All right wow you have your radio dial up because I Hello out there and welcome to yet another episode of because I said so the only podcast on the entire world wide web where you will hear the truth about psychology. The Truth About children and the truth about child rearing or zit is called these days parenting. I'm your host heretic psychologist and best selling author John Rosemond. My motto. For those of you who are joining us for the first time as a quote from one of Hollywood's most lovable villains, Headley, Lamar. My mind is a raging torrent flooded with rivulets of thought, cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. Yes, yes, that's Headley, and that's sometimes me as well. If you become a regular listener, you will come to understand and appreciate the bond that exists between the Headley and myself. And with that, here we go again, down the road of political psychological and parenting in correctness. And by the way, it is not my aim to offend. But sooner or later, there's a good chance you will be. So a friend of mine tells the story of being at a social gathering, setting with a group of maybe 10 people who were civilly discussing some controversial subject, when suddenly one of the members of the group became belligerent, and then he became threatening, and when his wife tried to calm him down, he pushed her away from him got up and stormed out of the room yelling various rude words and phrases at the top of his lungs. His wife immediately turned to the group and apologized for him. She explained that he had bipolar disorder, and was overdue for having his medication changed or adjusted or whatever. And everyone in the group began making according to my friends, sympathetic remarks, like Oh, that's too bad. And yeah, I have a cousin who's bipolar and he has these reps so regular episodes of blowing his top at minor things. Everyone in the group said some things sympathetic except my friend that is, who said I am no psychiatrists, but from what I just saw your husband is nothing but a jerk. Except he said something other than jerk use your imagination. My friends story got me thinking first. My friend was absolutely correct. The rude fellow in question doesn't have a neurological or biochemical condition known as bipolar disorder. That suppose it neuro chemical condition cannot be scientifically verified. That's right, bipolar disorder. It cannot be and has never been scientifically verified hold that thought all that can be verified. And the verification in question is a function of social consensus only. Is that said fellow does not at times exercise proper control over his temper? Concerning the psychiatric use, so the very slippery word have, as in I have bipolar disorder. No psychiatric diagnosis has any scientific validity therefore, one cannot have a psychiatric diagnosis. Let me say that again because I really want you to understand this. No psychiatric diagnosis has any scientific or medical validity none zero. Therefore, one cannot have Have a psychiatric diagnosis whatever it might be, one can be prone to episodes of depression say, but one cannot have depression. One can be prone to episodes of debilitating anxiety, but it is impossible for a person to have an anxiety disorder, one can be a rude antisocial jerk at times, but one cannot have bipolar disorder have is a word that should be reserved for physiological conditions that can be scientifically verified. So, for example, one can have leukemia, in the sense of harboring in one's bloodstream certain measurable physiological abnormalities. Likewise, a person's body can harbor measurable quantifiable diseases of the kidneys, heart, lungs, pancreas, and so on. Because they are quantifiable because they can be seen with microscopes or various scanning devices or detected with blood screens. It is accurate to say that people have those diseases they inhabit their bodies, but there is no such thing as having bipolar disorder to use that as our present example. As is the case with every psychiatric diagnosis. The term bipolar disorder lacks any medical or scientific validity. It's a label nothing more a labels psychiatrists and psychologists give to a certain grouping of behavioral characteristics. Let's take narcissism for example. There's no such thing as having narcissism. Narcissism is a name given to a set of personality characteristics. There is no narcissism, Gene, no narcissism, chemical imbalance in the brain. No narcissism anomaly in the brain or central nervous system. No narcissism tumor or Legion. Narcissism is not a disease. Likewise, what is called a bipolar disorder lacks any objective evidence that would qualify it as a disease. So when psychiatrists say that people who exhibit by polar personality characteristics have biochemical imbalances of one sort or another, I read that sort of garbage coming from psychiatrists and psychologists all the time. They are lying through their teeth. And furthermore, they absolutely know they're lying through their teeth, explanations of that sort given by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals for antisocial or dysfunctional behavior patterns of one sort or another, are fabrications. By which I mean they have zero basis in truth. The psychiatrists and psychologists in question. If asked to prove the existence of a biochemical imbalance, and a person's central nervous system can't come up with any evidence that would prove that contention, none zero. Like I said, bipolar disorder, like all psychiatric diagnoses, is a label nothing more given to a set of behavioral characteristics, period. What that means is people who've been told by psychiatrists and psychologists that they have bipolar disorder or merely disgruntled unhappy people who sometimes act like jerks. I don't mean to offend anybody with that, but that's the truth. Now, what we're talking about when we're