Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 322 Editor's Choice: 34
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You gotta be fucking kidding me
[Read the article: Shaming Jamie Lynn Spears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just days ago, we get more, predictable confirmation that the “flogging only” – sorry! “abstinence only” - approach to controlling those disturbing sexual urges plaguing our youth is countertherapeutic, then Ms. Clark-Flory notes that the sky appears blue, and progressive Salon readers react by displacing anger and projecting onto a sixteen-year-old their disallowed sexuality.
What’s up? Did this get mistaken for a “Since You Asked” thread?
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“Women and men have been gratified to medicalize their anxiety and depression . . .”
[Read the article: A salve for women's sex drive]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In my line of work I meet every day with indviduals whose depression, anxiety, bipolar and other disorders have been medicalized and treated as such. I have yet to meet a fully satisfied customer, but many who end up disappointed with a pharmacological fix. I suspect the same will hold true for the female libido.
These threads have covered about every angle except one: the research linked in the original thread which supports the idea that female libido predictably wanes once she enters a committed relationship. Humans have a fundamental need to preserve autonomy and control, especially as related to safety and survival needs, which are biologically enmeshed with the vulnerability and potential consequences of intimacy. We also seem to like novelty and the emotions associated with “falling in love”. When women or men lose control of their own intimate relationships through legal or other binding contracts and adopt guilt and shame for desiring their freedom, their emotional lives and drives – surprise! – are affected.
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What jaygordon said,
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and for Heather’s unflinching reminders of the grip of social pathology and escapism in a palatable and snarkily covert style that is ultimately as powerful and important as anything else being written on Salon.
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No,
[Read the article: My alcoholic father has a child we never knew about]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]there is no sense in which your father “has a child” out there, and you do not have a “half-sibling” somewhere, because there is no such thing, anymore than there is such a thing as a “sibling”. Free yourself from the pathology of absurdly constructed “kinship”, and your distress will vanish.
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CBT
[Read the article: Don't be happy, worry]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is not only established to be effective, but its benefits, unlike those of psychopharmacological fixes, are without adverse effects and are persistent. That’s because changes are integral and result from the client investing in reconfiguring his/her own “software”, or templates, software used to interpret and respond to experience.
Any competent clinician can differentiate among major depression, dysthymia, adjustment disorders, bereavement and other mood disorders, then explain the issues and rationale for treatment in everyday language. Demand it. When you sense that they can’t, you fire them and find someone else.
All effective therapy is cognitive and behavioral, emotional and experiential, even somatic. The more effective the therapist, the more blurred and unified these become. The more you are acutely aware of being delivered a packaged or by-the-numbers approach, the more you might think of trying another professional.
Turns out the best predictor of positive therapeutic outcome isn’t a SSRI or even CBT, DBT, ACT or any other practice theory – it’s therapeutic alliance, the feeling you get that the person you’re paying $150.00 a pop actually gives a rip and is listening and attuning to you in a collaborative way. That’s because healing is relational. If you don’t get that connection, consider taking your business elsewhere.
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Quite right,
[Read the article: How looks can kill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and an immensely important topic. It leads naturally to broader questions around the real meaning, use, and function of the medical model and the construct “psychiatric disorder” as codified in the DSM-IV and as related ultimately to power to pathologize, social control, aggression, and yes, patriarchy. Example: Bruce Levin’s recent piece over at Alternet on the over-use of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) to label, pathologize, and medicate kids who react to oppressive parenting and systems. Example: a female celebrity who no longer meets our needs and expectations is “mentally ill”, while adult males who lie and manipulate a nation into killing hundreds of thousands of innocents are “leaders” or “administration officials”.
With BDD, as in behavioral, addictive, and other disorders, the medical model is less concerned with etiology and effective treatment than with avoiding any real look at the social and environmental correlates of dysphoria and disordered behavior – that would lead to very dangerous places and indict and threaten much larger systems.
This is important and useful deconstruction. Ultimately it will help dispel even the myths around schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. They are neither diseases nor of the brain, but instead like BDD, represent maladaptive expressions of evolved, protective responses to toxic, invalidating, and threatening environments.