When Vanity Publishing Turns Dangerous

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Bad Advice, Essential Oils, Rant, Self-Help, Vanity Publishing

I know that it seems progressively harder to get published, as more and more books seem to become yet another commodity, and fabulous advance bidding wars are fought over the rights of (sometimes mediocre) books which are snapped up for megas because someone sees FILM RIGHTS or MERCHANDISING.

Meanwhile, the role of the carefully crafting book editor, nurturing a talent, working with a writer over decades, seems to be in decline

Inevitably the ‘well I can publish this myself on digi’ beckons, and clearly some writers find this hits the sweet spot – 50 Shades the classic example.

Now I’m sure there are wonderfully written books out there which failed to get publication the normal route, and the authors of them are desperate to get reviewers to try their free downloads to see if genuine enthusiasm can get the work read, as it absolutely deserves to be.

But it is also true that some stuff of abysmal quality is being self-pub’d, and I guess many of us have sneaked ‘look insides’ at what we were getting requests to read, and finding jaw-dropped moments of disbelief at how bad some of this was, and, in the end, we decided to draw a line and state, firmly ‘no self-published works will be read’. Which is horribly hard for the writers of the stuff we might have absolutely been blown away by, but unfortunately finding the pearl means wading through dozens and dozens of stuff which is badly written, – or completely outside the reviewer’s interest.

So – I had definitely become a ‘no self-pub’, clearly explained, on my Amazon profile. But still the requests keep coming, several daily. Delete, delete, delete.

Except – one arrived which was right within my area of expertise – a specific modality of the complementary health field. So, I thought I ought to read it, as I do keep up with what is newly being written on the subject. Though I had some reservations, as the title of the publication did rather suggest that the author was jumping onto a cash-cow bandwagon – self-help books, and that possibly, probably, her expertise might not be that high.

I started my read expecting to find only that the eBook on free download when offered would probably be no more than the usual same old same old fluffy repetitions, cuts and pastes. It’s an overcrowded, but lucrative market, particularly when the writer does a mass-mailout, offering a free download in the hope of garnering the 5 stars, pushing the book up the listings, before charging a very modest sum, and watching the modest sums stack up.

What I found, instead, was outrageously dangerous. The writer clearly had no more knowledge of the subject than I have of how to perform open-heart surgery. And yet her marketing found her managing to garner 5 star reviews from people who clearly were either patsies, or people who knew nothing whatsoever about the subject either, and thought that what was written was advice which could be safely followed

However if any misguided person actually does follow the given instructions they might – suffer severe skin burns from using essential oils in the bath in the manner suggested, suffer severe burns to the mouth, throat, oesophagus from ingesting essential oils diluted in water and suffer burns (both giver and receiver) attempting to massage someone with essential oils dissolved in water.

Essential oils are primarily hydrophobic – the majority of the individual components in each essential oil either do not dissolve in water at all, or are only marginally hydrophilic.

The worst which can result from reading a painfully bad work of fiction is irritation, boredom and the like.

But when ignorant writers turn their hands to writing ‘health advice’ on subjects they clearly know nothing about, the results can be serious, for the reader who takes that advice.

I  wrote a blistering, detailed, scathing and far too long 1 star review of the ill-advised book, on the Amazons, quoting from the book, and explaining many of its erroneous and dangerous mistakes, in the hope that possible readers who have no knowledge of the field might at least think ‘I wonder why there is a one star review’, and be deterred from following suspect advice, and perhaps seeking out one of the books written for lay-readers, but published by a reputable publishing house who specialises in the field of good quality books on health care and self-help.

Inevitably, some negative voting has happened on my review to drive it out of sight, on the USA site. But it’s telling, that so far, none of the negative voters has challenged that what I quoted from the text itself are not true quotes

Curiously, this distresses me even more – if I had put out advice into the public arena which was dangerous, but perhaps I was blithely unaware of the danger, and it was pointed out precisely why this was dangerous advice, personally I’d rather people were protected from danger, rather than want my dangerous information to be utilised.

Having read this particular self-pub it reinforces, for me, the importance of making sure that any books I read on complementary health matters which involve advice on supplements, homoeopathy, herbs, essential oils, manipulative bodywork and the like are published by one of the publishing houses which specialises in the area, and ensures that ‘advice’ for self-help is given by people who know what they are talking about.

Sometimes, the fact that a publisher might be held liable for dangerous advice and that the threats of lawsuits make publishers cautious, even over-cautious, is a good thing.

Complete freedom to write and self-publish whatever you like, as long as it isn’t an incitement to criminality, terrorism, racism and the like, does not mean that work which falls outside these obvious cavils, is necessarily writing which is without danger.

