Image by spike55151 via Flickr
This YouTube link below is James Randi‘s debunking of psychic’s abilities and their unique “insights”. He immediately shows us that what we perceived about him as he came on stage was what we believed to be so & what we assumed - not what actually occurred or was accurate.
Randi is poignant and humorous as he exposes what he calls “charlatans” who take your money & your emotions – leaving you with nothing.
While watching his video… I found myself drawing parallels to psychotherapy and therapists.
Both psychics and psychiatrists make use of “cold readings” whereby you, the patient or audience, believe that they have abilities and powers that you do not, and therefore, they are better able to make interpretations of your life’s experiences and/or the path your future should take. Both interpret your thoughts; both interpret your past; both will tell you what others think (like Grandma who died 20 years ago) and both can easily lead you to make decisions (like stay in long-term therapy) or display certain behaviors (like multiple personalities) that you otherwise would not have.
Psychics depend on your gullibility. Psychiatrists depend on your trust. Both depend on suggestion.
Both can inflict pain and long-term harm. And both allow you to leave their presence with a lighter wallet.
The skeptic’s dictionary defines cold reading as “a set of techniques used by professional manipulators to get a subject to behave in a certain way or to think that the cold reader has some sort of special ability that allows him to “mysteriously” know things about the subject. …In cold reading, salespersons, hypnotists, advertising pros, faith healers, con men, and some therapists bank on their subject’s inclination to find more meaning in a situation than there actually is.
Remembering previously buried memories easily fits into the cold reading category. Are we inclined to find memories that aren’t there just because someone tells us they are? Are we inclined to find more than is there to find? Are we inclined to keep looking? Are we going to force pieces of the abuse-puzzle to fit even though we can plainly see they don’t if we were honest with ourselves? You bet. Why is that? Because we are human and misfitting puzzle pieces leave us feeling uncomfortable and the cognitive dissonance is distressful so we need it rectified.
Whether it is a magician, a psychic, or a psychiatrist, we need to make sense of what we experience and perceive, particularly when we place our lives in the hands of a mental health care provider. During therapy to find buried memories, I held onto every memory that made the puzzle come together about my alleged sexual abuse, but ignored all the wrong information those memories uncovered. Behavior that ocurrs easily when receiving a cold reading from a psychic.
The Psychiatrist & The Psychic: making “Cold Readings” by Jeanette D. Bartha is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.mentalhealthmatters2.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.mentalhealthmatters2.wordpress.com.
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disequilibrium1
/ 09/23/2012Good article Jeanette. I believe that even if a therapist is relatively ethical, he often employs the “stagecraft” of therapy protocol and our distress to create the illusion that he has special power. Their training seems to instruct them that only the therapist knows THE TRUTH and that client response unreliably is resistance and transference. From the arrogance I’ve seen, I’d think many therapists think they’re in some kind of mystical star chamber, immune from the gravitational pull of human nature. Therapy is constructed on a fictional, phantom foundation.
Jeanette Bartha
/ 09/25/2012What distresses me about many therapists is the high opinions they hold of themselves. As a result, they know not the harm they cause – this fact is what makes many of them dangerous. On a mission, a self-identified crusade – like wiping out child abuse, while a valiant effort, therapists often looks to hidden memories instead of social activism. To be socially active is a huge risk, hard work, and guts to face your opponents. It’s much easier to sit behind a closed door all day.
V
/ 06/22/2011This is a really thought-provoking piece. I do think there are parallels involving the power of suggestion and also the belief that someone has special knowledge.
I also think that the use of crowds or groups may be similar with psychics and DID therapists. The people around who are also believing make it easier for a normal person to go along with the “expert”
I remember my mother’s doctors, one in particular, had this sage-like, thoughtful affect. In retrospect, it seems over-the-top. It was like he thought he was Yoda or something. So, he was acting like he had special knowledge or insight, even in more informal settings. I think most people would have found him quite annoying or had red flags go up, but my mother was vulnerable and wanted certainty, I think.
Both the DID therapists and psychics also seem very *certain*. I think that for people living in fear and uncertainty, this is attractive by itself. I think the very insecure are drawn to people who project certainty. Unfortunately, certainty is rarely reality. I imagine that the good therapists will likely not be totally sure what’s wrong right away, and they won’t have an easy instant answer for every problem. I think that this makes good therapists less attractive to people like my mom, compared to charlatans of various types.
Jeanette Bartha
/ 06/22/2011Interesting observations, V. I’d say most DID therapists believe they know more than the rest of us. That’s how they present themselves believing that “well, they just don’t understand”, meaning that the rest of us “don’t get it”. This was a problem during my treatment because although (I found out later) many nurses and aids at the hospital thought my former doctor was nuts, they really didn’t know if what he was saying just might be right about multiple personalities being directly linked to childhood sexual abuse.
It’s pompous to retain a smug attitude and belief system as your patients literally die at your feet. As I’ve mentioned, I know several patients who died during their MPD/DID treatment when we lived at the hospital together. Of course it didn’t make headlines… it should have. It was that doctor’s belief that he was helping those “poor abused women” when in fact He was the predator and the abuser (gees, I hate those buzz words). I wish it didn’t take me 6+ years to figure that out.
You are so right about the power of groups. I was in art therapy with Mindy Jacobson-Levy at the time and she ran groups just for multiples. Mindy is a brilliant therapist, caring, loving – how is it she couldn’t see that she suggested most everything to us and then we all learned how to be multiple from each other?
When people have their sights on advanced degrees, esteem from colleagues and their voice rising in their field, they go blind. And maybe a bit dumb too.