Rogerian psychology create an atmosphere of psychological safety within the counseling relationship which is relevant and applicable today. Rogers believed the therapist should have unconditional positive regard for the client – that is, not judge the client’s character. If the client feels that his/her character is being evaluated, he/she will put on a false front or perhaps leave therapy altogether.

The learner-centred philosophy advocated by Rogers makes a lot of sense in education. Personally I agree with Rogers' ideals; that learning is learner-constructed rather than teacher-delivered. Clearly teachers facilitate the learning, but Rogers' theories around personal experiences and needs resonate well with others' (such as Bruner's) constructivist stance. The importance of the learner's agency in satisfying, or actualising, their personal growth needs surely carries some weight in that working only towards physiological needs tends not to motivate learning (unless it is learning about how to survive!).

In terms of research more generally, context plays a part in determining whether a humanistic or phenomenological approach can fully satisfy research questions. As an advocate of mixed methods (and indeed mixed methodology) approaches, I would support the use of methodology appropriate to the context and consider whether a combination of strategies might reveal more (in specific contexts) than the focused approaches used by Rogers (although clearly Rogers developed methodology considered to be extremely robust and often replicated today).

Rogerian psychology create an atmosphere of psychological safety within the counseling relationship which is relevant and applicable today. Rogers believed the therapist should have unconditional positive regard for the client – that is, not judge the client’s character. If the client feels that his/her character is being evaluated, he/she will put on a false front or perhaps leave therapy altogether.

The is a good piece on the Psychology Today website (by Stephen Joseph), which provides three reasons why Roger's person-centered psychology is still relevant today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/what-doesnt-kill-us/201804/why-carl-rogers-person-centered-approach-is-still-relevant

In Psychosociology and in group work intervenion , Non-directivity presents the authentic model of communication for the intervener allowing an action of change.

We are in action research, where the intervenor is a member of the group imbibed with his reality, no longer emitting hypothesis or prejudice seeking in what he will determine opportunities for the group of transformation and recognition of oneself.

Psychosociology with its youth and insufficiently developed theoretical apparatus may be used both for integration at all costs and for the systematic contestation (Cornaton, 1969), for "tension regulator" and "revealer of contradictions" (Lapassade, & Favez-Boutonier, 1970). It is generally to Rogers' non-directivism that the ideological apparatus of psychosociological adventurism is related. For Anzieu et al. (1972) it does not bring the client any system of conceptual references as for the dynamic psychic processes mobilized. Cornaton (1969) argues that non-directivity does not correspond to the laissez-faire but to the unconditional appreciation of the client. The theoretical model of non directiviy in a group sitting still needs to be strengthened so that it no longer corresponds to the demagoguery of the system, of the client or of the intervener's amateurism.

Rogerian therapy is still widely practiced today, and even those who don't necessarily consider themselves "Rogerian therapists" frequently apply many Rogerian principles in their therapeutic practices (whether consciously or not.) In fact, I would argue that Carl Rogers' principles and the atmosphere he strived to create for his clients are essentially what therapeutic training centers nowadays use as the golden standard of therapy. So yes, I would definitely consider Rogers' work still to be relevant.

Mind you, I do have my points of departure from Rogers, and have certain (mostly minor) criticisms of his work—namely its somewhat over-optimistic attitude towards human nature and experience—but certainly, the basic tenants of creating a safe space for clients, free of all judgement, is probably the best ideal for the therapeutic environment that has been offered so far.

I agree Christopher Zieske - this is also relevant to education. A safe space, free of judgement (at least during the learning process itself - summative assessment accepted), is crucial for unrestricted engagement where human nature, hopefully, centres on curiosity and exploration. And experience returns a learning reward unshackled from the demands of formal assessment processes.

Adrian Twissell Indeed, Carl Rogers' influence was not relegated to therapy only, but to education and various other important services. One could even say that just about any profession that concerns human development and well-being have been profoundly impacted by Rogers' ideas. Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that, in contrast to therapy, Rogers' approach to education struggles much more profoundly to be accepted into mainstream practice, as evidenced by how so many public schools are so heavily curriculum-centered and based on getting students to perform well on standardized tests. This, for me, gives rise to an important question: how can we get Rogers' person-centered approach to care taking to be as well-accepted by educational systems as it has been by therapeutic and clinical communities?