Caveat emptor – and perhaps, even more, Caveat free-downloader!

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John Marzillier – The Gossamer Thread: My Life As A Psychotherapist

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Book Review, CBT, John Marzillier, Psychological Therapies, Psychotherapy, The Gossamer Thread: My Life As A Psychotherapist

The Gossamer Thread and The Boundless Ocean

I thoroughly appreciated John Marzillier’s wonderful book on psychological therapy, as the reading of it caused deep reflection which led me into many fields. Not least of which is the whole relationship we have with the reflective activity of reading itself. Doors open, horizons widen, intense emotional experiences and thoughtful, reasoned self-questioning occurs; ideas become developed or discarded; change happens.

I most value those books, fiction or non-fiction, which take me into these areas.

Marzillier’s beautifully titled book explores his own development in the field of psychological therapy, and the development of particular therapeutic approaches, as much as it also explores his successful or less than successful experiences with clients, suitably anonymised, and often with stories changed, to also protect the confidential integrity of the client’s story, in case a former client reads and thinks ‘that is me!’

John Marzillier almost stumbled into clinical work by default, beginning to work using behavioural techniques – a very reductive, lab-rat approach (or so it seems to this reader) in the late 60s and early 70s. The model, it seems, was heavily based on physiology and learned behaviours, biased towards large scale statistical ‘objective’ scientific studies, and drew much of its methodology from observed animal behaviour. However, Marzillier was beginning to feel uneasy, as ’something’ was missing in this approach, and almost by instinct he found himself, through a more dynamic engaged relationship with individual clients, drawn to exploring thought processes and even gaining curiosity about ‘back stories’

In fact, he was moving closer to embracing the role of the relationship between client and practitioner as integral to treatment. The ‘relational field’ approach though was still in the future for his work. This is a concept central within psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytical approaches, but was barely engaged with by the more ‘impartial’ scientific observational ideology of the behavioural approach.

He began to formally train in a then new discipline, cognitive therapy, examining the internal thought processes, the scripts and dialogues which run through our heads. Cognitive therapy of course, in tandem with the earlier behavioural approach, became mainstream as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

My sense, reading this book is that perhaps Marzillier was always as much an artist as a scientist, and therefore, by his own nature, more likely to find that any approach which has fairly set protocols, and a fairly rigid methodology might quickly begin to seem as if it were missing something. It seems to me that no one method or approach, in this field, is ever going to be successful with all people, at all times. What the left brain approach lacks is the imaginative gestalt, the whole-person poetry of the various strands of ‘relational’ right brain methods. Science versus art of psyche.

Marzillier ended up having a kind of revelation, listening to a lecture given by Dorothy Rowe, well-known for her work in the field of depression, about the centrality of core belief and how it can become entwined with one’s very identity. A belief may be useful or destructive, but even a self-destructive and painful core belief can provide the security of comfort – a reinforcements of the sense of self. To LOSE, for example, the certainly that life is meaningless or you yourself are worthless and bad things happen to you because you are worthless can be a frightening change too far – though a belief may or may not be a helpful one to an individual,  – and may or may not be right, it is YOURS. We all struggle with complex responses to being WRONG

His process of progression from scientific certainty, where the steps are known, and the methods can be approached sequentially, so that the method, not the person employing the method ‘makes’ the cure, eventually led him to the uncharted, waters of the mysterious ‘unknown’ of other, and the personal, uncertain route of that more narrative, right brain approach. I had a sense of the psychodynamic psychotherapist (a further training in this followed) like a boat in the middle of an ocean, lacking a map, with destination unknown, steering by instinct, feeling, sense, gut reaction on a journey of trust with his client. This sort of work comes closer to the relationships we have with ‘the others that are not self’ as we move through life. There are forms and structures, rough maps and sketched instructions which guide us, but the relationship between self and any other is something like a dance, which though the steps may be known, veers off into something jazzy, freeform, improvisational. Things may go horribly wrong, and the dancers fall over, step on each others’ toes – but they may also get to a dazzling, inventive, dynamic place with their dance.

Later, his journey takes him into analysis, to experience the procedure from the other side. He is as thoughtful about himself as an analysand, as he is about his patients, teasing out his sense of the process, and his resistance

As Marzillian points out, there are difficulties in psychoanalysis being properly verified by the statistical tools – because it is not dealing in certainties, but in ambiguities – the subjectivity of the practitioner is always within the encounter. There is not a set protocol of method, session to session, with set aims and objectives. This is the very real challenge of that therapy. It seems to me that IF the practitioner is both skilful, and congruent , on some deep level, with the client, the work can be amazing, profound, transformational. It is about much more than the client being free of the ‘symptom’ which brought them into treatment, and about much more than the client being ‘made well’ by the method – or by the therapist using ‘the method’. Instead, there is the possibility of (like with any authentic human encounter), both participants stepping into ‘meaning’ An epiphany of sorts, if you will. The big problem of course, is that it always beset around by those IFS.

