earlier version of this article also misstated the name of the group National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Sorry if it is hard to tell whether or not he actually is a scientist from that.
-
Reread last post.
-
I didn't catch your edit before posting. :p
Sorry - it mostly consists of interviews with scientists. The article is a plea for better science. More rigorous methodology.
Cherry picked, or representing the actual concensus? I'm not totally seeing how what Ryan said was in total agreement when the article says stuff like this:
The Western mind, endlessly analyzed by generations of theorists and researchers, has now been reduced to a batter of chemicals we carry around in the mixing bowl of our skulls.
-
The article does not say that this is wrong.
The article is entirely in agreement with MP-Ryan's view. You have even had the relevant passage quoted at you.
The article's concern is partly with research being conducted on non-representative samples, and partly on the important cognitive and social elements of how mental illness manifests.
Mental illness is mental and therefore has a mental component which is non-reducible to physical properties alone, just as the information content of a book is not reducible to atomic structures. This is not an argument against physicalism in neuroscience, it is a fundamental component of physicalism in neuroscience.
-
What's the point of bring up stylistic nitpicks? This is how most articles like these are written. Just go with the actual content instead of the tone, dude.