Behavior is a product of the brain, and while it might not be classified as a ‘disease’ strictly speaking, it can easily be the product of an illness.
Behavior is not a product of the brain, it is a product of the nervous system (to which the brain belongs). And that an actual physical disorder can produce alterations in brain function does not conflict with Szasz.
For example, read ‘Phantoms in the Brain’ or any neuroscience book about how different brains (including damaged ones) influence behavior.
In the case of “undamaged” brains they can no more prove the brain to be the culprit than they can the kidneys. The brain is the central operations station of the nervous system, the warehouse, where all sensory information is received and classified. The brain doesn’t make judgments, it recalls and processes the factors to make judgments based on its store of empirical information. If the information you’ve saved to that point leads to behaviors that are not consistent with what others might deem a “healthy” set of behaviors, that is not consistent with an actual physical disorder of the brain. Your brain is not diseased because it remembers. That’s the point.
"The brain doesn’t make judgments, it recalls and processes the factors to make judgments based on its store of empirical information. "
It recalls and processes the factors to make judgements AND THEN MAKES THE JUDGEMENTS. If not it, what?
I agree that ‘healthy’ is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, but then again that doesn’t seem to be Szasz’ point. After all, he isn’t writing about how there is no such thing as disease or sickness.
What would Szasz say about a patient with hemispatial neglect? Would he not consider some of their behavior diseased, as it can cause delusions resulting from their illness?
If a patient believes that her own arm is her husbands, and denies all evidence to the contrary, and such a believe is the product of a brain disorder, what would you call such irrational beliefs? Irrational beliefs tend towards irrational behavior, after all.
So, the expression “Hemispatial Neglect” refers to a symptom of brain damage.
I think Szasz would assert the simple fact that symptoms are not diseases.
I think Szasz would assert the simple fact that behavior can only be “diseased” in a metaphorical but not a literal sense.
I’m not sure it’s correct to call damage “illness” (although, it might be). For example, damage to the thumb, while impairing one’s ability to grasp certain objects, isn’t necessarily “disease” or “illness.” We might get all fancy and call the impairment of grasping ability “Semi-Pollical Neglect,” but all we’re doing is creating a fancy expression for the impaired utility of the hand due to thumb damage. It’s not a name for the thumb damage itself; that’s just called “thumb damage.”
One of the symptoms of brain damage is “Hemispatial Neglect,” or “delusions.”
Body organs (such as the brain) can be literally ill, diseased, or damaged;
behavior and symptoms cannot.
Behavior and symptoms can only be “ill,” “diseased,” or “damaged” in a metaphorical sense.
I’ll do the forum a favor of ignoring your snarky comments and simply comment on what I think the main issue is.
The original comment that I replied to posited that behavior was a product of bad upbringing, poor parenting or other environmental factors not including genetics or brain development. He was doing the equivelant of blaming the victim and seemingly ignoring decades of neuroscience and psychology to do so.
He attributed this position to Szasz.
Then someone posted the following:
“I took up the profession of psychiatry in part to combat the contention that abnormal behaviors are the products of abnormal brains.”
Does this mean that Szasz
a) doesn’t believe that abnormal behaviors exist, but believes that abnormal brains exist
b) believes that abnormal behaviors exist, but doesn’t think they are caused by abnormal brains
If his contention is A, it is a poor way of wording it/was interpreted incorrectly by the person who posted it in response to my comment.
If B, I think he is wrong and that shouldn’t be controversial.
“Not one of the children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD would ever go to a doctor and seek relief from his “hyperactivity issues”. But he will ask his parents for headache medicine or stomachache medicine.”
I have personal experience with someone who sought relief from his ADHD because he was unable to focus and his grades were suffering.
I also don’t think “something that bothers you” is an accepted definition of disease. I’m pretty sure most people would consider someone with palsy to have a disease, even if they never left their computer and the symptoms didn’t bother him.
more detail please. Can you honestly say this person sought relief from adhd or was he forced to go to a doctor in order to get drugs that allowed him to cope with the monotonous tasks he was forced to perform? Where did this individual live, and how many armed men were tasked with, among other responsibilities, making sure that this individual was in his assigned forced education camps for about 13 years? Or was this in college where its commonly understood that amphetamines and cannabis are an excellent combination for long bouts of study?
who cares what they think, if the individual in question is happy?
It was in high school. He honestly approached his parents about getting help. The state is evil and compulsory education is brainwashing. I get it.
“I also don’t think “something that bothers you” is an accepted definition of disease. I’m pretty sure most people would consider someone with palsy to have a disease, even if they never left their computer and the symptoms didn’t bother him.”
“who cares what they think, if the individual in question is happy?”
