This piece is a blunderbuss attack on psychoanalysis, invoking past controversies. Oddly, it also turns the brave whistelblowing of a key Tavistock employee (a psychoanalyst!) into an example of collusion with bad practice in the system. However, the GIDS sub-system was at odds with, not consistent with, psychodynamic tradition of the Tavistock, that is one reason why it has been unsustainable in that context, driven by the political economy of the NHS. This obvious fact did not get in the way of the author's argument. By contrast he argues that more scientific psychology can clear matters up, citing Eysenck and the virtues of cogntive behaviour therapy, as a harbinger of scientific rationality. Eysenck was a positivist, Popper was not. His critical rationalism understood science as value laden, whereas Eysenck was naive in this regard. Also Eysenck was part of a professionalisation project as a leader in clinical psychology, but Popper had no such axe to grind. Eyenck was a showman not a scientist-practitioner and his articles are being retracted from many journals for very good reason (reference below). And yet, he was the father of BT/CBT when setting up the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy. CBT itself is a revisionist product. Behaviour therapyy stood for behaviour, yet pragmatics had to allow inner events back into the equation. Yes psychoanalysis is not the only form of human science that morphs over time, with disputation in the ranks. Human science is inherently contested because human systems are open and the ontology of being human has hidden depths inside and outside of us. This scenario means that arguments go on and on in psychological theorising.
The arguments about false memory were touched upon and this is very important, especially as the author posits French as a back up to Eysenck's purported 'distinterested' positivism. But French, sceptic or not, has been complicit in the drift of the policy alignment between the British Psychological Society and the British False Memory Society (see reference below). If the author wants to consider the politics of the false memory debate, fine. But it requires more than the passing allusion in this piece to do it justice.
I finished the piece not being clear whether the author wanted to have a genuine open debate about epistemological and political aspects of mental health work, which are legion. If he does then fine but the problems of the psychoanalytical tradition are no fewer in number than those of the CBT brave new world. As an example, Eysenck was an advocate of conversion therapy for homosexuality. Trans activism has distorted conversion therapy by eliding sexuality and gender identity.
So finally, and repeated for emphasis, it was a psychoanalst who blew the whistle at the Tavistock. As he and other gender critical clinicians are now pointing out, whenever they are allowed, the real conversion therapy is turning healthy child bodies into sterilised ones in an evidence free zone. A core group standing up for exploratory rather then 'affirmative' therapy at GIDS were psychodynamic in orientaiton. They spoke out and many had to leave. Their honourable role is lost in this vendetta piece about Freud.
REFS-
Pilgrim, D. (2022) Verdicts on Hans Eysenck and the fluxing context of British psychology. History of Human Sciences (in press);
Conway, A. and Pilgrim, D. (2022) The Policy Alignment of the British False Memory Society and the British Psychological Society, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 23:2, 165-176,
I am grateful to Dr MacFarlane for his extensive reply. It is very extensive (straying in content beyond what was already a blunderbuss attack on psychoanalysis and linking it to the GIDS debacle). For this reason, in the context of this online exchange, it might create a rabbit hole for any reader fresh to our dialogue, if I dealt with each and every point.
However, consciously or not, Dr MacFarlane does point up two important current policy matters that implicate child protection. The first is whether the GIDS service harmed children, in its rush to 'affirm' gender identities and put many children who cannot vote, give consent to sex or even have a tatoo, onto a biomedical pathway of sterility and loss of sexual functioning in later years. This is a medical scandal and at last it is being debated more openly in the wake of the Cass Report.
The second point is separate and relates to Dr MacFarlane's allusion to the false memory debate, with a favoured partisan champion being Professor Chris French. He was on the advisory board of the British False Memory Society (I think that this has now collapsed here, as it did its version in the USA). Psychologists defending this partisan approach (such as French and the recently deceased Martn Conway and his colleagues) captured the policy position of the British Psychological Society (BPS) after the 1990s, hence me citing the paper I co-authored with Ashley Conway (no relation to MC) on this matter. This is a matter of historical fact, and as a result the policy convergence remains contentious within the BPS, especially from clinicians working with survivors of abuse or those who are survivors themself. It also keeps returning, like a bad penny, in the Royal College of Psychiatristists, where, in my view, it has been dealt with in a more balanced way than in the BPS, but is still unresolved.
The biased focus by both the BPS and the BFMS, on false positives in legal decision making, means that false negatives are systematically ignored. This affords a policy emphasis, which betrays survivors of child sexual abuse by ignoring their collective case. We now have extensive evidence that the latter are under-recognised as traumatised victims of sexual crime in childhood, as the findings of the recent statutory inquiry into historical abuse demonstrated, as did the Childrens Commissioner, whose report indicated a nine-fold under-reporting of child sexual abuse (CSA) in England.
To use a summary from the sociologist Stanley Cohen, there is, to use his phraseology, widespread 'moral stupor' and 'chilling denial' about CSA and we are in a collective complict 'state of denial' about its prevalence and mental health impact. I expanded this case in my book 'Child Sexual Abuse: Moral Panic or State of Denial?' (Routledge, 2018) before the inquiry into historical abuse reported its confirnatory evidence very recently. In some ways the picture is actually worse than I thought, when writing my account.
Thus I am grateful to Dr MacFarlane for discussing both of these matters implicating child protection, even though we clearly have a different perspective on many aspects of each.
