Quote from: blablahblah on October 18, 2012, 01:48:03 PM

Hmm, I've seen those wikipedia articles before and it still gives me the same suspicions as before. It seems there's a lot of money being made by the US medical industry for coming up with huge lists of vague symptoms where 1) there's "something for everyone", 2) it's basically incurable, but 3) some symptoms can sort-of be managed on an ongoing basis, and 4) everyone else better watch out because the nearest one is probably in YOUR neighbourhood! Wink

You are referring to psychiatric diagnosis, and you're quite right about the many problems plaguing that, to the extent that one might hesitate to call it an actual science:

Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places." The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.

[The study] was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and five men) who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release.

The second part of his study involved an offended hospital challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 193 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least 1 psychiatrist and 1 other staff member. In fact Rosenhan had sent no one to the hospital.

The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals".

Another good read on this is Bruce Levine's recent article on why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill by psychologists and psychiatrists. Certainly many reasons for concern.

However, if you are suggesting that sociopaths don't exist, you're quite mistaken. I refer you to the book I mentioned earlier, which will prove very enlightening on this point. I'm certain you can find a pirate copy of the book on the various torrent networks if you'd like to browse through it.