talking about people whom psychiatrists and psychologists say have have bipolar disorder. They are merely disgruntled, unhappy people who sometimes act like jerks. Like the fellow in my friends story, they have a habit of becoming rude, crude and disruptively, antisocial when the circumstances of their lives don't suit them. So let's go through the typical diagnostic scenario. Don't hang up on me yet folks. A person who has a habit of letting fly with disruptive antisocial behavior on a fairly regular basis, which is what a habit is. This persuaded by someone his wife may be to see a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist tells him after a 15 to 30 minute interview, during which mind you said psychiatrists performs no physical examination, he sits across the room from the fellow in question. He doesn't stick a hypodermic needle into the guy's brain and drought brain fluids, for example. Nonetheless, the psychiatrist after a 30 minute interview conducted with the two people sitting across the room from each other, having no physical contact, tells the person he has has bipolar disorder, which the psychiatrists claims is caused by a biochemical imbalance in the central nervous system that can be successfully treated with a drug that costs $25 for a daily dose. So the person in question goes through his local pharmacy and gets his prescription filled and begins taking the drug. And two weeks later, he tells psychiatrists, he feels a lot better and has an AD of bipolar eruptions since his last visit. Great. Six months later, he's still taking the drug and it hasn't had a bipolar eruption in six months. Great. A year later, still no bipolar eruptions and so on. Now, here's the question. Does the fact that the fellow in question has had no bipolar episodes since he began taking the drug? I mean, he really and truly does have a biochemical imbalance in his central nervous system that the drug is controlling it let me repeat that because this, this is the the the crux of the matter. Does the fact that the fellow in question, has had no bipolar episode since he began taking the drug in question, mean, he really and truly does have a biochemical imbalance in his central nervous system that the drug is controlling? No, it does not. It's simply confirms what every psychiatrists knows. To wit, the fellows experience merely confirms that the placebo effect is real, and very powerful. Here's a fact folks it is a fact. Capital letters F. A, C T fact, it is a fact that no psychiatric drug now one of them has reliably outperformed a placebo in controlled clinical trials. So in fact, psychiatric drugs work no better than placebos, which means that psychiatric drugs are essentially placebos. But make no mistake about it placebos work? Well, let me be more specific. This placebo effect is very real, and very powerful concerning psychiatric conditions only. So placebos work on people who are depressed. They work on people who are anxious. They work on people who have regular antisocial outbursts. But placebos do not work on verifiable physical diseases. Placebos don't work on cancer, for example. They don't work to lower cholesterol. They don't work on acne. or bunions or sciatica. Placebos only work on psychiatric conditions and even then, not always. That is why the Food and Drug Administration when determining whether to approve a psychiatric drug like Ritalin, Xanax, whatever, uses a completely different standard than the standard they use when they're going through the process of determining whether to approve a drug designed to treat a verifiable physiological disorder like leukemia, or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or whatever. If the Food and Drug Administration employed the same standard, across the board, on both drugs designed to treat psychiatric conditions, and drugs designed to treat verifiable biological disorders, no psychiatric drug would be able to obtain F D A approval. And in fact, the FDA lowers the bar and considerably so when it comes to psychiatric drugs, again, psychiatric drugs and what I'm about to say applies to all of them don't reliably outperform placebos and controlled clinical trials. They're known as double blind clinical trials. People who are taking these drugs for depression, anxiety, bipolar episodes, and so on may as well be taking placebos on average, not in every instance, mind you, but on average, they would obtain pretty much the same results. Ah, but it's illegal for physicians to prescribe placebos. So the people in question end up taking psychiatric drugs, which differ from placebos in two significant ways. They are much more expensive than placebos. And second, unlike placebos, they present the risk of dangerous side effects. So, the fellow who blew his top during an otherwise civil discussion of a controversial subject is according to his psychiatrists, not a jerk. He's got bipolar disorder, and he's not taking a sugar pill. He's taking some expensive psychiatric drug and when he blows his stack, and his wife, bless her tells the group that he has bipolar disorder and needs to have his medication adjusted. Everyone except my friend is sympathetic. That's what psychiatric diagnoses do. They turn people into victims take the following questions that are being told by a psychiatrist and he has no excuse for his emotional outbursts. He's grown man, he should get it together. He's told by a psychiatrist that he has an excuse specifically that the chemicals in his brain are out of whack. Now mind you, the psychiatrist who tells him this has never done a physical examination to the guy or had one ordered. He just tells the guy you got chemicals in your brain that are out of whack. And the psychiatrist then prescribes a medication that has no reliable that has never reliably outperformed placebos in controlled clinical trials. And from that point on, if the fellow