Humanistic approaches in psychotherapy is even more important today than ever. We are reducing folks to digital, monetary, and carbon units, thus dehumanizing them. I refer to this as "the dehumanization of a collective of selves". Several meta-analyses reveal that the working therapeutic alliance contributes significantly to + outcomes across transtheoretical approaches.

See 2 of my attached articles.

Rich

Yes I have struggled for many years to overcome the frailties of standardised testing Christopher Zieske . In particular relative to concept development and hand's on learning using various representative models in a technical context. For many people 'big data' speaks volumes and it is difficult to move understanding beyond the the numbers, particularly where individual learning is concerned. One ray of hope can be found in the current focus on what is termed variably as 'learning character', 'character education', 'learning habits' and 'habits of mind' (not an exhaustive list). These approaches recognise that the variety of affective factors at play can influence the potential for cognitive development. In establishing this focus I sense a tentative shift in emphasis from the 'big data' estimations of potential to the focus on individual needs and development. I have always attributed the origin of this focus to Bandura, but I can see Rogers also plays a significant part here.

I am rather grateful that Richard Kensinger took the liberty to share his articles with us. I hope that a few of us here will read his articles and take this opportunity to discuss them—I know for certain that I will.

Adrian Twissell This preference for the use of "Big Data" seems to come from the philosophy that to base one's work around the process of coming to know one's students (or clients, patients, etc.) on a personal level and to focus on this person's positive qualities leads to bias and is thus suboptimal in comparison to the search of "objectively verifiable" (i.e., quantitative) facts—to borrow a term from the Humanistic-Phenomenological Psychologist Dr. Scott Churchill, it is based on a preference for "third-person perspectivity." Ironically, this perspective is rarely turned upon itself to reveal its own equal capacity for bias, for "third-person perspectivity" is still characterized by subjective experiences, even if these subjective experiences are "disinterested" in their objects of awareness. It is not truly possible to have a perspective that is in some way based on one's own subjectivity, for subjectivity is a fundamental and inseparable aspect of human existence. I think that, if modern researchers in the fields of the social sciences or humanities can become amenable to this statement, they will be able to go beyond their traditional Naturalistic/Empiricist views and complement these with elements of Phenomenological and Humanistic/Existential thought. The difficult part of this will be convincing them to take this more pluralistic view in the first place.

Christopher,

Thanks so much for your kind remarks about my articles. I am grateful.

Rich

Richard Kensinger It is my pleasure, honestly. It would seem that we have some common ground, for I also believe that many recent trends in the social sciences have been over-reducing and overmechanizing human beings as well.

Best,

Christopher

As popular constructs of human psychology are mechanistic, genes, ec without human autonomy, then Rogers is a breath of pure, fresh and clarifying air. The mechanistic model is certainly the result of observer led research hand in hand with research using animals and the complete indifference towards client views and experiences. More about power perhaps than science.

Stanley Wilkin You provide a very profound insight, indeed, about the tendency of the social sciences to reduce human experience into mechanistic terms. The tendency to turn away from an understanding of the "within" of human beings (Wilhelm Dilthey would call this the "Verstehen" mode of knowledge) makes much sense when seen in light of the fact that much positivistic science is based off of the idea that the scientist must "control" the subjects (or rather, objects) of study. A Verstehen approach would not be of much help in maintaining control over situations—indeed, it largely involves giving up control entirely. It is natural, then, the classical positivistic focus of most social science will oppose this Verstehen model. I am unsure of whether Rogers was aware of Dilthey's writings (he certainly didn't seem to reference Dilthey often in his major works), but I am almost certain that he would be in complete agreement with Dilthey that the Verstehen model is indispensable to a complete understanding of human nature and experience, and that the "Erklären" model (the model of detached observation upon which most positivistic focuses are based) is incapable of accomplishing this task on its own.

