Knowledge Is Necessity

Rerun: Mahler: The Man Who Saw It Coming

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:16:09 PST

I just got in the door from a weekend trip to LA. There, I experienced the ultimate musical performance of my life - Dudamel conducting Mahler Symphony 6. The following is from a mcmanweb article I wrote in 2004, which I posted in edited form as a blog in June 2011. Enjoy ... Gustav Mahler described himself as three times homeless, a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew

The Book of Fort: The Two Wise Old Fools

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:48:02 PST

Book II in the series ... At the watering hole, along the barrens of Fey, on the fork of the road leading to Mem in one direction and Ar in the other, the wise and righteous Fort encountered a weary stranger in threadbare garments. And although Fort would later go hungry, he offered the stranger his last loaf, which the man eagerly consumed. Fort bid the stranger to make himself comfortable,

Newt the Borderpath: Making the Case that Psychiatry is Not Allowed to Make

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:42:59 PST

Picking up where we left off ... Thanks to “the Goldwater Rule” embedded into the code of ethics of the American Psychiatric Association, it is unethical for psychiatrists to “offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.” The rule was the direct outcome of more than a thousand psychiatrists venturing

Challenging the Bipolar-Sex Conventional Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:50:00 PST

I just added a new article to mcmanweb, The Whole Bipolar Sex Thing, which had its genesis in a series of posts on HealthCentral. Following is an extract ... The conventional wisdom is that (hypo)mania increases our sexual drive - often to the point of excess - while depression has the opposite effect. Goodwin and Jamison in their 2007 "Manic-Depressive Illness" note that Aretaeus of Cappadocia

Newt and "The Goldwater Rule": Why Psychiatrists Will Not Tell You the Obvious

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:43:12 PST

“Newt Gingrich’s three marriages mean he might make a strong president - really,” ran the headline to a Fox News article published last Friday. What else would you expect from the publicity arm of the Republican Party? The twist was the article was written by a psychiatrist, not just any psychiatrist, a psychiatrist employed by Fox News, Fox News’ house psychiatrist Keith Ablow. Dr Ablow also

The Book of Fort

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:38:21 PST

The other day, while hiking in the mountains, I came across some ancient writings secreted in a cave. Clearly, they are Scripture from a forgotten people. I just finished translating the first scroll ... And there lived in the land of Gob a righteous man named Fort, who was a crafter of fine hardwood didgeridoos. And his didgeridoos were strong and resonant and affordable and brought great joy

Incompetence in Psychiatry: Readers Weigh In

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:11:01 PST

“What percentage of psychiatrists do you think are incompetent?” I asked in a reader poll that ran some six weeks during December and January. Framing my question negatively carries the strong risk of encouraging rotten tomatoes responses and thus undermining the credibility of any findings, but my attempts at positive construction came out totally pathetic. Sometimes negative is the best option.

Rerun: We Still Have a Dream

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:52:52 PST

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

Dual Diagnosis, Co-Occurring Disorder: How Bad Is it?

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:49:30 PST

I just added two segments to my mcmanweb article, When Mood Meets Alcohol and Substance Use. The two segments help open and close the article, but surprisingly they work together as a blog piece without the intervening content. Without further ado ... In the fall of 2011, I experienced an aha! moment into the true severity of this condition. I was having dinner with a group of individuals

Reality Intervenes: The Case for Meds

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:47:46 PST

Yesterday, in a piece entitled, We Can All Get Along, Can't We?, I wrote: Psychiatry and its over-reliance on medications is experiencing a current self-inflicted lack of respect. This is occurring at the same time as Big Pharma is pulling out of the business of new psychiatric meds development. A new generation of psychiatrists pushing the same old meds serving up the same old explanations

We Can All Get Along - Can't We?

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:22:35 PST

Last week, I killed off the term, “antipsychiatry.” These days, we only hear the word used as an insult, too often in the context of attempting to discredit even mild critics of psychiatry. I may know what I mean when I use the A-word, but others hear it in a different way. They hear it as a weapon to silence skeptical enquiry, to discredit the recovery movement, and - worst of all - to devalue

R.I.P. "Antipsychiatry," the Term

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:06:37 PST

Following is a piece of a comment posted yesterday by KA on mcmanweb: ... No one is saying "anti-psychiatry is right" because anti-psychiatry isn't a belief system. It can't be right. It's an open-ended criticism. Skepticism is not a position; it's a process. In my article, Stupid Advocacy Kills, based on blog pieces here, I attacked antipsychiatry for its obstinate denial, in complete defiance

