More about evaluation

Recently, I posted my thoughts on evaluation on my pam-phlets blog. Here's some more thoughts.

I was reading the new edition of Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health yesterday and in the forword on How to Read this Book, (p 2 of hardcover) Mr. Hubbard talks about the "underevaluation" of facts because we "knew it all along." He points out that a fact is never important without proper evaluation of it and its precise relationship to other facts.

So I began to think, not only about should we evaluate, but when should we evaluate and the correct evaluation of importance.

Of course, we evaluate all the time. We decide something is important or unimportant. We even decide that something is important but that we can't or won't do something about it, or that, despite its importance, we will do something else.

Sometimes we are actually making decisions that fit our best interests. But often, we are reacting to hidden influences.

Evaluating for yourself (making decisions about what is important or unimportant to you) is one thing, but what about evaluating for others? Well, parents evaluate for their kids. "You should go to school. You should go to bed at 9." In so doing, they establish a structure for the child. Guidance on what is good, important and proper.

But from 1945, a phase started when parents were kind of encouraged NOT to evaluate for their kids. (This was attributed to psychologist Dr. Spock's book and labeled "permissive child-rearing." I'm not sure how many people actually read his book and how many simply formed their ideas based on little data and a lot of evaluation.) A generation grew up under this "permissive" philosophy.

I should say that I'm blogging in an area that I admittedly don't know that much about, having not had children. But I did grow up in this era of permissive child-rearing, so I have some thoughts about it. So what happened? Well, as I see it, it didn't work. Children need guidance, direction -- a moral code.

A child (or adult) without proper guidance, education and a moral code is unpredictable and disruptive. Psychology (talk therapy) failed, and Into this disrupted child-rearing scene stepped the psychiatrists. The psychiatrists are highly suseptible to hidden influences. There is no scientific body of knowledge behind the psychiatrist. Did you know that? They are people trained as doctors, then psychology, and then let loose on the world. They have a manual called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which contains a list of "mental illnesses" they have "voted in."  Yes, VOTED in.

Wikipedia notes that there is controversy about the DSM because roughly 50% of the authors who previously defined psychiatric disorders have had or have financial relationships with pharmaceutical industries and drug companies. (Also see "Experts Debunk DSM.") In today's psychiatry, if you get diagnosed as mentally ill, you're sure to end up on some psychiatric drug! You may not know that many of the men and women incarcerated in our prisons are on some sort of psychiatric mediation. They get their "daily meds". They may get out of jail, but not free. They are now addicted to some very powerful drugs.

But I digress. On the topic of evaluation, this is an area which is under-evaluated. You may think, well, there is a Science of Mental Health, and the psychiatrists have it all taken care of and we now have these brand new psychiatric drugs which handle these poor mentally ill people.

Take a good look for yourself, my friend. These drugs are often lethal. These "experts" don't know what they're doing, and the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Who benefits from the current psychiatric and drug scene? Well, the psychiatrist. He now has a "solution" that doesn't take any time at all — write a prescription. And the drug manufacturer, who now has an expanding clientele.

Inform yourself at the Citizens Commission on Human Rights website. Your correct evaluation of this scene is the first step towards a saner world.

Comments

[pam]

Encyclopedia Britanica online says of Dr. Spock: "Spock received his medical degree in 1929 from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and trained for six years at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He practiced pediatrics in New York City while teaching the subject at the Cornell University Medical College from 1933 to 1947. Spock wrote Baby and Child Care partly to counteract the rigid pediatric doctrines of his day, which emphasized strict feeding schedules for infants and discouraged open displays of affection between parent and child. Spock, by contrast, encouraged understanding and flexibility on the part of parents, and he stressed the importance of listening to children and appreciating their individual differences. From its first appearance in 1946, Baby and Child Care served as the definitive child-rearing manual for millions of American parents in the “baby boom” that followed World War II. Spock's approach was criticized as overly permissive by a minority of physicians, and he was even blamed for having helped form the generation of young Americans that protested the Vietnam War and launched the youth counterculture movement of the 1960s." I admit that I have not read Dr. Spock's book, and I would be careful to state that his book may NOT have been so much the cause of the increase in immorality as other factors, the increase in Psychiatry, the use of "street drugs" (originally advocated by psychiatrists such as Timothy Leary) and the increasing reliance on "a quick fix" in the form of drugs.