Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

To take another example, there are several types of depression. One type, called reactive depression , is a reaction to some environmental event, such as the loss of a friend, lover, or parent, or even the loss of an environment, as in the homesickness one sometimes sees in first-year college students. Research on this type of depression shows no support for the psychoanalytic “explanation.” More serious types of depression are biological in nature. So-called endogenous depression is caused by abnormalities in the levels of certain neurotransmitters, chemicals that allow neurons to transmit information to one another, in the brain (see Rosenzweig, Leiman, and Breedlove 1999, for a brief review). Endogenous depression is not linked to any objectively depressing event in the patient’s environment and can be treated, although not perfectly, with medications designed to normalize the patient’s brain chemistry. An even more serious type of depression is seen in manic-depressive psychosis, where the patient alternates between periods of deep depression and high-energy mania. Chemical treatment is available for this disorder, although it is sometimes necessary to use electroshock treatment. It was long thought that there was only one type of manic-depressive psychosis. Recent genetic studies, however, have revealed two separate chromosomal locations at which genes that can cause manic-depressive psychosis are found (Egeland et al. 1987; Hodgkinson et al. 1987), showing that there are two genetically distinct versions of the disorder. Such findings provide a far more profound understanding of depression than psychoanalytic cliches. Even suicidal behavior may be understood in terms of an underlying neurochemical abnormality (Mann and Stanley 1986) such that suicide-prone individuals may differ from others in levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

Childhood or infantile autism is a serious developmental disorder in which the child’s language develops poorly and the child ignores her surroundings and engages in stereotyped “self-stimulatory” behaviors such as waving the hands back and forth in front of the face for extended periods of time. The autistic child may engage in self-damaging behavior such as head banging and the chewing of her own flesh. It seems hard to imagine that such a severe disorder could be caused simply by cold, inept parents, as Betteiheim (1967) has contended. Bettelheim’s “blame the mother” approach no doubt held up research into the actual causes of autism for decades. It now seems likely that autism is not a single disorder but a group of disorders with different causes that may run the gamut from subtle brain damage before birth (Patzer and Volknaer 1999) to food allergies (Seroussi 2000). In addition to blocking research, Bettelheim caused an untold amount of grief for parents, especially mothers, who believed that they had caused their chid’s autism (Gardner 2000; Dolnick 1998).

Other disorders often thought to be psychological are now known to be caused by neurochemical abnormalities. One of the best-known is schizophrenia, which Freud believed was related to narcissism or self-love. In fact, schizophrenia (there are probably at least two types) is now known to be a genetically determined neurochemical disorder in which environmental influences such as stress may play some, but not a major, role (Rosenzweig, Leiman, and Breedlove 1999). Another disorder now linked to underlying biochemical abnormalities is anorexia nervosa, the “starving disease” that is seen mostly in young females (Pirke and Ploog 1984). A final example is Tourette’s syndrome. This is a rare disorder in which the patient is afflicted with uncontrollable muscular movements (called “tics”) and, at times, swears uncontrollably (Friedhoff and Chase 1982). Psychoanalytic “explanations” for the syndrome run from “displaced unconscious muscular eroticism toward the father” to “masturbatory conflict” to “defense against auto-pleasurable thumb-sucking” (quoted in Garelik 1986, pp. 79–80). Such “explanations” are, as might be expected, of little use in treating a patient who suffers from a neurochemical disease. Patients with Tourette’s syndrome were (and sometimes still are) believed to be possessed by the devil or evil spirits, as discussed in chapter 2. It is important to note that the demonic and psychoanalytic “explanations” of the syndrome are essentially the same. Both hypothesize untestable internal entities whose existence is inferred from the patients’ behavior. These same entities are then used, in totally circular fashion, to “explain” the same behavior. Whether the entity is labelled “Satan” or “masturbatory conflict” makes little difference. In fact, Freud’s entire theoretical system for explaining disorders he thought were psychological is little more than medieval demonology dressed up in new terminology.

If the problems with psychoanalytic theory and practice are so great, why is it still presented in so matter-of-fact and uncritical a way in most introductory psychology texts? One answer is that the seductive pseudoscientific and nonfalsifiable nature of major parts of psychoanalytic theory make it very easy to accept, even for trained psychologists. Another answer is more historical in nature. It holds, generally correctly, that Freud’s ideas have had major influences on Western thought and that, within psychology, it was Freud who brought the important concept of an unconscious to the notice of the field. These two points provide weak support for the continued teaching of so faulty a theory as psychoanalysis. An analogy, first made by Dallenbach (1955), between psychoanalysis and phrenology is instructive in this regard. Phrenology was the nineteenth-century pseudoscience that held that an individual’s personality could be determined by measuring the shape of his or her head. Phrenology was founded by Franz Joseph Gall, a well-known physician, in the last years of the eighteenth century. According to phrenology, each area of the brain was specialized for some particular function. This theory was in sharp contrast to the prevailing view that the brain was a mass of functionally homogeneous tissue. Gall further believed that if a particular “faculty” was well developed in an individual, the brain area that corresponded to that faculty would be enlarged. Therefore, the skull over the brain area that controlled the faculty would bulge outward. All that remained, then, was to measure the skull, find where the bulges were and infer the individual’s personality and abilities.

There were two great problems with phrenology. First, the faculties that the phrenologists believed were represented in specific brain areas were extremely vague, as can be seen from the phrenological “map” shown in figure 7. Second, even if the map had been organized as the phrenologists believed, measuring the skull would have revealed nothing about personality. This is because the gross shape of the brain is the same even in people with very different personalities and abilities. In spite of these fatal problems, phrenology had considerable, and often very positive, social influence (Davies 1955). In the 1800s phrenology was widely practiced all over the United States and Europe. Phrenological societies sprang up to work for needed reforms in education and treatment of prisoners, the mentally ill, and children. In the United States phrenology was a powerful enough movement to at least start many of these reforms. On the intellectual front, phrenology also had great influence. Neurologists began to consider that perhaps the brain wasn’t homogeneous in function, but that different brain areas might control different functions. This view, known as localizationism, has been supported by more than one hundred years of experimentation. Unfortunately for phrenology, the functions that are actually localized in various areas of the brain bear no resemblance to those the phrenologists thought were localized. Specific aspects of sensory and motor function, as well as some cognitive functions, such as speech, language, and aspects of attention, can be localized in particular brain areas. Discussion of this can be found in any physiological psychology text.