Like that other wonderful writer in this field – the humanistic, existentialist psychotherapist Irvin D Yalom, Marzillier is steeped with a sense of art, awareness of metaphor, the poetic. He often illustrates by using literary allusion – literature is indeed a potent source helping us to understand the depth and vitality of human experience.

Marzillier also writes not only with warmth, clarity and authenticity – but with a fine sense of the absurd humour that is to be found in even the most serious places.

What is also utterly compelling about this journey Marzillier takes the reader through, is that he is a man who accepts the confusions, the hesitations, the contradictions within any ‘method’ No wonder he embarked on so many trainings, with that recognition that any one party line is too reductive and fixed to capture human exchanges in all their complexity

Or, as he more cogently puts it

If I have learned anything from a lifetime career as a psychotherapist, it is that there is no universal truth, that everyone is different, and that you, the reader, should take what I or anyone else tells you about psychotherapy with a large pinch of salt

The Gossamer Thread Amazon UK
The Gossamer Thread Amazon USA

John Bradshaw – Cat Sense

Tags

Animal behaviour, Book Review, Cat sense, Cats, John Bradshaw, Soapbox

Anthropomorphism debunked – or are we really guilty of human special pleading?

I confess to a strong desire to stand scientists on their heads when I read any animal studies which look at those of us with a tendency to ascribe ‘human’ motivations, feelings and even thoughts to ‘dumb animals’, as being guilty of anthropomorphism.

Particularly in relationship to ‘dumb animals’ we may choose to share our lives with. In common parlance, pets.

John Bradshaw is a British biologist, probably its fair to say that he is really (whispers) a dog-lover, but clearly does like cats. QUITE a lot

I remember, years ago, reading an earlier book which Bradshaw wrote on the subject of woman’s best friend, and thinking, hmm, doggy person, distinctly doggy. There was a little too much stressing the superior qualities of the canine versus the not quite so intelligent, personable qualities of the feline.

I cannot deny my own reverse prejudices. I like dogs rather a lot, but my heart belongs to tabby.

But it isn’t this which makes me wish to invert Mr Bradshaw and his fairly interesting (though a little dryly written – a bit four square and lacking in cattish whimsicality and quirkiness for my tastes) tome.

It is the assumption that those of us who ascribe the prevalence of complex emotions to non human, or at least non-primate, species, are guilty of anthropomorphising animals.

There is another way of looking at all this – and it comes, not just from those who have strong connections with our companion animals, or other animals, but from OTHER scientists, who study animals with less of a sense of the uniqueness of the human animal, and more of a sense of a continuum of evolution which means that our very complex ‘humanity’ may be seen as a developing continuum across other species. 

Anyone who is interested in this approach may well find that the observations and studies cited in books by Jonathan Balcombe an absorbing, convincing and educative read

But one doesn’t have even to go along with this to think that some of the studies Bradshaw cites, ‘debunking’ animal ‘owners’ beliefs, may themselves miss the point.

One particular study involved disproving the fact that dogs could feel guilt, by setting up a double blind experiment whereby owners believe their dogs have been guilty of a misdemeanour (food theft) when in fact only SOME of the dogs have been, and comparing which owners recognise the guilt of their dog by the ‘expression’ on the dogs face, on coming back into the room (the owners are told their dog has ‘offended’, though not all dogs HAVE). The owners (including those with with innocent dogs) report guilty looks from the dogs.

Two ideas hit me – dogs (and cats, as Bradshaw acknowledges) have the skills to ‘read’ their humans – it is an evolutionary advantage to be able to be able to second guess and interpret what another animal is about to do. Given a dog WILL read its owner it is not a far jump to assume an owner projecting ‘bad dog’ posture, and facial expression WILL result in the ‘interpreting your-human’ sensitive dog in itself projecting ‘Whoops I have been a BAD DOG’ – as the animal will have picked up ‘bad dog’ from the owner and so is likely to reflect their bad guilty dogness back

The other thought is that PEOPLE readily ASSUME guilt, feel guilt, and even project clearly ‘I am guilty’ when they are no such thing.  One only has to think about situations where wrongdoing is being checked for – think about the airport scan experience,  or even, what most of us may feel on passing a policeman on patrol, even though we are squeaky innocent as the driven snow. MOST people, even though they know they have no contraband etc and are not breaking the law,  will feel a prickle of imaginative anxiety and guilt and begin to LOOK a little shifty

I’m not saying the dogs were going through that process (though of course such a complex cascade cannot have sprung into being fully formed in homo sapiens with having some sort of ‘proto development at an earlier stage) But the projection/imagining ‘my dog is guilty’ to dog LOOKING guilty does not mean it is purely an owner’s imagination that the dog expresses a certain look.