Do you like communicating with other people? If so, you might want to make it a habit to use terms in ways that are generally accepted, unless you want to spend half an hour defining your own peculiar terminology every time you meet someone. And having a disease isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If the individual isn’t bothered by it, he doesn’t need to treat its symptoms. It doesn’t mean the underlying condition doesn’t exist.
You are using disease as if it held moral weight. It doesn’t.
The only thing that matters is the perspective of the patient. Although I think I fell into a trap there with your example, as palsy has physical symptoms. But in order to be diagnosed, he would have to submit to an examination.
the point is a happy person doesnt need medication if they dont think the need it. As for individuals requesting performance enhancing meds in order to perform at a level to which they cannot aspire naturally, I would only say that professional athletes dont have a low-tesosterone disease, they use performance enhancing meds. Students dont have an attention span disease, they use performance enhancing meds to amplify their natural abilities.
So my family doesn’t suffer from a hyperthyroid disorder, they just choose to use performance enhancing meds to dampen their natural hormone-producing abilities? This is frankly absurd. I realize you think that disease has negative connotations, but strictly speaking it doesn’t. It just tends that way because on average, deviations from normal function are impairing rather than the opposite.
Speaking of which, thyroid diseases would be an excellent example of a physical disease with behavioral implications. Let alone the obvious examples from neuroscience where tumors in specific regions of the brain impact behavior in extreme ways.
Youre missing the point, I am to blame because I let the conversation come to this.
(members of) your family only have a thyroid disorder to the extent that they perceive it as such. A third party cant objectively characterize an individual’s thyroid behavior as abnormal except in reference to ideal thyroid behavior. The ideal standard for human behavior is subjective, there is no medical standard for human behavior, and there cant be, because human behavior is not a medical subject.
…and also, apparently, the two questions I asked you.
Well, my interpretation of what Clayton wrote differs from yours.
First, Clayton neither wrote nor posited that behavior is a “product” of anything, nor, as the quote I provided makes clear, does Szasz. Here is another Szasz quote, from p. 30 of The Ethics of Psychoanalysis:
To speak of behavior as the “product” of mind or brain, the way (for example) bile is the product of the liver, is incorrect. Behavior is not a “product”; behavior is human choice and action. This is not to say that behavior is not influenced by many things (including the brain).
As for Clayton, he wrote (my emphasis):
Clayton’s point (the way I read it, anyway) is that calling a child’s misbehavior a “disease” (or a “disorder”) creates the illusion that the problem “resides,” disease-like, in the child. This is identical to what goes on in the classroom: If the student finds the teacher and subject boring and irrelevant, the student must have a “disorder.” Heaven forbid that perhaps the teacher and subject are boring and irrelevant! And heaven forbid that perhaps some parents are lazy and ignorant. No, it’s much easier to slap the “mentally disordered” label on the kid, and psychiatrists are only too eager to oblige.
I’m not sure whom you think “the victim” is that Clayton is “blaming.”
Some parents have problems with their kids’ behavior, and some kids have problems with their parents’ behavior. But, since the parents, teachers, school boards and psychiatrists are more powerful than the kid, it is they who get to slap the “mentally disordered” label on the kid, then force drugs into him.
Neuroscience is irrelevant to child/parent relationships, but psychiatrists and psychologists invoke it to justify recasting as a medical problem what is in fact a relationship problem, then pushing drugs onto and into the kid.
No, I think Clayton nailed it pretty well.
No, it doesn’t mean this.
No, it doesn’t mean this either.
Szasz’s contention is neither.
What Szasz asserts is:
Behavior is not disease.
Behavior is not a “product” of the brain, nor is the brain’s “function” to “produce” behavior.
Behavior is not “caused” or “produced.” Behavior is influenced and chosen.
Ok, that’s what I originally thought but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
There is a REASON that the vast majority of neuroscientists (and scientists in general) are not dualists. They weren’t bought out by the state, there is no conspiracy. The evidence for the mind being an emergent product of the brain is overwhelming. People are machines, just made out of meat.
I can’t take a psychologist (or psychiatrist) seriously if he believes in a disembodied mind/soul, or if he thinks that such a mind has choices that are not determined by the multitude of factors being processed by the brain. Determined, not influenced.
That’s the most fundamental disagreement we seem to have, and is really a different discussion.
You seem to think of Szasz as a “dualist,” but he isn’t. You also seem to think that one must be either a “dualist” or a “materialist,” but Szasz is neither. You also use the word “mind” as a noun, which creates the illusion that there is some “thing” to which the word “mind” refers.
I don’t disagree with any of that, although I would classify him as a materialist or at least a monist regardless of his objections. I also think he is taking the ‘mind as object’ too literally when discussed by materialists. Even dualists hardly think of the ‘mind’ as an object (they would rather keep things vague and undefined, afterall)
Tell me this, does he believe in ‘free will’ or contra-causal will? Your earlier quotes from him implied that he does, although now I’m not sure.