The Year That Was: My 2011 Highlights and Lowlights

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:59:06 PST

This is the time of the year for looking back, a la Time Magazine and CNN. Following is my personal (and highly idiosyncratic) view on how the year unfolded: Person of the Year: The Three Stooges This was a no-brainer. Anytime I was stuck for a pictorial representation for a blog piece, these guys delivered. Need something to illustrate the fine points of personality? Moe, Larry, and Curly -

Robert Sapolsky Talks About the Biology of Human Behavior

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:55:23 PST

We think in categories. But there are these problems. The first one being that when you think in categories you underestimate how different two facts are when they fall in the same category. When you think in categories you overestimate how different they are when there happens to be a boundary in between them. And when you pay attention to categorical boundaries you don’t see big pictures. The

Rerun: A Christmas Poem

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:01:00 PST

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the place Not a thought was racing, not even a trace; The meds were all stashed, in the cabinet with care; A warning to my neurons, behave and beware. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, Something bad was going down, something was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Oh crap, not again, not another stupid crash. When

Rerun: Where is God?

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:54:52 PST

Christopher Hitchens' passing last week generated considerable discussion on his militant atheism, which you can read all about in his 2007 diatribe, "God is Not Great." The first major flaw in Hitchens' approach is that exclusively aiming his sights on fundamentalist nutjobs and their seriously disturbed world views is intellectually dishonest. The first rule of honest debate is to pick on

Christopher Hitchens: An Appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:37:31 PST

This is crazy. I just happened to be reading Christopher Hitchens’ recently released collection of essays, “Arguably,” when I found out he died today from complications from throat cancer. Christopher Buckley on the back cover cites Hitchens as “the greatest living essayist in the English language.” Now I have to regretfully disagree. If I were modeling a pompous villain who justly gets his

Illustrating Depression and Bipolar

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:55:14 PST

As most of you who follow this blog know, at the beginning of this year I essentially blew up mcmanweb and started over. The site was in serious need of an updating, plus a facelift. My first phase involved a complete redesign, together with rewrites and reorganization of a lot of old articles. This consumed most of my time well into spring. Throughout the rest of the year, I made incremental

WTF?: How Hitler Ran Amok, Mao Died in Bed, and Your Jerk Brother Ruined Your Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:52:54 PST

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. But first let me recap: In six pieces, we have investigated evil, using Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes” as our source. Dr Oakley noted that the type of people who specialize in making your life miserable are best described as Machiavellian, what she calls the “successfully sinister.” These may range from Hitler to the family jerk who ruins everyone’s

Hitler on the Couch

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:03:20 PST

As I promised last week, a study on Hitler. My starting point was Nassir Ghaemi’s recent “A First-Rate Madness,” which raised the extraordinary proposition that Hitler was far more “normal” than we give him credit for. What Ghaemi was driving at was that evil is not the exclusive domain of people with twisted minds. Perfectly normal individuals are as capable of gross inhumanities, or for that

Chairman Mao: A Portrait in Evil

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:22:19 PST

This is my fifth piece on Barbara Oakley’s eye-opening 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” I stumbled into her book after a Google search involving Hitler and sociopathy. What prompted the search was Nassir Ghaemi’s recently published “A First-Rate Madness” that, among many other things, raised the extraordinary proposition that

Why Evil Works

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:40:16 PST

What does Mao Zedong have to do with that jerk brother or sister who wrecks everyone’s Thanksgiving? Funny you should ask. Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend” masterfully connects the dots. Her starting point is “the successfully sinister.” As I explained in an earlier piece, Figuring Out Evil, these are your

Is There An RX for the Over-Prescription Epidemic?

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:49:21 PST

Do we have an over-prescription epidemic? Here’s a snippet from a piece I wrote in 2002: Paramijit Joshi MD, Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the National Children's Medical Center in Washington DC, told the gathering she gets kids aged four and five on four or five medications. "I'm spending more time taking kids off medications than putting them on, as I don't know what I'm

See the Man with the Stage Fright

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 21:41:56 PST

The life of a writer is much like that of a weather observer at Advance Base in Antarctica in the winter of 1934, but without the snow and all the social distractions. The reference is to Admiral Richard Byrd, who spent five months completely on his own in the deepest of all deep souths. His chronicle of the experience, Alone, is a classic in the psychology of social isolation. I read it when I

The Blood-Brain Barrier

noreply@blogger.com (John McManamy) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:28:28 PST

I just finished rewriting my mcmanweb article on the blood-brain barrier, which I first published in 2003. Here is the new version in full ... You may have heard of "antisense" therapy. The idea is to synthesize strands of RNA that bind to disease-causing strands of messenger RNA and thus stop them dead in their tracks. The technology is being researched for cancer and other diseases. Imagine