Whilst I appreciate there may be a fairly narrow window of opportunity, within a kitten’s life, for socialisation with humans to happen, so that a very young kitten (we are talking around the second month), needs to be used to humans, and being handled by humans (kindly) for it to be receptive and desirous of human touch, this surely is not so different from the experience of a baby. Where Bradshaw (I think) is talking about genetic ancestry from the wild, versus the imprint of early experience and environmental modification, he does I feel rather look at cat response as different in kind from human response. Whereas, much work on the development of small babies also shows the profound importance of habituation to good touch. Brains have plasticity, both the brains of Homo sapiens and the brains of Felis catus.

Ashley Montagu in his profoundly informative book Touching, though it is subtitled Human Significence of the Skin is very much about a common mammalian inheritance. Montagu shows that young babies, young primates, young puppies, kittens and indeed the poor old lab rat, may not be that different from each other, and that the plasticity of the early brain is profoundly important (for good or ill)

So….interesting though Bradshaw’s book may be, it also frustrated me somewhat, as it was coming from a place of difference between humans and other animals. A difference which some animal behaviourists, like the aforementioned Balcombe, indicate may be much narrower than we think

Bradshaw did not really tell me much I didn’t already know, except in the closing chapters of the book where he looks at the FUTURE of the domestic cat, as influenced by the fact that most responsible owners who share their lives with ‘moggies’ are likely to have had them neutered. This means that outside pedigree breeding (which has its own potential problems as visual desirability makes breeders choose mates for their queens, rather than cat choice selecting for health) there is a greater tendency for un-neutered domestic queens to be breeding with feral toms. This is more likely to result in the resulting kittens to have a wilder, less ‘socialised domestic’ temperament than the mating of 2 moggy domestics. This of course assumes that some of the suitability for domestication in our cats will be of genetic base and not just environmental. There is interesting genetic evidence in terms of a long history of genetic mingling between small wild cats Felis lybica, Felis sylvestris and our domesticated catus.

Finally, I have no wish to leave Mr Bradshaw standing on his head, though I have no idea what this less than pleased looking tabby feels about that.

My own felines do not appear within this post. They are extremely private individuals and request that the paparazzi leave them alone, at this challenging time.As this book was an ARC from the publishers via Netgalley, and it not yet appearing on the Amazon’s for prepublication ordering, links will have to wait

I did enjoy reading this book, though I was often in disputatious mode, snorting crossly at the elevation of homo sapiens and man’s best friend

Having shared my life with various cats (and dogs) over many years, most of which have been rescue animals, and none of which have been pedigree, I have only ever had one cat which was more attached to place than person and did not intensely form a relationship with me. And it does not surprise me that this was my very first cat, when I was in some ways too young to understand MYSELF never mind how best to respond to the complexities of the needs of other beings in my world, whether human or cat.

A Rose by any other name would not BE as sweet

Tags

Aromatics, Chemistry, Cosmetics, Fashion, Health and wellbeing, Other Stuff, Perfumery, Soapbox

A Killjoy post about synthetic perfumery

I happened, as one does, on an interesting blog devoted to perfume. The only reason I’m not linking to it, or doing a pingythingy, is because THIS post is actually an anti SYNTHETIC perfumery post, and it might seem it is a post against the perfume passionate blogger – which it isn’t. Though it is a killjoy post about pretty well all modern perfumery, despite my love of aromatics, as evidenced by earlier posts – and rants – wrapped up in reviews of two books by Jean-Claude Ellena

I have become deeply concerned about the fact that virtually ALL perfumery is using synthesised ‘novel’ chemical constituents – this is very different from the complexity of naturally occurring chemical compounds as they arise within the chemistry of a plant.

