Dr. X's Free Associations

Vintage Memorial Day: 1943

Memorial Day Arlington Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Esther Bubley, OWI.

Boy scout color bearer listening to the Memorial Day ceremony.

Stolen home run of the year

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During the first round of the NWAACC baseball championships, Lower Columbia College outfielder Derrick Salberg leaps over the fence to make a game-ending catch to rob Everett of a two-run home run and preserve a 4-2 victory. Video courtest of KLTV in Longview, Wash.

And the marriage proposal of the year, below the fold.

Obsession with diagnosis: part I

I've been thinking about a post on clinical diagnosis for the last week, but a recurrent health problem forced me to strictly limit my time reading and looking at the computer screen, but things are good again, so here we go.

Cheryl Fuller wrote a post about the current obsession with diagnosis in the mental health field. I have quite a few thoughts related to this subject, so I'll spread them over several posts of my own. Here's Cheryl:

How different Jung's perspective is from what dominates today -- a fixation on diagnosis. In fact, if one is not assigned, then there is no third party payment. We may have rather hugely increased the number of potential diagnoses, but to think the process is actually precise or scientific is to labor under serious delusion. Following Jung's path takes patient and therapist to meaning of symptoms in the context of that patient's life.

When I first started out, all the psychiatric world was divided into 3 parts: psychosis, neurosis, organic brain syndromes. And yes, borderline was in there too along with personality disorders but not as major categories. I can't see that things are better now for having so many more labels. And does diagnosis, especially when considering the types of issues most frequently brought to us in our offices, make much of a difference in what we do, really? And is it helpful to the patient?

In the diagnostic system used for insurance claims, the DSM, checklists of symptoms lend an air of objectivity to diagnostic work. These checklists may include externally observable phenomena, patient and family historical reports and, in some instances, patient reports of conscious, subjective experience, though the latter is deliberately de-emphasized. This sounds like an effort to maximize diagnostic objectivity, so what's not to like?

If Republicans really cared about the truth

Fact Checking and Alternate Realities

By Sheila Kennedy

One of the stereotypes firmly embedded in the nation’s political psyche is that of the “tax and spend” Democrats. The taken-for-granted “reality” of American politics pits these profligate lefties against fiscally prudent conservative Republicans.

As with all stereotypes, this one has roots in reality. When I was young, Democrats were leftwing big spenders. And Republicans were fiscally responsible. (Those Republicans would never have waged a war and cut taxes at the same time, to use just one example.) The problem with stereotypes, however, is that they persist long after the reality that generated them has changed.

Which brings me to the reality-challenged charge by Mitt Romney and his minions that the Obama Administration has spent money like drunken sailors, a charge echoed by partisans on the Internet, Faux News and other outlets that have long since abandoned even the pretense of fact-checking and/or objectivity.

The charge has now been pretty decisively debunked by no other than the Wall Street Journal, hardly a left-wing publication.

The Journal reports that, even taking into account the massive stimulus spending during Obama’s tenure, overall federal spending has been rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s. In fact, according to the article,  ”Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.”  The article includes a nifty graph, and hyperlinks that will lead skeptics to the official sources of the information presented.

Not only has spending barely increased in present dollars, after adjusting for inflation, the Journal reports that spending under Obama is falling at a 1.4% annual pace — the first decline in real spending since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon was retreating from the quagmire in Vietnam.

Why level a charge so demonstrably untrue? Because people will believe it. It feeds into a persistent stereotype, and the “legacy media” that could formerly be relied upon to provide fact-checking has been displaced by lazy “he said/she said” reporting and partisan spin.

Repeat a big lie often enough, and you’ll be amazed at how widely it will be accepted.

Sheila Kennedy is Professor of Law and Policy in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. She's a member of IUPUI’s Philanthropic Studies faculty, a Faculty Fellow with both the Center for Religion and American Culture in the School of Liberal Arts and the Tobias Center of the Kelley School of Business, and an adjunct professor of political science. In addition, Professor Kennedy was for several years, a regular columnist for the Indianapolis Star.

CPD and the NATO protests

From what I've seen on the news, and based on what reporters present have said, the police showed extraordinary restraint. Most of the protesters conducted themselves well, but a small, very active percentage of protesters were there to instigate violence and chaos. According to many reports, the police endured viscious taunts without reacting (at one point, chanting in their faces: dead police! dead police! dead police!).

Vintage Photos: 1943

Sun bathers on the sand beach at the swimming pool in the Glen Echo Amusement Park. (Esther Bubley, Glen Echo, Maryland).

Sunday p.m. pig out

The condiments are regulation, but the dogs are a violation (charred). You can't expect non-natives to play by all the rules. I know, the beer is criminal, but the blue bottles are cool.

The NATO Protests

The summit itself will be held in Chicago today, now that all the G8 big shots have arrived. The biggest protest event is set for late this morning in Grant Park. So far, events this week haven't lived up to the police and press hype. The semi-lockdown of our building has thus far proven entirely unnecessary.

Psychological undercurrents in political movements

Commenting on anti-gay crusader Paul Cameron's revelation that he was raped as a child, Sullivan observes:

The longer I am in this debate, the more something emerges. Most people don't really care much about gays. The subject doesn't come up; and most adjusted straight men do not feel passionately on the subject one way or the other. And so you notice patterns. You find that most of the really impassioned anti-gay activists are just as motivated by personal passion - whether as an early victim of sex abuse (Paul Cameron), or as the father of a gay son (Charles Socarides), or as a single mother abandoned by her boyfriend (Maggie Gallagher), or someone fighting to restrain their own gay feelings (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig) - as pro-gay activists are. This is a perfectly legitimate motivation for all sorts of political movements, but on the gay question, one should always be alert to the personal psychological undercurrents. (That goes for us gays as well as out opponents, and I am grateful for the odd psychological diagnoses I receive via email.)