Your observations Christopher refer to the construction of perception. I have for example written elsewhere that treatment, certainly one to one treatment processes, may in fact be a place where clinical perception is constructed rather than truth revealed. The environment itself may allign with the clinician or treaters' control of perception, or reality. Indeed the processes of control mechanisms are employed to underwrite and qualify the treater's understanding of reality.

The gene theory of psychiatry constructs a particular reality that has a political and social basis-for example. Its one shoe fits all approach serves additional purposes outside of treatment parameters. The need to apply fixed typologies to clients concerns control and constructions of reality by therapists or treaters. The posirivist approach concerns an end in itself, which may be the authentication of treater status.

For me Yes!! it is needed because at first all emotions are based on subjective metaphors. So, What is your observation and why? Christopher Zieske

I believe that Rogers' theory has had subsequent developments such as considering the importance of the social that allow its current validity. Its approach is basic to all psychotherapeutic action.

I am responding to various people in this response, so it will be a particularly long one. Please don't be afraid to skip to a conversation that is of more interest to you, if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the amount of this I have to say here.

Stanley Wilkin Yet another profound insight. And if we are to come to the topic of perception and its construction, one thing that I think is significant is to discuss the common attempt to "objectify" one's perceptions in scientific research. It seems to me that those who take a purely positivistic view (for, despite my tendency in this discussion so far to criticize positivism, I do know of some positivists who are a bit more open to less positivistic thinking and more willing to accept non-objectifying approaches to science) have the tendency to have a perception during the research process which they then proceed to claim as an objective perception. I am certain that most people involved in this discussion would agree with me that the idea of an "objective perception" is a bit oxymoronic, at least if used in the way that most scientists tend to use the term, for perceptions are, by nature, at least partially subjective. Were these researchers to admit that this perception is their perception, and not necessarily a completely objective perception which all people will univocally have, their assertions and findings would be much more valid, for they would be admitting to the biases that are just as inherent in their approach to studying humanity as it is in any other. Unfortunately, they find themselves so threatened by the idea of their perceptions being subjective (and thus, in their eyes, invalid) that they continue to promote these perceptions as objective. Rogerian psychology, I believe, can remedy this by returning to the priority of recognizing one's perceptions as subjective in nature, this way allowing scientific researchers to continue studying human psychology from their tradition of origin while still respecting that they must also occasionally gain access to their participants' own perceptions—for what can be more "objective" when studying human experience than to study how the one actually in the experiencing position perceives these experiences?

Niladri Das I would say that you and I are essentially in agreement, for I would also argue that emotions are primarily a subjective phenomenon. However, I would even go beyond this to say that thoughts, cognitions, sensations, etc. are largely subjective as well. Without subscribing entirely to a constructivistic or idealistic ontology, for I do believe that there is, to some extent, a world outside of ourselves, I would argue that once a human being encounters an "object" in the world, much of the meaning and existence of this object becomes dependent on the person who encounters it. In other words, reality, particularly psychic reality, cannot be fully understood without an understanding of the person for whom this is a reality. All people are different, however, which means that one person's reality, while it may share certain similarities with the realities of others, will not have the exact same reality as any given specific other. Thus, essentially any psychological faculty must be, at least to some extent, subjective in nature, making all of psychology incomplete without at least some influence by those thinkers such as Rogers who seemed to understand the subjective experience of humans.

Richard Kensinger I am very happy to say that I have finally found the time to read your articles from your earlier response. I found them highly insightful, and I believed that they did a solid job of bridging the gap between the humanizing perspective of Rogers and the more traditional but still necessary focus of most psychologists on such aspects of psychology as Biology or Neurology. Let me just ensure that I understood your essays correctly: it seemed that, taking the argument presented by both of your papers holistically, you essentially intend to say that recent trends in the digitalization of society have brought about the tendency to reduce human beings to mere elements or numbers. This reductionism—which, of course, seems to have been helped along by those psychologists who sought to isolate positivistic psychology from movements such as Rogerian psychology or phenomenological psychology—implicitly dehumanizes people, which then makes it easier for such dark social phenomena as polarization and politicization to occur. After all, why respect something that, to you, isn't even a human being anymore? And why let it disagree with you? Thus, digitalizing and reducing human beings in the way that various trends in scientific research have done—either implicitly or explicitly—facilitates dysfunction in our global society. This is what I gathered from your essays so far, but please don't hesitate to correct me if I am in any way wrong.

