I've given a lot of thought to how I want to write this full review (see my partial review here). Shrinks is an excruciating rant-sneering, caustic, and just so wrong in so many ways. It was tempting to just shred it point by invalid point. But the truth is, there's something pathetic about the lengths to which Lieberman goes to "prove" that his version is the only true psychiatry.
So I decided to focus on my real concern-the impact this book may have on a lay audience. This is where I think it's downright dangerous. Lieberman writes about present day psychiatry as though it's already achieved all the goals it aspires to. He speaks as though current brain imaging has already explained the etiology of all mental illness, and as though DSM has classified every possible psychiatric disorder:
...the book precisely defines every known mental illness. It is these detailed definitions that empower the DSM's unparalleled medical influence over society.
He writes about the wonderful breakthroughs that Thorazine, lithium, and imipramine represented-and I agree that these drugs were godsends to many people, but he includes virtually no information about the problems that these and other meds can cause, or about the fact that they don't always work. To hear him tell it, biomarkers are already in widespread use and predictive of treatment response in many psychiatric illnesses. And most of all, his version of psychiatry is, wait for it, SCIENTIFIC.
As I read Shrinks, I tried very hard to imagine what it would be like if I were a reasonably intelligent adult with no particular knowledge of psychiatry, but who was interested in learning about the field. (Okay, cue the jokes about my being reasonably unintelligent and questionably adult)
It's an unrealistic thought exercise, but I imagine I might think I'm reading a book by someone who is an expert in his field, chair of psychiatry at a prestigious hospital, former president of the APA, so he must know what he's talking about. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be familiar with the immensely varied modes of thinking that exist in psychiatry. I suspect I'd assume psychopharmacology and psychoanalysis are areas that all psychiatrists are trained in. And since Dr. Lieberman is a psychiatrist, psychoanalysis must be part of his field, so if he's claiming there's no validity to it, he must be telling the embarrassing but necessary truth. And if he claims drugs and CBT are effective and "scientific", he must be right about that, too.
I hope I would pick up on the painfully disparaging tone, and the fact that sneering does not constitute evidence, but I'm not sure I would.
At some point, I realized I didn't need to speculate about what a layperson would think of the book, I could, instead, read reviews on Amazon. And it turns out that, for the most part, it got good reviews from people outside the field, and bad reviews from people who know something about psychiatry, or its history. Here are some examples, both good and bad:
In my earlier review, I wrote that I was willing to buy into the historical information included in the book. I stand corrected.
The basic outline of the book is this: first we had "alienists", who oversaw the care of the mentally ill in institutions, even though there was nothing much to be done for these patients. Then Freud came along and treated the "worried well" with what we now know is a bogus treatment designed by Jews and for Jews (not clear to me why Lieberman emphasizes that particular point, but he seems to feel it's important). Beginning in WWII, a taxonomy of mental illness was finally! developed, by an analyst, no less, and this ultimately led to the DSM-III, the savior of psychiatry. Then meds came along, and brain imaging, and CBT, and more recently, genetic markers. And today, psychiatry can proudly state that it understands the etiology of mental illnesses, and has the tools to successfully treat them.
The book's argument reminds me of people who understand evolutionary process to mean that living beings have maintained a progressive course over eons just to reach the pinnacle of existence that is humanity.
Lieberman never explains why the things he sneers at are unscientific. He just states it as fact. He has no understanding or knowledge of, nor does he make any reference to, psychoanalysis as it has been practiced and understood for the last 30 or so years. His bio on the Columbia site indicates that he is a, "Physician and scientist," so it's hard to understand why he doesn't even attempt to give a factual basis to his assertions.
And he seems completely unaware of his own internal contradictions. He criticizes psychoanalysis for blaming family members for a patient's illness, such as the idea of the "refrigerator mother" in autism, or the "schizophrenogenic mother".
But then he goes on to describe several of his cases, in which his recommended treatment failed because of the patients' families, who he criticized.
I told them quite bluntly that their decision to withhold treatment was both cruel and immoral-though tragically, not illegal...
Lieberman seems to think that only his recommendations matter, and once he's made them, there's no need to establish a rapport with a patient's family, in order to help the patient. They should just do what he says because he's right.
He has no clue about the limitations of the DSM, which he refers to repeatedly as "The Bible of Psychiatry". He's convinced that everything in the DSM is "scientific", despite his own descriptions of how many of the decisions about its content were made-often as compromises and to reassure the public and get proper insurance reimbursement.