To me, saying someone has a ‘mental disorder’ is the same as saying someone has a brain abnormality that effects the functioning of those processes that are attributed to mental agents (thinking, acting, deciding). Is he simply disagreeing on ground of terminology? If so, I’m not interested.
The idea Szasz is trying to impart here is that if people have free will, then they have it whether we approve or disapprove of their behavior. Suggesting that free will “disappears” when we disapprove of someone’s behavior is silly and inconsistent - yet, this is essentially what psychiatrists suggest, at least implicitly.
Are you saying that “behavioral abnormality” (“mental disorder”) is associated with “brain abnormality,” or identical to “brain abnormality”? I can’t opine on whether Szasz (dis)agrees with you until I understand what you are saying.
Also, what is a “brain abnormality”?
Do you mean brain damage, or “something else”?
If the latter, how is this defined? How is it measured? By whom?
Edit:
As an example, ingesting LSD might result in what could reasonably be called a “brain abnormality” (albeit a temporary one), and the ensuing behavioral changes could reasonably be described as a “behavioral abnormality.”
I mean abnormal brain in the most obvious way possible. A brain that, by way of genetic variation or injury, deviates from what is average.
A person with hypothryoidism has a statistically uncommon brain, one that produces a statistically uncommon amount of thyroid hormone which can result in statistically uncommon emotional responses to stimuli, which usually results in statistically uncommon behavior in a fixed environment. Statistically.
What “brain injury” means is clear, but what “genetic variation” means is not. But using “brain injury,” my question becomes:
Are you saying that “behavioral abnormality” (“mental disorder”) is associated with “brain injury,” or identical to “brain injury”? I can’t opine on whether Szasz (dis)agrees with you until I understand what you are saying.
Edit:
Your original question was:
My opinion:
Szasz would not disagree that a change in behavior can correspond with brain damage.
Szasz would disagree that “change in behavior” is identical to “brain damage,” and (obviously) on more than just “ground of terminology.” Behavior is not physical damage or disease. For example, if I spill boiling water on my hand, I’ll jump around and scream, but this behavior is not “damage or disease.” It’s a symptom of the damage (and pain) of spilling boiling water on my hand.
This confuses me. Thyroid hormone is not produced by the brain; it is produced by the thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is not the brain, nor is it even located within the brain; it is a separate organ located in the neck. The fact that a person’s thyroid might produce insufficient amounts of thyroxine is not equivalent to saying that a person has an “abnormal brain.” If you call the behavior of such a person “mentally disordered,” you are still talking about his behavior, not his brain or his thyroid. This is just the expression of your subjective reaction to his behavior or symptoms, and not the rendering of a medical diagnosis.
I don’t think anyone, least of all Szasz, denies that brain damage, brain disease, glandular malfunction, or ingestion of drugs can correspond with behavioral changes. But calling (a changed) behavior a “disease” is incorrect; no behavior is disease. Calling a behavior a “disorder” is just another way of saying you disapprove of the behavior; behavior has no intrinsic “order.”
I need further clarification on what you mean by “A brain that, by way of genetic variation … deviates from what is average.”
Calling a behavior a ‘disease’ is indeed incorrect. But different behavior can result from a diseased brain. Could not these behaviors be considered ‘diseased’?
I still get the feeling that this is all just an argument over language. I am pretty sure that most people, when referring to ‘behavioral disorders’, simply refer to behavior that is a symptom of an actual brain disorder.
What I mean when I refer to a brain that deviates from the average because of genetic variation, is.. sort of hard to explain in simpler terms. For an example, there are genes that regulate the ‘pruning’ of neural connections in a developing brain. Defects in this gene can result in a brain that is very different from average, and is considered to be one of the causes of synesthesia.
My point was mainly that it doesn’t have to be brain damage that results in ‘abnormal brains’. All of our brains are different, some are just more different than others. I am not using ‘normal’ in a normative way, which seems to be a sticking point for you. Same with ‘disorder’.
edit: can you give me an example of someone who thinks ‘change in behavior’ is identical to ‘brain damage’? I feel like he is arguing against a strawman, as I can’t imagine many professionals who suscribe to that belief.
"Youre missing the point, I am to blame because I let the conversation come to this.
(members of) your family only have a thyroid disorder to the extent that they perceive it as such. A third party cant objectively characterize an individual’s thyroid behavior as abnormal except in reference to ideal thyroid behavior. The ideal standard for human behavior is subjective, there is no medical standard for human behavior, and there cant be, because human behavior is not a medical subject."
When I say abnormal, I am using it in a descriptive and not a normative context. Abnormal means “not normal, average, typical, or usual”. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘bad’.
Someone could have a brain that gives them superpowers for all I care. It would still be abnormal (and everyone would want it). Abnormal brains don’t have to be ‘fixed’.