check out this video

[Anonymous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq-7uvVOoyk

Interesting when thinking about 4-profit TBS.

[Ursus]

From a link in the "more info" section of the above clip; color emphasis mine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing

Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness and particularly the experience of psychosis. He is noted for his views, influenced by existential philosophy, on the causes and treatment of mental illness, which went against the psychiatric orthodoxy of the time by taking the expressions or communications of the individual patient or client as representing valid descriptions of lived experience or reality rather than as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. He is often associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, although, like many of his contemporaries also critical of psychiatry, he himself rejected this label. He made a significant contribution to the ethics of psychology.

...In 1956, at the invitation of John ("Jock") D. Sutherland, Laing went on to train on a grant at the Tavistock Clinic in London, widely known as a centre for the study and practice of psychotherapy (particularly psychoanalysis). At this time, he was associated with John Bowlby, D. W. Winnicott and Charles Rycroft. He remained at the Tavistock Institute until 1964. [3]

In 1965, Laing and a group of colleagues created the Philadelphia Association and started a psychiatric community project at Kingsley Hall, where patients and therapists lived together. [4] The Norwegian author Axel Jensen got to know Laing at this time. They became close friends and Laing often visited Axel Jensen onboard his ship, Shanti Devi, in Stockholm...

<snip snip>

Influence

...Laing's most enduring and practically beneficial contribution to mental health, however, is probably his co-founding and chairmanship in 1965 of the Philadelphia Association [9] and the wider movement of therapeutic communities, adopted in more effective and less confrontational psychiatric settings. Other organizations created in a Laingian tradition are the Arbours Association [10] and the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London, where "Existential psychotherapy" [11] is taught.

Laing is often regarded as an important figure in the anti-psychiatry movement, along with David Cooper. However, like many of his contemporaries, labeling him as "anti-psychiatry" is a caricature of his stated views. Laing never denied the value of treating mental distress, but simply wanted to challenge the core values of contemporary psychiatry which considered (and some would say still considers) mental illness as primarily a biological phenomenon of no intrinsic value...

Tavistock was where the Northfield Experiments occurred, which are the earliest reference to intentional therapeutic communities I have found (the first one was in 1939). Their purpose was to get soldiers on psych leave in a military psych hospital to get their act together and get back onto the battlefield (as opposed to going home).

R.D.Laing's intentions appear a bit more humanistic, but the central modus operandi of TCs was still central to his approach. The Philadelphia Association (UK) still exists; Kingsley Hall was one of about 20 TCs that they have run over the years.

He had some interesting things to say about family politics, particularly in Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964), although his "wisdom" in this arena apparently did not translate into the actual living of it. "Laing fathered six sons and four daughters by four women. His son Adrian, speaking in 2008 said, [7] 'It was ironic that my father became well-known as a family psychiatrist, when, in the meantime, he had nothing to do with his own family.'"

Existential psychotherapy and the like undoubtedly contributed to Werner Erhard's approach to LGAT "philosophy" in est/The Forum/Landmark Education, however superficial the interpretation was. Apparently, clichés gleaned from Jean Paul Sartre are even used at Hyde School, judging by the speech of a recent alumnus.

All in all, I would have to say this: it takes all kinds to make a world, and the extreme introverts among us don't do very well in any kind of TC, regardless of how "kindly" it is run. It has something to do with the inherent dynamic of it being a GROUP. This simple fact, which has nothing to do with the kind of group or it's philosophy, is a real blind spot for TC apologists and adherents.

[Ursus]

Wiki entry on the experiment discussed in the OP's YouTube clip:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by David Rosenhan in 1972. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places."[1]

Rosenhan's study consisted of two parts. The first involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients," who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. The second involved asking staff at a psychiatric hospital to detect non-existent "fake" patients. In the first case hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, in the second the staff falsely identified large numbers of genuine patients as impostors. The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.

The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of depersonalization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities.

The pseudopatient experiment

For the purposes of the study, eight "pseudopatients" (associates of Rosenhan selected to be a group of varied and healthy individuals) attempted to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals. During psychiatric assessment they claimed to be hearing voices that were often unclear, but which seemed to pronounce the words "empty," "hollow" and "thud." No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed, and apart from giving false names and employment details, further biographical details were truthfully reported. If admitted, the pseudopatients were asked to "act normally," report that they felt fine and no longer heard voices.

The pseudopatients were: a psychology graduate student in his twenties, three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife. None had a history of mental illness. If admitted, they were to act normally and not display any obvious psychopathology. Subjects were to remain as inpatients until they were discharged by the staff at their hospitals, who were not privy to the experiment and believed the subjects to be real psychiatric patients.

All eight were admitted, seven with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the last with bipolar disorder. Even after admission, none of the pseudopatients were identified as imposters by the hospital staff, although other psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. In the first three hospitalizations notes remarks made by patients to pseudopatients were kept and 35 of the total of 118 patients expressed a suspicion that the pseudopatients were sane. All of the pseudopatients were discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia "in remission." Their stays ranged from 7 to 52 days and the average was 19 days.

Hospital notes indicated that staff interpreted much of the pseudopatient's behaviour in terms of mental illness. For example, one observer, apparently oblivious to the irony, labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. In contrast, actual patients would accuse them of being researchers or journalists based entirely on the same writing behavior.

The non-existent impostor experiment

For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor. Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients and all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were genuine patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one". Studies by others found similarly problematic diagnostic results.

Related experiments

Maurice K. Temerlin split 25 psychiatrists into two groups and had them listen to an actor portraying a character of normal mental health. One group was told that the actor "was a very interesting man because he looked neurotic, but actually was quite psychotic" while the other was told nothing. Sixty percent of the former group diagnosed psychoses, most often schizophrenia, while none of the control group did so.[2]

Loring and Powell gave 290 psychiatrists a transcript of a patient interview and told half of them that the patients were black and the other half white; they concluded of the results that "Clinicians appear to ascribe violence, suspiciousness, and dangerousness to black clients even though the case studies are the same as the case studies for the white clients".[3]

Impact

Rosenhan published his findings in Science, criticizing the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and the disempowering and demeaning nature of patient care experienced by the associates in the study. His article generated an explosion of controversy.

Many defended psychiatry, arguing that psychiatric diagnosis must rely heavily on the patient's own report of their experiences. Hence, mis-diagnosis in the presence of fake symptoms no more demonstrates problems with psychiatric diagnosis than would lying about other medical symptoms.

References

   1. ^ On being sane in insane places, Science. 1973 Jan 19;179(70):250-8
   2. ^ The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice
   3. ^ Loring M, Powell B. Gender, race, and DSM-III: a study of the objectivity of psychiatric diagnostic behavior. J Health Soc Behav. 1988 Mar;29(1):1–22. PMID 3367027

    * Rosenhan, D.L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 70, pp. 250-8.
    * Spitzer, R.L. (1975). On pseudoscience in science, logic in remission, and psychiatric diagnosis: a critique of Rosenhan's "On being sane in insane places". Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84, 5, pp. 442-52.
    * Slater, Lauren (2004). Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. W._W._Norton, 64-94. ISBN 0-393-05095-5