He thinks that knowing there's an amygdala-hippocampus-prefrontal cortex loop in PTSD explains why people get PTSD. He claims that some people have genetic differences that predispose them to PTSD, and that's why some get it and some don't.
He proudly describes two traumatic experiences of his own-his apartment was invaded and he was robbed at gunpoint when he was in medical school, and 12 years later, he accidentally dropped an air conditioner out of his 15th floor apartment window. No one was hurt in either incident, but he was not traumatized by the former (the robbery), and had some PTSD symptoms following the latter (the air conditioner). Obviously, he can't claim his genetic predisposition changed in the intervening 12 years. Instead, he comes up with a long-winded story about how he had the illusion of control when being robbed, but not when dropping the air conditioner and that created a different amygdala loop. It never occurs to him to ask WHY he had the illusion of control in one situation but not the other. He has no sense that the two events had different meanings for him. And it certainly doesn't occur to him that HE was the aggressor in the incident that gave him PTSD symptoms.
Meaning, for Lieberman, is meaningless. All that matters are symptoms and getting the diagnosis right.
I'm trying not to harp on this part, but another truly dangerous aspect to the book is the way Lieberman disses any type of talk therapy that isn't CBT. Especially psychoanalysis. Here's some of the language he uses:
Gradually, physicians came to recognize that focusing on unobservable processes shrouded within a nebulous "Mind" did not produce lasting change...
...Sigmund Schlomo Freud stands in a class of his own, simultaneously psychiatry's greatest hero and its most calamitous rogue. (Incidentally, Freud's accurate birth name was, "Sigismund", not "Sigmund")
Freud ended up leading psychiatry into an intellectual desert for more than half a century...
As a psychiatrist who lived through many of the worst excesses of the psychoanalytic theocracy, I regard Freud's fateful decision (to discourage scientific questioning) with sadness and regret.
(On the move of many early analysts to American due to WWII): These psychiatric refugees would soon change the fundamental nature of mental health care in the United States, but not necessarily for the better. They brought with them the dogmatic and faith-based approach to psychiatry that Freud had espoused, discouraging inquiry and experimentation. Eventually,...psychoanalysis would become a plague upon American medicine, infecting every institution of psychiatry with its dogmatic and antiscientific mind-set...
...By 1940, American psychoanalysis had become a unique phenomenon in the annals of medicine: a scientifically ungrounded theory, adapted for the specific needs of a minority ethnic group (Jews).
Knowing that the path to influence ran through medical schools and teaching hospitals, psychoanalysts began targeting universities.
Had it been able to lie upon its own therapeutic couch, the psychoanalytic movement would have been diagnosed with all the classic symptoms of mania: extravagant behaviors, grandiose beliefs, and irrational faith in its world-changing powers.
Talk about projection!
Psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis are compared to or described as:
omen-divining wizards
the primeval sorcery of the jungle witch doctor
the circus Big Top
a mangled map of mental illness
the psychoanalytic hegemony
The Oracle of Delphi
I get a definite sense of a man with no tolerance for ambiguity or ambivalence.
Think about that for a minute. The only way to become a psychiatrist-a bona fide medical professional-was to share your life's history, innermost feelings, fears, and aspirations, your nightly dreams and daily fantasies, with someone who would use this deeply intimate material to determine how devoted you were to Freudian principles. Imagine if the only way you could become a theoretical physicist was to confess an unwavering and unquestioning dedication to the theory of relativity or the precepts of quantum mechanics, or if the only way you could become an economist was to reveal whether Karl Marx appeared as an angel (or devil) in your dreams. If a trainee wanted to rise within the ranks of academic psychiatry or develop a successful practice, she had to demonstrate fealty to psychoanalytic theory. If not, she risked being banished to working in the public-hospital sector, which usually meant a state mental institution. If you were looking for an indoctrination method to foster a particular ideology within a profession, you probably couldn't do much better than forcing all job applicants to undergo confessional psychotherapy with a therapist-inquisitor already committed to the ideology.
Lieberman obviously believes that the analytic approach is wrong, and the Kraepelinian approach is right. But leaving aside the issue of which is correct (and why can't there be some of both?) I feel like he's assuming everyone prefers to have his internal
April 12, 2015
Shrinks by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman is a fantastic read and a real eye opener for those of us who know next to nothing about psychiatry...The bottom line is that Shrinks brings to light many myths about psychiatry, but it also points out its historic shortcomings. More importantly it presents mental illness not as something to be ashamed of or for which there is no cure, but rather as a medical condition just like any other which can and should be addressed with proper treatment. Thankfully the advances in neuroscience and psychiatry, reviewed by Dr. Liberman in his book, have enhanced the understanding of the causes of mental illness and vastly improved the methods of its treatment.
