Nov 20, 2023Liked by Owen Scott Muir, M.D, Awais Aftab
"This might just be a rationalization, but I am glad that I became a psychiatrist instead of a philosopher because I think clinical work keeps you grounded in a way that working with abstract ideas doesn’t. "
I'm a philosopher as you know, but I think being mad an an ex-mentalpatient oneself and knowing other people like that also helps to keep you grounded. (Well, I also know psychiatrists!)
I've read my share of shitty philosophy of psychiatry written by philosophers who have neither "grounding mechanism"... (I'm not saying all philosophers who lack either are bad, but there are too many.) They think they're clinically informed because they read a few snippets of patient testimony! Like that one everyone quotes about thought insertion "it's just like my thoughts, but they aren't... they belong to this chap, Chris" (quoting from memory, but I've read that particular snippet in like ten different papers or so.
"This might just be a rationalization, but I am glad that I became a psychiatrist instead of a philosopher because I think clinical work keeps you grounded in a way that working with abstract ideas doesn’t. "
I'm a philosopher as you know, but I think being mad an an ex-mentalpatient oneself and knowing other people like that also helps to keep you grounded. (Well, I also know psychiatrists!)
I've read my share of shitty philosophy of psychiatry written by philosophers who have neither "grounding mechanism"... (I'm not saying all philosophers who lack either are bad, but there are too many.) They think they're clinically informed because they read a few snippets of patient testimony! Like that one everyone quotes about thought insertion "it's just like my thoughts, but they aren't... they belong to this chap, Chris" (quoting from memory, but I've read that particular snippet in like ten different papers or so.
It would be interesting to approach psychiatry from an evolutionary point of view.