Assuming, however, that I am interpreting you correctly, I have only one main thing to say: while your words very much ring true, the unfortunate aspect of this issue is that those who are contributing to the dehumanization of the species at large often have no idea that they are a part of the problem. The question, then is this: how, exactly, can we convince these people that they are having such an impact on the species? How can we convince these people to embrace the humanizing ideas of Rogers, and not to stop at purely causal, objectifying, and numerical explanations of human beings? I am sure that this is not one of those problems that will ever be solved for good, but I think it is important to at least find as good of a solution to it as we can.

I apologize if this response was rather long; however, as can be seen, I simply was involved in many rather stimulating discussions. I am truly grateful to have had the chance to discuss these significant topics with all of you, and I do hope that you have all found them as insightful as I have.

Christopher Zieske Transcendence is needed for further imagination or any self-purification but that is also subjective emotional feeling. So, how do you explain this meta level for everyone?

Christopher,

You are quite accurate in your integration of my clinical observations. You are correct that some do not do it knowingly. In the clinical field many clinicians do realize the adverse impacts, and do it anyway. I so appreciate our exchanges!

See my 2 articles pertaining to this topic.

Rich

Richard, you and I go back now in our discussions on this topic and I must admit I am less inclined to give space to the gene based model than you, as I believe it only provides answers for those engaged in providing the almost automatic treatments now dominant. Neither am I content with typology.

In one of your articles you raise opposites as instances of human personality. One I remember clearly is private and public. Can I provide my view on these ideas, which proliferate now?

Neither of these positions are absolute as clearly they are vigorously negotiated but more.....Without buildings and in particular homes these aspects would not be warranted at all as they reference space confined for human habitation. When bedrooms were planned and people sectioned off from one another, private became tangible. Otherwise all was in a sense public. The roles of planned and sectioned work environments located the public within separate accessed space at a distance from the private space. From there, private was negotiated internally.

Should our present cultures fail, private and public would lose their meaning, therefore like most of these opposites and the archetypes employed to describe them they are merely contingent, reflecting cultural situations rather than fixed psychology.

Rogerian psychology, as a humanistic approach to human psyche and behavior, is relevant today only for historical purposes, not because humans aren't humanistic anymore, but because such idealistic theoretical coordinates start from erroneous concepts regarding human as a concept in which the species has been substantialized to an abstract level. So, a simple questions: what is human? what is humanistic? initiates a philosophical discussion that could be answered from epistemological or gnoseological perspectives, but at any rate, human behavior could be seen from an ontological or materialistic frameworks and practitioners confront at the end which approaches are more powerful to deliver results for the explanations of the vast array of behaviors, motivations, desires, dreams, necessities, concerns of us as species.

Niladri Das Transcendence wasn't exactly much of a Rogerian term, but it was a term used by some of his associates (for instance, Rollo May used it fairly frequently, and Abraham Maslow used it on occasion as well.) I think that if we are to discuss the concept of transcendence on a discussion of the contributions of Carl Rogers, we need to find a definition of transcendence that would've fit well with his theory. Rogers would likely object to the idea of "transcendence" as the overcoming of oneself or one's desires, instincts, etcetera in favor of a higher force because he believed that the self was a fundamentally good entity and did not need to be denied. For instance, despite the fact that both Rogers and the Buddha were both important advocates of peaceful compassion, Rogers would have disagreed with the Buddha's promotion of "self-denial." However, if "transcendence" were defined as a heightened ability to listen to oneself, and not have one's inner voice be squelched by pressures from others to be obedient or conforming to some system that is foreign to the person, Rogers may have been much more accepting of the term. What do you think about this approach to transcendence? Is it a more adequate approach to defining the term than more traditional approaches? Does it fall short of them? Or, perhaps, can this approach and others engage in a dialogue in order to bring out the strengths of both perspectives as well as tackle their weaknesses?