A fine example is the fact that the fragrance industry has now identified linalool, a naturally occurring chemical constituent in many essential oils as a potential skin irritant, so its use in compounds is restricted to a maximum level. This is because (for example) tests with synthetic linalool isolate showed a potential to trigger eczematous reactions in susceptible individuals

This is now having a (negative) effect on aromatherapeutics as MANY essential oils – including some of those known to be amongst the ‘safest’ – for example, Lavandula angustifolia, true lavender, is high in linalool (Sometimes also referred to as linalol)

And information which tries to equate the synthetic isolate with the whole herb synergy has herbalists and aromatherapists turning quite puce with rage – as the two are not the same.  Linalool rich true lavender is one of many essential oils which may be effectively used in topical applications to TREAT eczema

So what is going on here, and how has a plant which has been used, both aesthetically and therapeutically, for thousands of years, suddenly turned out to have restricted levels in ‘products’ And by the way, I mean ‘thousands’ literally as documented use stretches back that far in herbal texts from classical times, as whole herb use, and also, from a few hundred years later, as essential oils. The invention or re-invention of distillation occurred around the 10th and 11th century by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) a Persian (Iranian) doctor/herbalist/healer/writer of medical texts.

What no one really seems to be getting their heads round is that complex evolved chemistry in a plant is not a chemical in isolation, but a synthesis of hundreds – creating a particular new synergy. Plants (like people) are made of chemical checks and balances to maintain integrity. A particular chemical component may be toxic but may be contained or have its toxicity ameliorated or modified by the presence of other chemicals

A fine example is that. within our own bodies, the contents of the stomach are highly acidic, through the presence of corrosive  hydrochloric acid, which is present to break down foods, particularly as part of protein digestion – however the aggressive and necessary effects of HCl (hydrochloric acid) are moderated by the presence of mucus secreting cells which protect the lining of the stomach itself being ‘burned’ by the acid

So, within plants, there may be aggressive or irritant chemistry which is contained by the presence of other chemicals. It is just not true to say that a plant containing high levels of linalool, like true lavender, has the skin irritancy potential of much LOWER levels of the synthesised chemical isolate, linalool

Perfumery Chemists-behaving-like-gods are creating ‘novel’ chemicals which have never existed before, as well as creating synthetic versions of preexisting chemicals. The situation is further complicated by the fact that although synthetic linalool, for example, and linalool as a naturally occurring compound may indeed have the same chemical formula – the molecules may not have the same shape. How chemistry is utilised in the body is often linked to receptors on cells,with a particular shape, designed to be activated by the presence of a chemical fitting the receptor (like keys in locks) And like keys in locks, the wrong key, or a badly cut key may not only ‘not work’ but get jammed into the keyhole

The above picture of two naturally occurring forms of linalool is a diagrammatic illustration of how the same chemical molecule may exist in different spatial arrangements – and the shape itself will alter various characteristics of the chemical. For example, the two forms of the same chemical compounds even SMELL completely different.

Naturally occurring chemistry has been part of an evolutionary process, species will evolve ways to use or protect itself if it comes into contact with specific chemistry, over many generations. But evolution on that level works quite slowly.

However NO ONE KNOWS  how we are really responding to the new chemistry flooding out into the market place – whether in perfumery, household products, food, atmosphere, industry etc. And we know EVEN LESS how all these individual novel chemicals will react with each other.

Sure you may be able to test for obvious things in cosmetics, like application to the skin, and at what levels an irritability reaction may occur with each chemical, or even the finished product. But, long term? And as many of these compounds belong to classes of chemicals which are related to naturally occurring compounds which absorb into the body via various routes, it is LIKELY that they may well be absorbed into the body, through those same routes, reaching the brain, via the olfactory receptor cells, the respiratory system, or with a partially fat soluble partially water soluble structure, being absorbed through the skin (in cosmetic or perfumery application)

Allergic and intolerant responses have been on the rise for some time, and a percentage of those are from people who are claiming strong perfumes trigger headaches and migraines. In fact there have been some who are trying to stop the wearing of ‘strong perfumes’ in public places and are using some of the arguments akin to those brought up around the dangers of passive smoking. Which of course took many years of known negative health implications and growing statistical evidence before the might of Big Tobacco was overpowered enough to create changes in legislation

To return to synthetic perfumery – It is my own belief that it is nothing to do with the ‘strength’ of the perfume, and everything to do with the pervasiveness of synthesised chemical compounds, both ‘copies’ of naturally occurring compounds and entirely novel ones. That belief comes from the number of people who begin to use only natural perfumes and cosmetic products because they DON’T have the intolerant reactions to these latter products.

