Working on my PhD in psych. Loved Brain on Fire. Thought the Rosenhan study was super interesting when I first read about it in undergrad. Was excited to learn more.

I did not finish this book. I got to chapter Ward 11 after taking a break and decided “I don’t even really like this book. I’m not going to read this.”

I jumped forward to read the chapter on the SCID, which solidified my decision to not finish this book. The author takes issue with the open ended interview style questions and that the assessor didn’t ask how she felt about certain instances— the SCID isn’t psychotherapy. It’s called an interview for a reason. It’s clear to me that the author was so deadest in proving that the field is incorrect based on her experience that she didn’t want to see anything other than that, taking a clearly biased position rooted in her own personal vendetta. Frankly, the author took on a project that she was not qualified to write about beyond her own anecdotal experiences.

I agree that it is a flaw that psychology cannot diagnose medical illnesses— but this is where integrative care models and interdisciplinary teams come in. Psychologists are not trained in medicine and it’s entirely illogical to attempt to prove that psychology is fake because a psychologist cannot diagnose a brain tumor. Psychiatrists have medical degrees but their training is predominantly focused in psychopharmacology. To me, the author’s argument is the equivalent of asking an epidemiologist to diagnose a gastrointestinal cancer.

Not only do I disagree with the conclusions she attempts to draw, but this book was so unorganized with so many pages dedicated to random research that she didn’t want to go to waste. Attempting to parse through this was so dull.