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hdark 's review for:
Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses
by Sarah Fay
Essentially it’s a literature professors critique of a field where she has no training. This was a hard book to get through. I went in believing the author would stick to her story but the entire book was a huge critique of the DSM, mental health field, mental health professionals, etc. I get it, the DSM is flawed, there’s a lot of overlap and clinical judgement that comes into play, but a lot of Fay’s book reads like mental health diagnoses aren’t real, when we know very well that these symptoms and psychiatric disorders exist. She brings up the fact that they can’t be physically demonstrated, but that goes back to the mind/body separation. Does your mind not exist because we can’t definitively prove it’s there? Your brain is there sure, but where’s the mind exactly? In the prefrontal cortex, the limbic system…who knows. Also, she says that therapy didn’t help which is interesting. Really? Talking about what you’re going through, trying to work it out, receiving feedback about it, and considering that feedback and your thoughts about it later are literally parts of some therapeutic processes. So she cured herself I guess and the help she sought was irrelevant? Nicely, on the very last page she adds that dementia and chromosomal abnormalities aren’t included in her diatribe…guess I should be glad I’m not wasting my days researching neurodegenerative diseases.