In what might seem a disconnect (but isn’t) some years ago we were all deluged by advertising claims that margarine was better for us than butter, because of the danger of saturated fats (primarily animal origin) as compared to mono – or poly, unsaturates (primarily plant origin)

The difference between a fat (solid at room temperature) and an oil (liquid) is that the latter has a bendier, more flexible structure. A saturated fat, like butter, contains all the hydrogen atoms the carbon atoms will hold. Hence, the carbons are saturated’ with hydrogen. Our bodies can recognise and process these naturally occurring substances

With a monounsaturated fat, like oleic acid ( naturally occurs in olive oil) or a polyunsaturated fat for  example, the Omega 3’s in fish oils, or the Omega 6’s in borage or evening primrose or other seed oils, one (monounsaturated) or more (polyunsaturated) of the carbon atoms in the chain of carbons forms a double bond with another carbon – so it is no longer ‘saturated’ with the maximum number of hydrogens it could hold. The double bond makes the molecule bendier

And still, the body can recognise the shape of these different molecules. However, the process of hydrogenation turning a liquid plant oil into a solid, spreadable fat, effectively, re-saturates them again – except – except the hydrogen atoms attach in a different way. which is not a naturally occurring ‘shape’ and which the body is unable to properly recognise and utilise.

Way back IN THE 50s concerns were already being expressed about health issues related to  ‘trans fats’ where the hydrogen atoms are forced onto opposing ‘sides’ of the carbon. It took 40 years before, slowly, slowly the food industry made changes (were forced to make changes) so that now we know to check our spreadable plant oil-turned-into-fat is ‘free from trans-fats. This time, the Big Food industry were the ones doing the heel-dragging

My rather lengthy deviation into butter versus margarine is really not a deviation at all. We make and use novel chemistry in a rather ‘because we can’ way, without really knowing the effects

Back in the time of the first Queen Elizabeth it was fashionable for ladies to have a complexion which was as white as possible, and lead was used in cosmetics to give the desirable pallor

We gaze on smugly at the ignorance and folly of that earlier generation dicing with death due to the follies of fashion

In fact, our ancestors, knowing less about chemistry, had far more excuse for their ignorance than we do. Watch, as they say, this space (the cosmetics and perfumery industry space) and see what the next 40 years may bring.

Sounds disgusting, sounds repellent – but……….

Tags

Big Pharma, health, Holism, Medicine, Philosophy, Reflection, Soapbox, Tangible Intangibility

Where the darkest shadow falls, the brightest light is shining

There is a blog I follow, Medical Revolt written by an American clinician, trained in conventional medicine, but married to a complementary health practitioner. I follow his blog with great interest as I too have a deep interest in complementary and holistic approaches to health.

Indeed, the word Hael, an old English word, has a word root from which other words, other concepts are derived – Hael, Whole, Health, Holy, Holistic, Holism (literally, what is holy, is also wholly, the whole is more Hale/Hael healthy than the sum of its parts. Hail! (as in a word used to greet) – is to wish good health – and therefore good all-the-sum-of-your-parts – body, mind, spirit – to the other.

Perhaps we could even say it is even more than to wish that to other – it is also to GREET (or recognise) that which is hale/whole/healthy/holy in each other. And where do we see or recognise the health/holy/completeness of the other – except from that part of ourselves which is similarly healthy/holy/complete, no matter how broken parts of us may be, or may appear to be, to ourselves or each other.

So………….what does this have to do with Medical Revolt’s blog, or the title or subtitle of this post……and why am I particularly interested in, and excited by, Mr Revolt’s blog, rather than any other blog about matters to do with health and wellbeing, whether physiological, psychological, spiritual or the whole-hael-of-what-is.

Well, it’s the SCIENCE. It’s incredibly common, for what I suppose I might loosely think of as the broad world of matter – physics – and the broad world of the intangible – metaphysics, to be distrustful or dismissive of each other. In fact there is a place where everything becomes (and indeed contains), its opposite

So I am rather more interested in finding out about cutting edge biological science from the edge where oppositions meet. It’s the Buddhist concept of ‘The Middle Way’. The ‘extremes of thinking’ for me – whether of number crunching pure statistics, or the edge of irrational (in my view) extremes of New Age-ism both frustrate me equally, because they fail to contain opposition, and the duality of homoeostasis AND entropy, – whatever movements there are towards the edge – expansion, dissolution, flying apart, this OR that, the opposite exists, the condensation, the contraction, the holding together. This AND That, rather than This OR That

Mr Revolt, for me, provides a beautiful illustration, approaching the far-out through a scientific rationale, or approaching the scientific precision of taking a thing apart to see its inner workings through the paradigm of encompassing the whole.