Shrinks by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman is a fantastic read and a real eye opener for those of us who know next to nothing about psychiatry...The bottom line is that Shrinks brings to light many myths about psychiatry, but it also points out its historic shortcomings. More importantly it presents mental illness not as something to be ashamed of or for which there is no cure, but rather as a medical condition just like any other which can and should be addressed with proper treatment. Thankfully the advances in neuroscience and psychiatry, reviewed by Dr. Liberman in his book, have enhanced the understanding of the causes of mental illness and vastly improved the methods of its treatment.
April 1, 2015
...In his book, Dr. Lieberman clearly offered his experience as a scientist and physician and the history of psychiatry...The best parts of the book describe the rise and fall of theories championed by Freud and how they stymied real science and the description of the motivation behind some of organized psychiatry's most barbaric practices...
Dr. Lieberman explains so well the past failures, the research being presently done and the future of psychiatry. What an honest book...
Lieberman tells this story with remarkable clarity, complete honesty about his own viewpoint, and unusual humility for someone in the field. The human mind, whether it functions well or ill, is poorly understood, but recent progress in both understanding and treatment is significant...but most importantly, there is help.. the right help and the exciting future with DNA exploration...
This top psychiatrist says his field of medicine has recently turned a corner and he shows how it is offering real help to those with anxiety, eating disorders, phobias, obsessions, PTSD, bi-polar disorder, etc. And for people facing brain issues like Parkinsons, autism, Alzheimers, etc, scientists are getting oh so close.
March 28, 2015
I'm biased. I am a historian of psychiatry. Really. I have a PhD from the University of Michigan, served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, and wrote a book on the history of psychotherapy. ...So arrogant as this may sound, I know what I'm talking about. This book is compendium of errors -- at least from a historian's perspective. It fails to consider virtually all of the scholarship produced over the past fifty years on the subject, cites virtually no primary sources, and simply recycles common stories -- many of which have long since been discredited....this book does an extraordinary disservice to those who have been producing exceptional scholarship in the field for decades. What's more, it reveals how easy it is for a well-respected (and deservedly so) physician to publish nonsense about a subject about which he knows little and has probably read even less....You might not agree with me. But I can promise you this: I did my homework. That's not something Dr. Lieberman can say. What's more, I didn't pay someone to write my book for me.
March 22, 2015
To read this book, you would think that everyone who was treated with psychotropic drugs was miraculously cured and anyone who was not sunk into misery or worse. There is no mention of the millions of prescriptions written to treat questionable disorders for children as young as two, or of the terrible side effects of the some of the powerful medications that Dr. Lieberman evidently eagerly dispenses to virtually every patient who walks into his office. You would further conclude that no one was ever helped by psychoanalysis, nor for that matter any other form of therapy than his. This is a book filled with half truths, omissions, distortions, and propaganda. The "untold story of psychiatry" indeed.
The basic outline of the book is this: first we had "alienists", who oversaw the care of the mentally ill in institutions, even though there was nothing much to be done for these patients. Then Freud came along and treated the "worried well" with what we now know is a bogus treatment designed by Jews and for Jews (not clear to me why Lieberman emphasizes that particular point, but he seems to feel it's important). Beginning in WWII, a taxonomy of mental illness was finally! developed, by an analyst, no less, and this ultimately led to the DSM-III, the savior of psychiatry. Then meds came along, and brain imaging, and CBT, and more recently, genetic markers. And today, psychiatry can proudly state that it understands the etiology of mental illnesses, and has the tools to successfully treat them.
The book's argument reminds me of people who understand evolutionary process to mean that living beings have maintained a progressive course over eons just to reach the pinnacle of existence that is humanity.
Lieberman never explains why the things he sneers at are unscientific. He just states it as fact. He has no understanding or knowledge of, nor does he make any reference to, psychoanalysis as it has been practiced and understood for the last 30 or so years. His bio on the Columbia site indicates that he is a, "Physician and scientist," so it's hard to understand why he doesn't even attempt to give a factual basis to his assertions.
And he seems completely unaware of his own internal contradictions. He criticizes psychoanalysis for blaming family members for a patient's illness, such as the idea of the "refrigerator mother" in autism, or the "schizophrenogenic mother".