 

What the...

What do you think was behind this bizarre attack in the Chicago suburbs? War within the Irish Travellers? Really, I have no idea.

National Review's false accusation of plagiarism

Alex Pareene:

The National Review says Elizabeth Warren is guilty of the gravest crime a writer can commit: Plagiarism. Katrina Trinko compares passages from “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Money Lifetime Plan,” Warren’s book with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, with passages from “Getting on the Money Track,” a book by Rob Black. The passages line up perfectly. The wording and even the punctuation are identical. It’s plagiarism all right. Except it looks very much like Warren is actually the victim.

Trinko mistakenly compared the publication date of Warren's paperback edition to the earlier initial publication date of Black's book. But Warren's hardcover edition was actually published seven months before Black's book.

Pathologizing Normalcy and Overdiagnosing Pathology

Russell Blackford:

I get fed up with the constant attempts to treat people's legitimate choices as pathological. These proposed, guidelines would reclassify as alcoholics very large numbers of people (especially young people in university or college) who choose to get drunk now and then. Bloody ridiculous!

The longer term implication of these kinds of changes to diagnostic manuals could be very illiberal. Potentially, many choices could come to be regarded as illegitimate on the basis that someone making those choices must suffer from a mental disorder. A diagnostic manual of mental disorders can end up being used to do an end run around people's political freedom - all sorts of behavioral choices could be stigmatised as revealing mental disorder. It's not as if we lack historical experience with this. Think of how homosexuality has been treated in the past, not to mention any interest in sex on the part of women. If we're not careful "mental disorders" can become, as they sometimes have become in the past, mere political constructs.

True at one time and still true in some places, but in the US, at least, we're not in any such danger. Because of deinstitutionalization, tight state budgets and penny pinching insurers, the mental health and pharmaceutical industries are effectively turning mental disorders into economic constructs. The issue isn't government declaring someone sick; DSM diagnoses don't constitute legal grounds for commitment.

In the U.S, the DSM boils down to three critical issues: reimbursement, reimbursement and reimbursement.  It should be renamed the American Diagnostic and Reimbursement Manual, so that those who use it outside the U.S. better understand the influences behind it.

Mad Men

Time for another freestyle Mad Man analysis. I have scattered thoughts about the most recent episode, and once again I don't know where I'm going with this post, so I'll begin by getting my bearings with a quick recap of where we've been.

Last week, there was the ambivalence older people feel toward younger people. Ambivalence can be expressed in good wishes that contain hidden or implicit bad wishes (see: break a leg). There was also the related matter of fakery in the portrayal of reality. For example, there was the struggle over how to seduce consumers into forgetting that Cool Whip is not real whipped cream.

There was more on fakery this week as aspiring actor Megan showed Sally that she can cry on cue. Sally was blown away by that, but it came back to bite Megan when Sally confronted her about breaking a confidence. When Megan is about to cry, Sally sneers at her: so now you're going to fake crying.

CPD officers have thick skins

So says superintendent Garry McCarthy:

Chicago police have done a good job handling NATO-related demonstrations so far this week, even when protesters at one event tried to provoke confrontations, Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Wednesday.

I would really love to agree with him after the summit is over.

While we complain about our 15% tax rate, would you please further tax all the schlubs in Chicago to give us billionaires a $150 million gift?

Chicago Tribune:

The Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, today moved to control the fallout from a now-disavowed plan to politically attack President Barack Obama reportedly funded by family patriarch.

The New York Times first reported that a plan was submitted to Joe Ricketts to use $10 million to fund Super PAC advertisements linking Obama to the controversial preaching of his onetime pastor,Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose teachings were perceived as a liability to the president when he ran in 2008.

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts, who has been pushing a plan to get government help in rebuilding Wrigley Field, issued a statement distancing himself and the organization from that plan.

“As chairman of the Chicago Cubs, I repudiate any return to racially divisive issues in this year’s presidential campaign or in any setting — like my father has,” Tom Ricketts said in the statement. “I shall have no further comment on this or any other election year political issue. My full-time focus is on making the Chicago Cubs a World Series champion preserving Wrigley Field and making the Chicago Cubs a great corporate citizen.”

Ricketts’ statement came as Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, blasted the proposed political attack on the president as an insult to the nation.

“I don’t think that’s fitting in a campaign of any nature,” Emanuel said, cautioning that he does not have first-hand knowledge of the Ricketts effort. “You can have disagreements without being disagreeable.”

“America is too great a country with too great a future with the content they are talking about,” added the mayor. “And it’s insulting to the president, it’s insulting to the country.”

The Cubs are trying to work out a deal with the city that would involve using $150 million in city amusement taxes for a $300 million renovation of Wrigley Field.

Tom Ricketts repudiates the campaign because his family (the founders of TD Ameritrade) got caught supporting racist smear tactics and that might interfere with enriching themselves off of us schlubs who don't make even a tiny fraction of what the Ricketts family makes. I've never felt any resentment or heard resentment expressed locally toward the Ricketts family or their wealth. That may change now.