Not micro OR macro but micro AND macro (and of course the oppositional middle which contains the whole

Oh but hang on, what is it with the post title – there has been little of disgust and repellent so far, (you might be thinking, if you have had the patience to stay thus far) and what’s this about dark shadow and bright light, even:

commons on flicr –  silentius’ photostream,

There is an obvious physical manifestation that it is when the sun is brightest (more illuminative) that the shadows, the areas without light, where objects interrupt the light, are seen. Sunlight and shade are neither good nor bad, they are.  The above yin and yang version does the illustration through sunlight and shadow, night day, dark light

There is a concept, from Jungian psychotherapy, of the ‘shadow self’  – the self we do not wish others to see. It is the self we may not even wish to see ourselves. We don’t want to own that shameful self, that hidden self. This is the self (because WE place constructs on it of illumination good, hidden/shadow= shady, dodgy,bad) The shadow (whether individual, cultural, or of an epoch) – is however made visible through illumination, and the shadow contains within it the light and the illumination.

yes, yes, but what is it which is so disgusting????

Well Mr Medical Revolt (you will be REALLY pleased I’m not posting the obvious illustration at this point) made an absolutely FASCINATING (well it was, as far as I’m concerned) post about a rather counter-intuitive way of dealing with a potentially lethal gut bacterium, which is on the verge of being untreatable by any antibiotics – indeed has developed strength, virulence and population growth THROUGH the over-prescription of antibiotics. Here’s a pic of C.difficile – it is found in the intestine.

Medical Revolt’s post on ‘Poo Cure for Clostridium difficile’

Now, seeing the title of Mr Revolt’s post, aren’t you pleased I am going no further with graphics at this point?

What fascinated and interested me about his post, once I got beyond the Yeurrh gut (!) reaction stage, the disgust, the horrified embarrassed black humour, and even the science of it and the predictable anger at Big Pharma trying to suppress it, was this:

It was such an illustration of the shadow side, that which is unwanted, hidden, which we wish to eliminate (hah!) from ourselves, vent from ourselves, void from ourselves, being the part from where new health may come.

Strange to find excrement itself (well, it was strange to me) providing some sort of visceral (ha again) illumination about the metaphysics of dark and light, and the absorbed, acknowledged and integrated shadow rather than the disowned shadow

This post of mine, has, finally a practical purpose. As someone who doesn’t facebook, doesn’t tweet: I believe Medical Revolt’s post is hugely and scientifically important. Changes in medical thinking may often come ground up, rather than top down. Many extremely compassionate, caring dedicated clinicians ARE UNAWARE of unconventional effective, safer treatment protocols other than the protocols of Big Pharma itself or the last resort surgical scalpel – for all the obvious reason. PHARMA isn’t going to publicise the positive evidence of anything unpatentable.

Patients and clients are often the means by which other approaches come to the awareness of clinicians. Information just needs to be out there more widely in collective consciousness. If I did twit, face, or anything else, I would be twitfacing Mr Revolt’s post.

A journey of a thousand (virtual) miles  starts with a single facetwit!

Ancient Chinese Digital proverb, often unattributed to Lao Tzu

Flicr, Commons, elliotmoore photostream

James Davies – Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good

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Big Pharma, Book Review, Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, James Davies, Medicine, Psychiatry, Soapbox

Wool Pulled Justifiable Rage Disorder

Why has the prescription of antidepressant medicine roughly tripled in less than 20 years? Is it that we are indeed becoming sicker, that we are all becoming more and more stressed and psychologically unwell, is it merely that doctors and psychiatrists are much more skilled at diagnosing psychiatric conditions than they used to be, or is it that we are now medicalising (drugging) what is normal about the variety of day to day human experiences, which at times can be sorrowful, challenging or confusing?

This briiliantly clear, cogently argued, shocking and timely book by psychotherapist and anthropologist James Davies rendered me almost incoherent with rage, exposing as it did something which many of us have been aware of, but maybe have not had the tools or ability to follow to a conclusion. James Davies has those tools and abilities; he thoughtfully, knowledgeably, skilfully connects all the dots together, uncovering the horrendous duplicity, collusion and sheer unscientific snake oil peddling visited upon us by Big Pharma, in the field of mental health.

I can’t urge the reading of this book strongly enough. Anyone who cares about what it means to be a fully human being, and especially anyone involved in any way in the caring professions needs to be aware of what Davies lays clear about the mental health industry. For industry it surely is.