But then he goes on to describe several of his cases, in which his recommended treatment failed because of the patients' families, who he criticized.
I told them quite bluntly that their decision to withhold treatment was both cruel and immoral-though tragically, not illegal...
Lieberman seems to think that only his recommendations matter, and once he's made them, there's no need to establish a rapport with a patient's family, in order to help the patient. They should just do what he says because he's right.
He has no clue about the limitations of the DSM, which he refers to repeatedly as "The Bible of Psychiatry". He's convinced that everything in the DSM is "scientific", despite his own descriptions of how many of the decisions about its content were made-often as compromises and to reassure the public and get proper insurance reimbursement.
He thinks that knowing there's an amygdala-hippocampus-prefrontal cortex loop in PTSD explains why people get PTSD. He claims that some people have genetic differences that predispose them to PTSD, and that's why some get it and some don't.
He proudly describes two traumatic experiences of his own-his apartment was invaded and he was robbed at gunpoint when he was in medical school, and 12 years later, he accidentally dropped an air conditioner out of his 15th floor apartment window. No one was hurt in either incident, but he was not traumatized by the former (the robbery), and had some PTSD symptoms following the latter (the air conditioner). Obviously, he can't claim his genetic predisposition changed in the intervening 12 years. Instead, he comes up with a long-winded story about how he had the illusion of control when being robbed, but not when dropping the air conditioner and that created a different amygdala loop. It never occurs to him to ask WHY he had the illusion of control in one situation but not the other. He has no sense that the two events had different meanings for him. And it certainly doesn't occur to him that HE was the aggressor in the incident that gave him PTSD symptoms.
Meaning, for Lieberman, is meaningless. All that matters are symptoms and getting the diagnosis right.
I'm trying not to harp on this part, but another truly dangerous aspect to the book is the way Lieberman disses any type of talk therapy that isn't CBT. Especially psychoanalysis. Here's some of the language he uses:
Gradually, physicians came to recognize that focusing on unobservable processes shrouded within a nebulous "Mind" did not produce lasting change...
...Sigmund Schlomo Freud stands in a class of his own, simultaneously psychiatry's greatest hero and its most calamitous rogue. (Incidentally, Freud's accurate birth name was, "Sigismund", not "Sigmund")
Freud ended up leading psychiatry into an intellectual desert for more than half a century...
As a psychiatrist who lived through many of the worst excesses of the psychoanalytic theocracy, I regard Freud's fateful decision (to discourage scientific questioning) with sadness and regret.
(On the move of many early analysts to American due to WWII): These psychiatric refugees would soon change the fundamental nature of mental health care in the United States, but not necessarily for the better. They brought with them the dogmatic and faith-based approach to psychiatry that Freud had espoused, discouraging inquiry and experimentation. Eventually,...psychoanalysis would become a plague upon American medicine, infecting every institution of psychiatry with its dogmatic and antiscientific mind-set...
...By 1940, American psychoanalysis had become a unique phenomenon in the annals of medicine: a scientifically ungrounded theory, adapted for the specific needs of a minority ethnic group (Jews).
Knowing that the path to influence ran through medical schools and teaching hospitals, psychoanalysts began targeting universities.
Had it been able to lie upon its own therapeutic couch, the psychoanalytic movement would have been diagnosed with all the classic symptoms of mania: extravagant behaviors, grandiose beliefs, and irrational faith in its world-changing powers.
Talk about projection!
Psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis are compared to or described as:
omen-divining wizards
the primeval sorcery of the jungle witch doctor
the circus Big Top
a mangled map of mental illness
the psychoanalytic hegemony
The Oracle of Delphi
I get a definite sense of a man with no tolerance for ambiguity or ambivalence.
He writes about his college experimentation with recreational drugs, which involved his researching which drug would be the best for him, before going on to try it. This is clearly not a guy who dropped acid because someone offered him some at a party.
He idolizes Robert Spitzer for creating the DSM-III. He relates an anecdote in which a teenage Spitzer, at summer camp, was confused about his feelings towards girls, so he made charts of those feelings and kept them on his bunk wall. This is viewed, in the book, as a demonstration of Spitzer's great promise as a researcher, not as an indication of a highly intellectualized defense.
Lieberman also dislikes the notion that mental illness exists on a spectrum, that there is no clear defining line between sickness and health, and he feels this was one of Freud's great mistakes:
It was no longer acceptable to divide human behavior into normal and pathological, since virtually all human behavior reflected some form of neurotic conflict, and while conflict was innate to everyone, like fingerprints and belly buttons, no two conflicts looked exactly alike...the psychoanalysts set out to convince the public that we were all walking wounded, normal neurotics, functioning psychotics...
