Maybe the right term, which could describe all those diagnoses, just isn't found yet because we are looking at it the wrong way. Maybe all mental illnesses are a kind of PTSD.

Clinical psychologist here (UK). In my practice, I avoid the 'rush to diagnosis' as much as possible, prefering to talk to clients about their individual experience of suffering—a more or less direct translation of the Buddhist 'dukkha'. For the majority, this helps them avoid the stigma attached to diagnostic criteria, and it frees me from the onerous task of ascribing a label that may, at best, be only a rough fit.

Paul Verhaeghe has a book presenting the arguments against DSM and claiming that r/Freudwasright and has new proofs [ in the 90s made on on fMRI =neuronal level ] by Peter Fonagy et al [ see Wiki]. Title: On Being Normal and Other Disorders.2004. Exists on PDF.

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I've struggled to get a mental health diagnosis for years. My therapist confidently assured me that due to this and that criteria, I was not bipolar. My psychiatrist said that it's possible that I am.

I'm gonna keep trying different treatments until I find one that works, and theres something oddly reassuring about the concept that no one really knows, and the whole system is figuring out how to deal with each individual case by case.

I thought that I was just so fucked up that I was confusing to mental health professionals.

A person looks at the map and the map provides them with information that tells them what will happen if they move in a certain direction or whatever. A map can tell someone standing on a road whether if they take the second left hand turn they will come across a church or an open field or a roundabout or another street. Its giving them information about something they cannot immediately access and don't know about. That is a form of prediction, made by the person using the information from the map which is a model of the topographic features of some landscape. If I have never been somewhere before and have no knowledge of its terrain, then I can think of the map as allowing me to make a prediction of the kind of terrain I might expect to see. Its my personal prediction. Maybe you will see it more easily if I use words like knowledge or expectation instead of prediction, but I would be meaning the exact same thing. I don't necessarily mean predicting something no one has ever seen before. This is about the personal knowledge of whoever is using the map. They get knowledge from the map and they use that knowledge to act. That implies prediction. I am not going to embark on a route unless I know whats at the end of it which means I can predict what will happen if I were to go down that route, which is essentially just equivalent to making factual statements about this route and its endpoint which I cannot access immediately from my current position. When I say prediction, I basically just mean the utilization of knowledge, knowing what will happen or what is the case beyond my immediate experience. A map trivially allows this to occur. Even the photo example too: if you have never seen someone before and you have seen their photo, then you suddenly have information about them which you can use in novel contexts, you might be able to recognize them walking down the street.

>map itself cannot predict because it is an inanimate objects

Well so are models. no model is useful unless someone is there to initialize it and put in the parameters, the variables, the initial conditions that need to be used to predict something.

I entered a Canadian university in 1977 to study psychology. Part way into the second year, I realized it was all subjective. In other words bullshit. There is NO way to show that any one diagnosis of disorder is more applicable than any other one. I quit and entered a technical trade.

This was a great read. It does seem like most people are under the impression that mental health diagnoses are perfectly concrete; in some cases, that the very act of being diagnosed (of being categorised) is a panacea in itself.

Parricide or regicide? It should tell if it was a Prince... this seem odd

It makes sense since, although Tolkien wasn't much interested in discussing politics openly, his political opinions were more related to the Whigs and would agree with Burke's "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Although he wouldn't like to associate the Ring with a real life allegory, the Ring's true purpose is to give command to its creator, Sauron, ultimately command all over Middle-Earth. In a sense, the Ring is a technology developed by Sauron to achieve that objective. From this point, maybe a critique of technology (the negative consequences of technology as a means to command nature) can be made using LotR as a frame, but that'd require a more elaborate argument.

I think there was an essay, sortof relevant, on the difference in philosophy between tolkien and lewis. Tolkien believing that technology (the ring) would always fall into the hands of the powerful, and be a corrupting influence, and thus was ultimately irredeemable. Maybe if all you had to go on was human history up to but including ww1, it might be a reasonable conclusion to draw.

Very interesting read and very relevant. Appreciate the share!

Ah yes, makes sense it's good for an introduction (I guess the negative conclusion distracted me from that)

Thank you for posting this article, I enjoyed reading it

Why should a individual help or contribute in society ?

I mean you might as well just read the book? The reviewer said that if you want to get in touch with the literature on power and technology then this book is a place to start.

It seems the review was quite negative, it's a pity because I'm interested in the relationship between power and technology. I know that the review is already negative enough, so it makes sense the author didn't recomend alternatives, but can anyone recomend any books or articles on this?

I thought the other comments were maybe being mean. But no, I discovered the other comments were correctly trying to stop me from wasting my time. Book sounds terrible, reviewer didn’t like it and I’m sure I wouldn’t either.

After reading this article I feel that I know less now than I did about the subject than I did going in. It didn’t sell me on anything except to stay away from the book.

Totally sounded like an interesting book but then the review convinced me it wasn't worth my time. Job done for that reviewer.

It doesn’t have to be ‘immediately’ useful, it doesn’t have to be useful at all. But, if we are to care about truth, we care about truth FOR some reason. The question “why do I care about Truth” presupposes that it might be possible to answer “I don’t.” So it is not intrinsically necessary that we care about Truth, so it is up to us to justify our desire for it.