Stanley Wilkin I think that when engaging Richard Kensinger we have to be aware of our differing backgrounds from his. While Kensinger is a practicing clinician, working primarily with practical applications of Psychology, we are—at least in the context of this discussion—placing scrutiny onto the entire philosophy upon which Psychology is founded. It follows, then, that Kensinger will be more willing to accept some of the more natural scientific-based approaches to Psychology as well as that of our more philosophical/phenomenological outlook. I, for one, would personally argue that natural science approaches (which are precisely the approaches that you and to some extent I critique—the genetic and nosological models) aren't necessarily inherently inadequate for understanding human nature; however, they are inadequate if they are used alone and to the exclusion of the more inner-experience focused approaches to Psychology. For instance, genetics may, perhaps, assist in the development of one's dispositions, but they cannot be considered the sole factor, and the notion that genetics play a role in shaping personality should absolutely not be used to justify a purely deterministic perspective that abruptly denies the existence of free will (one can say that "genes are not destiny.") Similarly, nosologies of psychological disorders do not necessarily need to be rejected entirely, but those who use nosologies need to remember that these nosologies are not necessarily natural phenomena, but are human constructions designed to be used as tools. Therefore, one who uses such nosologies should be constantly re-evauating the philosophical assumptions underlying these nosologies and the personal and cultural biases that will always be present in them. Essentially, I think that the best approach would be to set up a dialogue between the more inner-experience focused (one can call most of them "phenomenological") methods to studying human beings and the more traditional natural scientific methods, in which each are taken to be equally important and indispensable in understanding humans, and each supports the strengths of the other approach while also each helping the other to subdue their weaknesses. The issue is that, as of now, many people seem to be unwilling to engage in this dialogical approach (which seems to me to be an especially prominent issue among those taking the natural scientific stance, although this may be my bias from aligning somewhat more with the phenomenological stance.) Would you or Richard Kensinger like to provide any further comments on this dilemma?

Reinaldo Barbero Before I engage in a discussion with you, I would first like to clarify that I am reading you correctly. It seems that what you mean to say is that Rogerian Psychology is relevant in the history of Psychology for bringing up the necessity of Psychology to focus more on what it means to be human, but isn't quite as relevant to modern Psychological theory or practice because it doesn't quite prove us with a definition of what exactly it does mean to be human. Would you say that this is an accurate reading of your comment, or is there any aspect of this interpretation that you would like to correct?

Best regards to all of you,

—Christopher Zieske

@ Christopher Zieske For now, your interpretation of my comment is correct. There is a broader discussion in which rogerian psychology is overflow again and again when uses the term human, because for definition any psychological system is humanistic, history is humanistic and any social science is humanistic for the reason that are disciplines centered in the human aspects of life. Thermodynamics is human because is a "human product" and we can apply a thermodynamic approach to societies and even in our bodies there are thermodynamics involved. The process to a human to become a person, occurs in a progressus from the zoological-ethological scale, to the socio-historical scale and for that reason H. Neardenthal is not a person, is just a human that doest reach the civilizes status and in that regard in our modern times, every human became a person within society and every human individual became a person with a personality. So, there is a more complex approach in which human needs to face other categories besides transcendence and so.

Christophe, I know Richard well and he is not the only one to practise as a clinician. I have no problem seeing even the scientific nostologies you reference being employed, although I hold the science involved is weak and based on experimental fallacies, to provide assistance in understanding clients except that their absolute nature can equally cause problems. Tools can be employed as long as they are not seen as anything more than tools. Scissors cut but require manipulation and have no central purpose beyond manipulation.

Nevertheless, the dangers of these scientific (sic) tropes are excessive and should only be used with great caution. Psychiatry, from which such ideas are taken, concentrates on archetypes as genuine personality schema. They are not.