behaves in some boorish and antisocial manner, it's because his medication needs to be changed or adjusted that all that's all. In other words, the fellow in question from that point on has no reason to try and become a better person. From that point on how he acts is completely a matter of whether his make medications working or needs to be adjusted or not. His diagnosis absolves him of personal responsibility which has to say his diagnosis denies him the right to accept person personal responsibility for his behavior. So Right. When it comes to children, the diagnoses they are given the big one being Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, absolve their parents of responsibility. Let me be clear on what I'm saying here, folks. It is better for parents to hear your child is behaving the way he is behaving, because you have not to this point disciplined him properly than it is for them to hear what they are almost 100% likely to hear from mental health professionals, which is, Oh, you did nothing to cause your child's problems, his problems stem from something inside of him that he brought into the world with him. Why is it better for parents to hear that they have been the primary agents where their kids behavior problems are concerned? Because if they're willing to accept that they are the primary agents for their children's problems, that means they have the power to solve those same problems. In fact, psychological diagnoses like ADHD, and psychiatric medications like Ritalin just empower parents, they cause parents to become dependent on the mental health, pharmaceutical industry. Not good. What I'm saying is that the relationship between parents whose kids have received psychiatric diagnoses, all of which are scientifically unverifiable, and whose kids are taking psychiatric medicines, none of which have reliably outperformed placebos is a relationship of pathological codependency. So, I set all of this at a conference I was conducting in Missouri a few years ago, a few years back 20 years or so ago, during the question and answer part of the presentation, a fellow stood and told the audience he had been during his career director of research for a major pharmaceutical company. So I sort of cringed, you know, I thought he was going to tell everyone that everything I'd said was wrong. Instead, he told the audience that everything I had said was absolutely 100%. Correct. What John has just told you, he said, is the dirty little secret of the pharmaceutical industry. On another occasion, I said the same stuff to an audience in Texas. Afterwards, a psychiatrist came up to me and told me that psychiatrists were fully aware of the truth of everything I had said, and that they regularly discussed this stuff. When I got together, private, the problem, John, he said, with a straight face, is that our standards of living depend on people believing it, believing that what we tell them is true. When most of it isn't proven, and probably never will be. Wow, what does it feel like? I wonder when your entire career is built on falsehoods? And you know, it's built on falsehoods. And you keep it right on telling your clients the falsehoods because you have too much at stake financially to do otherwise. Now, what does that feel like? So another story is psychiatrist who's on staff at a mega church in the South. I won't be any more specific than that. One sent me an email in which he tried to justify the falsehoods in question. So I wrote him back and offered to come to his church on my own dime, and debate him in front of his congregation. Okay, so I write him back and I say, look, how about this? I'll come to your church on my dime and debate you in front of your congregation concerning these issues. He never wrote me back. I can't blame him. If I was him, I wouldn't want to debate me either. Ever since I discovered the truth about the psychiatric diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, again, commonly called ADHD, this was back in the 1980s. Good number of mental health professionals have written me telling me how wrong I am. They even use terms like you're dangerous, John. I have simply said them back letter e mail offering to debate them on, again my dime at a venue of their choosing. My only condition being that I'm able to invite national media to the debate. Okay, that I have written that letter or that email several dozens of times, never once. Have I heard back from any of these folks, again, I don't blame them. They don't want to be exposed for the charlatans that they are. The ethical standards of my profession. psychologies stipulate that a psychologist is not to misinformed the public about any psychological matter. My licensing board the North Carolina psychology board knows full well what I say publicly about the falsehoods of psychological diagnoses, psychological treatments and psychiatric medications. After all, I've been saying this stuff for 40 years trying to get people to listen as my board ever sent me a letter demanding that I stopped saying these things. Nope. And they're not going to because they know that if they hold me up in front of one of their bogus inquisitions, and try to take my license to practice psychology away from me, I'm going to sue them. And they will have to defend themselves in open court, and they don't walk back. No way. Do they want any of what I've told you today to go public? No way. Okay. So that wraps today's podcast, the one and only podcast on the entire world wide web, where you will hear the truth about psychology, children and child rearing currently called parenting. The name of the podcast is because I said so and I'm your host John Rosemond. If you enjoy listening, I encourage you to check out my weekly substack which you can find on substack.com. Until next time, keep on rockin in the free world people. Rock and roll is good for the soul.