Lieberman also dislikes the notion that mental illness exists on a spectrum, that there is no clear defining line between sickness and health, and he feels this was one of Freud's great mistakes:
It was no longer acceptable to divide human behavior into normal and pathological, since virtually all human behavior reflected some form of neurotic conflict, and while conflict was innate to everyone, like fingerprints and belly buttons, no two conflicts looked exactly alike...the psychoanalysts set out to convince the public that we were all walking wounded, normal neurotics, functioning psychotics...
No wonder the DSM-III had such great appeal for these men. When Lieberman writes about the standing ovation Spitzer got when the DSM-III was approved, it feels like a conquest, like he has vanquished the evil empire established by Freud, the community from which he was excluded for his "scientific" beliefs, and the sun is finally beginning to shine on psychiatry.
The title of this post was intended to be provocative, but there really is an Oedipal victory feel to the book. As you can tell from the quotes above, there's a lot of disparaging comparison of psychoanalysis to magic or religion, along with some comments that flirt with antisemitism, but then he keeps calling the DSM the "Bible of Psychiatry". Apparently, his is the better religion.
Lieberman, (or maye it's Ogas) writes with particular vehemence about the period when most psychiatrists did analytic training. It made me wonder if he was rejected from a training program at one point, or if he was in an analysis that he quit because he found it intolerable. I have absolutely no basis for these thoughts- they're just conjecture. But here's the description:
The title of this post was intended to be provocative, but there really is an Oedipal victory feel to the book. As you can tell from the quotes above, there's a lot of disparaging comparison of psychoanalysis to magic or religion, along with some comments that flirt with antisemitism, but then he keeps calling the DSM the "Bible of Psychiatry". Apparently, his is the better religion.
Lieberman, (or maye it's Ogas) writes with particular vehemence about the period when most psychiatrists did analytic training. It made me wonder if he was rejected from a training program at one point, or if he was in an analysis that he quit because he found it intolerable. I have absolutely no basis for these thoughts- they're just conjecture. But here's the description:
Nowhere does he indicate that he has even considered the possibility that understanding ones own limitations can make one a better clinician. He doesn't even seem to get that if one is caring for patients, it might be helpful to know what it's like to be a patient. And forget the idea that an analysis is intended to be helpful. He seems to view it as nothing but a threat. The analyst as, "therapist-inquisitor".
Reading the paragraph above, it really is hard to believe Lieberman's claim that he likes psychoanalysis.
The final concern I have has to do with Lieberman's inability to imagine that other people may not think the same way he does. Here's a quote:
...a psychoanalytic diagnosis of Abigail Abercrombie might account for her spells of anxiety by connecting them to the way she reacted to her parents' strict Lutheran upbringing, combined with her decision to leave home at an early age to work rather than marry. A Kraepelinian diagnosis would characterize Abbey as suffering from an anxiety disorder based upon her symptoms of intense fear and discomfort accompanied by heart palpitations, sweating, and dizziness, symptoms that occurred together in regular episodes.
...a psychoanalytic diagnosis of Abigail Abercrombie might account for her spells of anxiety by connecting them to the way she reacted to her parents' strict Lutheran upbringing, combined with her decision to leave home at an early age to work rather than marry. A Kraepelinian diagnosis would characterize Abbey as suffering from an anxiety disorder based upon her symptoms of intense fear and discomfort accompanied by heart palpitations, sweating, and dizziness, symptoms that occurred together in regular episodes.
experience described by symptoms and their duration. There's no sense that some people might prefer his way, but others might prefer to have their experiences of anxiety considered in the context of a fuller narrative of who they are, with some continuity to how they got to be this way. Some might even find it offensive to be reduced to a bunch of symptoms and a diagnosis code.
And unlike Lieberman, some people might be comfortable with a little ambiguity.
And unlike Lieberman, some people might be comfortable with a little ambiguity.
Reference:
J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 2015 Apr 24. pii: 0003065115585169. [Epub ahead of print]
The Psychiatrist, Circa 2015: "From Shrink to Pill-Pusher".
Hoffman L. PMID: 2591090
J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 2015 Apr 24. pii: 0003065115585169. [Epub ahead of print]
The Psychiatrist, Circa 2015: "From Shrink to Pill-Pusher".
Hoffman L. PMID: 2591090