With a carefully constructed series of explanations, revelations and arguments Davies delivers telling knock out punches to the House of Trick Cards of current mainstream psychiatry. The major punches involve

1)    The increasing categorisation of VIRTUALLY ANY EMOTIONAL STATE so that it falls within a category of disorder – thus opening the way to the development of chemical coshes. This categorisation – the ‘Bible’ used to denote syndromes, the DSM (currently DSM 5), is NOT the result of huge studies and research itself, yet it gets used as if it were the result of close scientific analyses. The result of the sort of sordid, limiting tickboxy thinking, turning us all into robots who can be managed out of our normal human pain is the crass thinking that says, for example, if after a bereavement, sleep appetite and general mood are affected for more than 2 weeks, anti-depressants may be helpfully prescribed. Crazy, insidious, crass. We have become so afraid of our suffering that the answer becomes ‘cosh it, flat line what it is to be in any way human’

1926 city scene, Fritz Lang Metroplis. Flicr Commons

2)    Trials – various meta analysis studies have shown that antidepressants are BARELY more effective, in mild to moderate depression, to placebo. Drug companies have disquietingly low bars to climb over, in order to ‘prove’ their products effectiveness. Davies uncovers the secrecy, the UNPUBLISHED drug trials that go against the findings Big Pharma wants and the manipulation of results. More than this, how drug companies positively USE that most powerful of tools – PLACEBO ITSELF to manipulate their own results higher – for example, the colour, the name, the advertising of the pharmaceutical – many of the effects that might be assumed to be the result of the chemistry of the drug ‘better than placebo’ – are in fact DUE to the use of placebo!

3)    There has been a change in thinking from the 60s and 70s, where psychiatric drugs were seen as altering mood (in the same way as any mind altering drug, including alcohol and street drugs alter moods) A shift occurred to thinking of psychiatric drugs as ‘curative’. This might not seem an important shift – however it goes along with the idea that much uncomfortable, difficult human emotion is now being seen as potentially aberrant and classifiable as a ‘disease’ – as in the DSM – shyness becomes ‘social phobia’.

Medical naming encourages thinking about human beings in all their complexity as broken, and needing mending – and opens the door to the over-prescription. In fact, as one astute expert (among the many) Davies consults, points out tersely, this thinking of these drugs as ‘cures’ is erroneous, as unlike most physiological disease there just is no hard evidence to support the biology of a lot of what is now being treated as ‘disease’ through these medications – which alter mood. They do not ‘cure’ shyness, (or, lets medicalise it as social phobia) any more than a glass of wine ‘cures’ shyness – both change ways of perceiving the world, that is all.

4)    Who bites the hand that feeds? There is a huge cover-up, smoke and mirrors going on in the world of funding ‘research’ into psychiatric medicine whether in academic institutions, or with clinicians. And, gentle reader, there is even less transparency over this in the UK than there is in the States, where under the Obama administration, spearheaded by a particularly truth-and-justice campaigning Senator, Senator Grassley, some efforts to bring the Pharma hyena under the spotlight are beginning to bear fruit. But not here, where there is murk a plenty. Perhaps though, the fact that fully 56% of the panel member luminaries involved in writing the DSM-IV  bible had 1 or more financial associations with the pharmaceutical industry, should begin to rip the wool from over our eyes.  And, for those writing/creating the diagnostic categories, which would of course be primarily treated by pharmaceuticals,  – 88% of DSM-IV panel members had drug company financial ties.from Big Pharma. And things don’t have appeared to have changed for the better in terms of ‘arms length’ involvement with the writing of the now current DSM-V.

I am not saying (nor is Davies) that all these senior clinicians and medical academicians are corrupt, merely that neutrality becomes hard to achieve when your income is dependent on a particular company who are hoping your findings will support the excellence of their product, and even to demonstrate a need for their product

I received this book as an ARC – of course, given what I have said in point 4, you may feel that my judgement is compromised. I would argue that a lowly amateur reviewer lucky enough to get offered bookie freebies through third parties does not in any way equate to some stars of the psychiatric industry who receive millions for the sterling work they do in supporting the claims of specific drugs and manufacturers.  A look at some of my reviews on Amazon will show that if I think a particular book is poor I will indeed say so.

This one though gets my gold standard bookie trial award. Properly researched, properly cited, free from duplicitous cover-up. Unlike the industry is exposes.It deserves to be a best seller – indeed, needs to be so – its material is provocative, prescient, and vital to know.

I have one cavil – my ARC was a digital copy, from the publisher via NetGalley. Now I don’t know if this will be any different than the standard digitise prepared for sale, but the digitisation on my ARC was poor – a lot of the useful charts and graphs do not appear and footnotes get chopped and inexplicably appear in the middle of other pages.  If I were buying this book, I would definitely choose hard, over digitised, copy.

Available now in the UK, paper and digital; not in the USA in paper until August but available as digital
Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good UK
Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good USA