This piece is a blunderbuss attack on psychoanalysis, invoking past controversies. Oddly, it also turns the brave whistelblowing of a key Tavistock employee (a psychoanalyst!) into an example of collusion with bad practice in the system. However, the GIDS sub-system was at odds with, not consistent with, psychodynamic tradition of the Tavistock, that is one reason why it has been unsustainable in that context, driven by the political economy of the NHS. This obvious fact did not get in the way of the author's argument. By contrast he argues that more scientific psychology can clear matters up, citing Eysenck and the virtues of cogntive behaviour therapy, as a harbinger of scientific rationality. Eysenck was a positivist, Popper was not. His critical rationalism understood science as value laden, whereas Eysenck was naive in this regard. Also Eysenck was part of a professionalisation project as a leader in clinical psychology, but Popper had no such axe to grind. Eyenck was a showman not a scientist-practitioner and his articles are being retracted from many journals for very good reason (reference below). And yet, he was the father of BT/CBT when setting up the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy. CBT itself is a revisionist product. Behaviour therapyy stood for behaviour, yet pragmatics had to allow inner events back into the equation. Yes psychoanalysis is not the only form of human science that morphs over time, with disputation in the ranks. Human science is inherently contested because human systems are open and the ontology of being human has hidden depths inside and outside of us. This scenario means that arguments go on and on in psychological theorising.
The arguments about false memory were touched upon and this is very important, especially as the author posits French as a back up to Eysenck's purported 'distinterested' positivism. But French, sceptic or not, has been complicit in the drift of the policy alignment between the British Psychological Society and the British False Memory Society (see reference below). If the author wants to consider the politics of the false memory debate, fine. But it requires more than the passing allusion in this piece to do it justice.
I finished the piece not being clear whether the author wanted to have a genuine open debate about epistemological and political aspects of mental health work, which are legion. If he does then fine but the problems of the psychoanalytical tradition are no fewer in number than those of the CBT brave new world. As an example, Eysenck was an advocate of conversion therapy for homosexuality. Trans activism has distorted conversion therapy by eliding sexuality and gender identity.
So finally, and repeated for emphasis, it was a psychoanalst who blew the whistle at the Tavistock. As he and other gender critical clinicians are now pointing out, whenever they are allowed, the real conversion therapy is turning healthy child bodies into sterilised ones in an evidence free zone. A core group standing up for exploratory rather then 'affirmative' therapy at GIDS were psychodynamic in orientaiton. They spoke out and many had to leave. Their honourable role is lost in this vendetta piece about Freud.
REFS-
Pilgrim, D. (2022) Verdicts on Hans Eysenck and the fluxing context of British psychology. History of Human Sciences (in press);
Conway, A. and Pilgrim, D. (2022) The Policy Alignment of the British False Memory Society and the British Psychological Society, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 23:2, 165-176,
I am grateful to Dr MacFarlane for his extensive reply. It is very extensive (straying in content beyond what was already a blunderbuss attack on psychoanalysis and linking it to the GIDS debacle). For this reason, in the context of this online exchange, it might create a rabbit hole for any reader fresh to our dialogue, if I dealt with each and every point.
However, consciously or not, Dr MacFarlane does point up two important current policy matters that implicate child protection. The first is whether the GIDS service harmed children, in its rush to 'affirm' gender identities and put many children who cannot vote, give consent to sex or even have a tatoo, onto a biomedical pathway of sterility and loss of sexual functioning in later years. This is a medical scandal and at last it is being debated more openly in the wake of the Cass Report.
The second point is separate and relates to Dr MacFarlane's allusion to the false memory debate, with a favoured partisan champion being Professor Chris French. He was on the advisory board of the British False Memory Society (I think that this has now collapsed here, as it did its version in the USA). Psychologists defending this partisan approach (such as French and the recently deceased Martn Conway and his colleagues) captured the policy position of the British Psychological Society (BPS) after the 1990s, hence me citing the paper I co-authored with Ashley Conway (no relation to MC) on this matter. This is a matter of historical fact, and as a result the policy convergence remains contentious within the BPS, especially from clinicians working with survivors of abuse or those who are survivors themself. It also keeps returning, like a bad penny, in the Royal College of Psychiatristists, where, in my view, it has been dealt with in a more balanced way than in the BPS, but is still unresolved.
The biased focus by both the BPS and the BFMS, on false positives in legal decision making, means that false negatives are systematically ignored. This affords a policy emphasis, which betrays survivors of child sexual abuse by ignoring their collective case. We now have extensive evidence that the latter are under-recognised as traumatised victims of sexual crime in childhood, as the findings of the recent statutory inquiry into historical abuse demonstrated, as did the Childrens Commissioner, whose report indicated a nine-fold under-reporting of child sexual abuse (CSA) in England.
To use a summary from the sociologist Stanley Cohen, there is, to use his phraseology, widespread 'moral stupor' and 'chilling denial' about CSA and we are in a collective complict 'state of denial' about its prevalence and mental health impact. I expanded this case in my book 'Child Sexual Abuse: Moral Panic or State of Denial?' (Routledge, 2018) before the inquiry into historical abuse reported its confirnatory evidence very recently. In some ways the picture is actually worse than I thought, when writing my account.
Thus I am grateful to Dr MacFarlane for discussing both of these matters implicating child protection, even though we clearly have a different perspective on many aspects of each.