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Archive for December, 2007

A New Skin

Posted in American Psychological Association, psychology in the media on December 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

How often in life do we get to trade in our skin for a new one? Come new year, I’ll be trading in the external face of this blog for a new one. With blogs that is easy, more like a change of clothes than a re-design. Yet as we spend more and more time [...]

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‘Tis the Season to Buy Drugs: Are You a Shopaholic?

Posted in Big Pharma, consumer interest, diagnosis, obsessive-compulsive, oinomania, psychology in the media, psychotropic drugs on December 21, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Found this mention of oniomania, purported new entrants into DSM-V. Said article has the following tempting title: “Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious.” The digest version is:

Big Pharma creates both supply and demand. Once a diagnosis is in the DSM marketing can begin in [...]

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APA Task Force Takes Big Pharma to Task

Posted in American Psychological Association, Big Pharma, compliance professionals, psychology in the media, psychotropic drugs on December 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

This month’s American Psychologist features a compelling advisory to the American Psychological Association (APA) regarding what it sees as potential threats to the integrity of the profession. The article, “Corporate Funding and Conflicts of Interest” includes these recommendations:

External funds (i.e., drug money) should not be a part of APA’s core budget
Exhibitors at APA conventions should [...]

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Does Therapy Work?

Posted in FAQ about psychology, consumer interest, psychology on the internet, public interest, questions, research on December 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Guest post.
Here’s an article written by Paul G. Mattiuzzi, Ph.D. on the question of whether therapy works. Dr. Mattiuzzi was kind enough to allow me to quote the article in full. His website, the psychological resource information system, can be found here.
Does Therapy Work?
Yes.
Countless studies have shown that psychotherapeutic treatment works.
The effects have been measured [...]

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Biobabble and the SSRI Mechanism

Posted in Big Pharma, consumer interest, depression, medical model, psychology in the media, psychotropic drugs on December 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

A bill of goods.
In Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression, David Healy, M.D. notes that the big pharma version of depression we are being sold is simplistic and, to some degree, without evidence.
As a psychopharmacologist, however, he saw from the outset that the drug firms were pushing [...]

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Freud in Academe: Another View

Posted in Freud, psychodynamic therapy, psychological domains on December 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

What follows is another opinion on the recent New York Times article about Freud as taught in academe. The post from a colleague on a professional listserv. Thanks to Dr. Rhinewine for allowing me to quote it.
Post from a guest:
In my opinion: the handling of psychoanalysis is just short of preposterous in many psych [...]

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Obsessive Compulsive? High Achieving?

Posted in anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive, perfectionism, psychology in the media on December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

The scourge of perfectionism.
We call it perfectionism. Nice article in the New York Times today about the way the culture encourages both obsessive attention to detail and compulsive behavior. Much of what therapists do is dealing with the damaging results of people stuck in the mindset of “black-and-white thinking”, a sad by-product of perfectionism (either [...]

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