Science enables technology, but disables psychiatry

Psychiatry today is a global disaster. You want scientific proof? It’s an
irrefutable, scientifically proven fact that more people die from suicide, a lethal mental disease, than from breast and prostate cancer combined (ask the W.H.O). Add in the death rate from psychiatric drugs, and it’s scientifically obvious that today’s psychiatry must change – only unscientific psychiatrists (or governments) can think otherwise. However, to be scientific, indeed for science to work at all, there must be reliable definitions. When scientific terms are robust, human ingenuity knows no bounds, teamwork flourishes, and technology floods us with endless iGadgets, iMedia and other marvels – but when they’re not, as here, there’s trouble.

Humans vary, even you and me – it’s all part of the rich tapestry of life. But this variation actually runs deeper than we generally realise.
Again, objective scientific proof is not far away. It’s part of the human condition that we chatter away with great ease, we gossip about this that and the other without a care as to what the different words we use mean – in fact, we carry on as if there were no limits to our verbal communication. But some of the most important words we ever use are grossly unscientific. I’ve found three so far. They don’t behave scientifically at all, in fact we keep having to repair them, every time we use them. This wouldn’t matter so much if thesethree words weren’t quite so vital – but they are. We literally cannot live without them – which is what today’s psychiatry tries to do, guaranteeing its failure.

What could be less scientific than each of us having our own private, special meaning for a given word? What if the same word meant
something to me, but I could never precisely define what that was? What if you too knew the word itself extremely well – yet even though using it practically every day, we could neither of us say with any precision what its exact verbal definition was. And the first of these words? Pain. Yes, pain – full of meaning, not to say urgency, but utterly
resistant to any definition whatsoever. But don’t take my word for it. Try your own scientific experiment. Write down what pain means. Think up your own scientific definition for pain. Tautologies are ruled out – that is to say, if you’ve written ‘ouch’ or ‘ow’ or ‘it hurts’ or ‘I don’t like this’ – then this is only bland repetition, it doesn’t tell anyone else
what it means. Pain is one of three words with maximum meaning and zero definition. You could call them ‘non-scientific’, but I prefer
 h-words’, or ‘human-words’.

And this isn’t going to change, ever.

So what do we do about it? Well first, we have to stop pretending that science will uncover a way round this verbal loophole. Stop thinking that someone else will solve this fundamental problem of human communication for us, that some scientific boffin will come up with a ‘pain-meter’, a device which will scientifically define just what pain means,so we can all get on with the rest of our lives. It’s not going to happen. It’s the way we are. It’s an intrinsic part of being alive – and any scientific gadget to do this, real or just hopedfor, actually diminishes us, degrades us, reduces the awesome nature of living, shrinks it to some boring clockwork, rather as mainstream psychiatry does today.

The other thing we desperately need to do, having once accepted that scientific word worddefinition will never work for something as vital as pain, is to learn to use it responsibly – that is to say make sure every time we describe a pain, that it really does correspond with what’s going on. If we don’t, then the penalty for misusing this h-word is impartial, logical, even ‘scientific’ – being irresponsible means failing to ensure you respond to what’s really taking place out there. Irresponsibility comes with a precisely measured limit, governed exclusively by the degree to which you didn’t respond, a self-imposed limit to your life-given capability of adapting, of making sure you are in tune with, and so can survive better within, your surroundings, social or otherwise.

And if you thought pain was bad enough, linguistically, then meet the other two – fear and intent. Again, don’t take my word for it – do your own science, write down your scientific definitions. And when your head hurts enough from trying this, breathe a sigh of relief that you can indeed sensibly, rationally, responsibly, even scientifically use words with maximum meaning, but zero definition – ‘h-words’ at that.

Now religions the world over try and square this circle. They offer their own, usually patented, definitions for these indefinables – but I’m broadminded, I don’t mind which religion you follow, provided always that you tolerate the others. But what I do object to is a psychiatry that tries, dogmatically, to be so scientific that it won’t use any of them at all.
Without intent, mental health simply isn’t. And since fear forms the core of every mental disease, it’s the only symptom present in every one of them that ever existed. Ergo, in practical clinical reality, eliminating fear via trustworthy support offers a 100% cure for every single psychiatric disorder there is – but that’s another story.

Dr Bob Johnson Formerly Head of Therapy at Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital.
He was also Consultant Psychiatrist, Special Unit, C-Wing, Parkhurst Prison 1991-1996