Stanley Wilkin I am in full agreement with you that tools should never be seen or used as anything more than tools, and that the archetypes and classifications given by scientific nosologies should not be taken as genuine reflections of the entire personality. I had primarily intended to argue that the nosologies can be used, but only as a means to an end rather than an end in itself—an assertion to which you seem to agree. Thank you for clarifying that you are already in acquaintance with Richard—I had not known this before. I apologize if I had offended you by unintentionally implying that you didn't have any experience as a clinical practitioner—what I had meant to say wasn't so much that you didn't have such experience, but more so that while Richard was speaking from a background of traditional clinical practice, thus concerned more with the applications of clinical theory to social problems than with questioning common clinical theory, you and I were speaking from a perspective of those who wish to critique the traditional clinical model and question its underlying assumptions. I think it is trained and experienced clinicians themselves who most often take such a perspective, but it is nevertheless a different background than those who simply speak from the background of conventional knowledge. I hope that this helps you to understand what I had meant better and that it doesn't come across as presumptuous as my earlier comment (accidentally) did.

Reinaldo Barbero I understand what you mean to say—for Rogerian psychology and other so-called "Humanistic" approaches to psychology to use such a term to describe their own perspective would seem odd to those who believe that all of psychology studies human beings, and could therefore all be termed "Humanistic." However, from my understanding of "Humanistic" and other related approaches to psychology, the idea isn't so much that these approaches study "human beings" more so than other disciplines within psychology, but rather that they study the human being as a holistic totality rather than focusing on certain, specific aspects of human nature. In other words, Humanistic psychologists would agree with you that social, historical, zoological, ethological, and even thermodynamic studies all concern the understanding of human beings, but they would argue that focusing solely on one of these factors would fail to understand the human being as a whole. Therefore, I think that they do actually give a definition of what it means to be "human"—it essentially means to be the unified totality of all topics of study conducted on them so far which cannot be holistically understood by a focus on only one of these topics. As for your argument that there is a more "complex approach" in which categories other than "transcendence" need to be focused on, then, Humanistic psychologists would be in agreement with you—humans aren't just transcendence but are also all of that which they transcend as well. We simply focus on such topics as transcendence and subjectivity more often than other psychologists because we believe that these are the aspects of humanity that have been given less consideration in the psychological literature so far, and which need to be given the same amount of consideration as other topics before psychology can proceed in understanding humanity.

Christopher, no need to apologise. I do not stress my clinical background. I also teach psychology and mark exam papers on psychology and sociology. Yes, my intention is to critique as so many of my clients discussed their psychiatric treatment differently- no doubt- to their doctors. I have since collected an immense number of case studies that contradict the claims of psychiatry.

My wider education and experience help in judging these matters. I have quals. in classics and psychotherapy.

Stanley Wilkin Good to hear that my words were not too presumptuous.

Indeed, the psychiatric/medical model rests almost exclusively on biological factors in psychology, which is at odds with the more holistic approach of Rogers. Likewise, it also tends to focus on psychologically "disordered" persons rather exclusively, and doesn't offer much of a focus on how exactly to approach those who are not psychologically "disordered" per se, but still rely on psychological counseling as a source of well-being in their lives. It is rather evident that psychiatry has had a bit too much of a parochial vision of humanity so far, and so we must now begin moving beyond the mere psychiatric model. For me, this doesn't necessarily mean dispensing with the psychiatric approach entirely, for I do believe that it still has its own pieces to offer even if it is somewhat narrow when taken alone. Some people disagree with me on this point, which is not unfair of them, as they have very valid reasons for opposing the psychiatric model as much as they do; however, I generally take the position that a truly holistic perspective of humanity must exclude neither the traditional views of humanity nor the more emergent ones, allowing neither to dominate over the other.

Would anyone else like to weigh in on this discussion?

i have written histories on psychiatry, some of which is on RG. One of my points concerns the enormous power it has acquired, its tendency towards normalysing concepts that have now become commonplace and their belief in the effects of their drugs, which seem not to jell in any way with their real effects. in the past, I always insisted that clients come off drugs on the basis that it might be the drugs causing their problems.

