Dear Mr Korg,
 
Fair enough, and thank you for your reply, but I suppose what concerned me
was that there might in your remarks have been an unstated bias in favour
of psychiatry and against psychology and psychotherapy. This latter does
indeed seem evident in your reply to Mr Borda where you say:
 
As I'm sure
you know, a psychiatrist, after taking his MD, spends several years
interning and specializing in his specialty before he is licensed to
practice. Of course, there are all sorts of "therapists" with Ph D.
degrees in psychology (or less) who run around the landscape trying to
make people feel better.
 
I suppose I'd like to know why you think the interning and specializing
done by psychiatrists makes their treatment preferable to qualified
psychologists 'who run around' etc. Surely they do different things,
according to their training, and surely there is a clear bias against
psychology in your remarks here. Many would think that psychiatrists, while
good at diagnosing and treating chemical imbalances requiring drug
treatment, are far worse than psychologists at treating behavioural
problems through counselling - psychoanalysis remaining the treatment of
choice for deep-rooted personality disorders.
 
Sincerely,
 
Richard Read.
 
 
>Dear Mr. Read:
>        I don't know what you have made of my "tone," but I was simply
>warning that competent psychiatric diagnoses should be made only by those
>trained to do it. Note the various and differing speculations of the
>postings that followed Mr. Redman's comment.
 
 
 
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Dr Richard Read                            Email [log in to unmask]
Senior Lecturer
School of Architecture and Fine Arts
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands WA 6009                        Tel +61 8 9380 2140
Australia                               Fax 8 9380 1082