I think truth is useful to many people. You want your romantic partner to truly love you, you care about the truth of their feelings. Many examples where we care about truth. So then how do we get truth? You’re right, an inexact but working model of it is the best we can do. Thats what I was also getting at with my idea that we don’t care so much about absolute Truth, but only subjective truth.

This may be found in the last collection of Nietzsche’s works, notes, and letters which was posthumously titled: Will to Power. It is not an official piece of Nietzsche’s, but it seems he did plan to write a metaphysical magnus opus on the Will to Power, until that damn horse incident.

There are indications Nietzsche was loosely influenced by new ideas in physics, especially with his understanding of energy.

The Eternal Recurrence, of how I understand it, seems to be an infinitude of infinite variation in which sameness, due to the breath of scope, inevitably infinitely re-occurs.

It is still debated if he believed it or not; he doesn’t write it like it is thought-experiment:

——

“The new concept of the universe. The universe exists; it is nothing that grows into existence and that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it develops, it passes away, but it never began to develop, and has never ceased from passing away; it maintains itself in both states. It lives on itself, its excrements are its nourishment. We need not concern ourselves for one instant with the hypothesis of a created world. The concept create is to-day utterly indefinable and unrealisable; it is but a word which hails from superstitious ages, nothing can be explained with a word. The last attempt that was made to conceive of a world that began occurred quite recently, in many cases with the help of logical reasoning,—generally, too, as you will guess, with an ulterior theological motive. Several attempts have been made lately to show that the concept that "the universe has an infinite past (regressus in infinitum) is contradictory, it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backwards from this moment of time, and of saying: "I shall never reach the end"; just as I can calculate without end in a forward direction, from the same moment. It is only when I wish to commit the error—I shall be careful to avoid it—of reconciling this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with the absolutely unrealisable concept of a finite progressus up to the present; only when I consider the direction (forwards or backwards) as logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head—this very moment—and think I hold the tail: this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Dühring!...

I have come across this thought in other thinkers before me, and every time I found that it was determined by other ulterior motives (chiefly theological, in favour of a creator spiritus). If the universe were in any way able to congeal, to dry up, to perish; or if it were capable of attaining to a state of equilibrium; or if it had any kind of goal at all which a long lapse of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it (in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nonentity), this state ought already to have been reached. But it has not been reached: it therefore follows....

This is the only certainty we can grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If, for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted. [Pg 428] If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of energy,—and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless,—it follows therefrom that the universe must go through a calculable number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible combination must once have been realised; not only this, but it must have been realised an infinite number of times. And inasmuch as between every one of these combinations and its next recurrence every other possible combination would necessarily have been undergone, and since every one of these combinations would determine the whole series in the same order, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the universe is thus shown to be a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity.—This conception is not simply materialistic; for if it were this, it would not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the universe has not reached this finite state, materialism shows itself to be but an imperfect and provisional hypothesis.” 1067.

—-

“And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity o; energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty.

It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else!And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!”

It is still debated if he believed it or not; he doesn’t write it like it is thought-experiment:

——

“The new concept of the universe. The universe exists; it is nothing that grows into existence and that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it develops, it passes away, but it never began to develop, and has never ceased from passing away; it maintains itself in both states. It lives on itself, its excrements are its nourishment. We need not concern ourselves for one instant with the hypothesis of a created world. The concept create is to-day utterly indefinable and unrealisable; it is but a word which hails from superstitious ages, nothing can be explained with a word. The last attempt that was made to conceive of a world that began occurred quite recently, in many cases with the help of logical reasoning,—generally, too, as you will guess, with an ulterior theological motive. Several attempts have been made lately to show that the concept that "the universe has an infinite past (regressus in infinitum) is contradictory, it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backwards from this moment of time, and of saying: "I shall never reach the end"; just as I can calculate without end in a forward direction, from the same moment. It is only when I wish to commit the error—I shall be careful to avoid it—of reconciling this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with the absolutely unrealisable concept of a finite progressus up to the present; only when I consider the direction (forwards or backwards) as logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head—this very moment—and think I hold the tail: this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Dühring!... I have come across this thought in other thinkers before me, and every time I found that it was determined by other ulterior motives (chiefly theological, in favour of a creator spiritus). If the universe were in any way able to congeal, to dry up, to perish; or if it were capable of attaining to a state of equilibrium; or if it had any kind of goal at all which a long lapse of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it (in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nonentity), this state ought already to have been reached. But it has not been reached: it therefore follows.... This is the only certainty we can grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If, for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted. [Pg 428] If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of energy,—and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless,—it follows therefrom that the universe must go through a calculable number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible combination must once have been realised; not only this, but it must have been realised an infinite number of times. And inasmuch as between every one of these combinations and its next recurrence every other possible combination would necessarily have been undergone, and since every one of these combinations would determine the whole series in the same order, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the universe is thus shown to be a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity.—This conception is not simply materialistic; for if it were this, it would not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the universe has not reached this finite state, materialism shows itself to be but an imperfect and provisional hypothesis.” 1067.

—-

“And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity o; energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses [Pg 431] [Pg 429] [Pg 430]

or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else!And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!”

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