Stanley Wilkin Indeed, what seems to be the greatest flaw in the psychiatric model is precisely this over reliance on the use of drug therapy. What many people, laypeople and psychiatrists alike, seem to me to misunderstand about drug therapy is that it often doesn't truly counteract the main roots of psychological dilemmas themselves—it only eases the difficulties of these dilemmas to a point in which they can be better reached by a therapist and do not find themselves slipping as easily into a catastrophic frame of mind which hinders their motivation to seek better well-being. Because of this, I would say that drug therapies can be used as a temporary assistance in working on the problem, but never as the solution to the problem in and of itself. Once again, I would be hesitant to dispense with drug therapy entirely (one could say that this runs the risk of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater"), but I would be in full agreement that drug therapy should not be used in too long-term of a way, and that at some point a client should always eventually come off of their drug treatment in order to begin facing their problems more directly, thus finding a more permanent solution. Otherwise, a client can easily develop a sort of dependency on the drug that can even dangerously approach an addiction of sorts—they can no longer feel happy or in a state of well-being without it.

I apologize if anyone happens to be seeing my last response more than once—I am currently having some connection issues at my home which have been causing strange things to happen as of late.

Christopher, I absolutely cannot agree with you about the use of drugs and fear you may be regurgitating the medical viewpoint. Let me give you two examples among the case studies I have collected:

A psychiatrist prescribed sleeping tablets by his peers when his first child interrupted his sleep. After a few years he tried to give up but found himself going 'mad'. He was prescribed anti-depressives and told that psychotropic drugs were not addictive. He was on them for a length of time, tried to come off but tried to commit suicide and landed up in a mental hospital.

A young girl of 15 with abusive parents who went into a hospital to get away from them. Was prescribed psychotropic drugs. When she left the hospital a month later, no longer taking the drugs, she exhibited bizarre behaviour (caused by the drugs), was taken back to hospital and labelled psychotic.

On both occasions the doctors evidenced no understanding of the effects of their drugs and therefore still freely prescribe them, even to children under 6. There is considerable evidence for the harm to childrens' brains occasioned by this behaviour.

Christopher, added>

psychiatric drugs are eperimented with on rodents. Their effectiveness in parts of the rat or mice brain is effectively noted, especially on SSRIs. These determinants are extrapolated onto human usage and seen as effecting human brains the same implausible way. For example, a mouse or rat expresses, according to the science (sic), depression when their tails go rigid. So, of course, do human beings.

Gene expression of human brains vastly outstrips other animals, even chimpanzees. See my Hu (mice) and Hu (man). The efficacy of drugs is down to the views of psychiatrists (see Joanna Moncrieff) alone. It is rather like someone battering your mother with a spade, telling you and her it is an effective cure for headache, pointing to the bruised and bloody body before them and saying:

'See, a cure.'

You are meant to take their word for it and doubt the evidence of your own senses.

Stanley Wilkin Thank you for providing these examples. Evidently, we take a somewhat different approach to the psychiatric/medical model, which I have no qualms over—I think that the reasons for your reluctance to accept the ideas expressed by this model are just as valid as the reasons for my hesitance in throwing the model out entirely. However, it also seems to me that our approaches to this model are essentially rooted in the same distrust of purely medical models of psychological illness and a recognition of the necessity for moving beyond these models to more holistic approaches. Thus I think that we are, in essence, fundamentally in agreement.

One thing that I am curious to hear is whether or not Richard Kensinger has any more comments on this dialogue. Would you happen to have anything further to add? Have any other comments arisen to you after witnessing the discussion that Dr. Wilkin and I have had so far? If so, I would love to hear them and discuss them further.

I indeed have deep concerns on the medical model, which I have researched for many years.

I will not pursue it here as I have written about my concerns elsewhere at length, but one of my avenues of research took me into the records of early western hospitals (1920s and 1930s) where I discovered that the efficacy of treatments had been fabricated. This was specifically for shock therapy and lobotomy. Fabrication of course occurs daily where drug treatments are concerned.