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Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, important and essentially true
Review: Margaret Hagen is an experimental psychologist who studies human activities. She is very much aware how little we know or can predict about human behavior, and that we know virtually nothing about how the brain works in everyday life. Clinical psychologists, the people who decide about mental illness, treatment, prison confinement, and guilt and innocence in court do not draw on this meager knowledge. Rather, clinical psychology depends on speculations about human behavior going back to Sigmund Freud, and on the intuition of the psychotherapist. In other words, clinical psychology is neither science, nor does it rely on firm knowledge. She refers to therapy and assessment as ineffective, a waste of time. We, the public, the courts, various welfare and other institutions, desperately need to assess and to know what to do with persons, including children, who are emotionally damaged, who commit criminal acts, or are just generally behaving weirdly. Society has empowered the clinical psychologist to make these determinations, to say who is sick, who is guilty, who needs treatment, and how to dispose of the case. The clinical psychologist has no, absolutely no, no kind, of science to base his or her judgement on. We simply do not know how people will behave in future, nor do we understand the working of the brain. "I have said it before, and I will say it again, there are no reliable valid, mental or 'behavioral' tests for suspected child abuse worth a damn In this mythology, the individual is an impotent pawn of his environment and upbringing, and the family is more likely pathological, dysfunctional, and damaging. In contrast, "the ideas of free will and moral choice have vanished from the landscape." (p. 306) Clinical psychologists confidently assert that memories of trauma may be repressed, and will cheerfully help a client or witness in a criminal case excavate these repressed memories. This, despite that fact there is no evidence of repression anywhere in the large experimental literature on the subject. People can forget, they can avoid thinking of the unpleasant past, they may scramble memory, but they will not repress it. In clinical psychology children are fragile and have to be protected from the court, from their parents, and from unhappy experiences lest they be damaged forever. Yet, what we know about the brain, is that children heal more, better, and faster than adults, are more resilient, and can cope with adversity better than adults. This is a very interesting book, and, I think, essentially true as well.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Have for ANYONE dealing with Psychs and legal battles
Review: SEND A COPY TO EVERY JUDGE IN YOUR COMMUNITY!! Ms. Hagen has done an OUTSTANDING job of exposing the fallacies of the Psych communities involvement in the legal system. If you are attempting to refute bad "science" this book will help you to understand how to go about it. It will not give you step by step instructions but the understanding of how and WHERE the flaws are will help to create questions and arguments against "SNAKE OIL SALESMEN" (might make a good follow up title?). I am buying a box and sending one to ALL of our judges. They ALL need to know what they are dealing with!
Rating:
Summary: A Must Have for ANYONE dealing with Psychs and legal battles
Review: SEND A COPY TO EVERY JUDGE IN YOUR COMMUNITY!! Ms. Hagen has done an OUTSTANDING job of exposing the fallacies of the Psych communities involvement in the legal system. If you are attempting to refute bad "science" this book will help you to understand how to go about it. It will not give you step by step instructions but the understanding of how and WHERE the flaws are will help to create questions and arguments against "SNAKE OIL SALESMEN" (might make a good follow up title?). I am buying a box and sending one to ALL of our judges. They ALL need to know what they are dealing with!
Rating:
Summary: On the Death of Souls ...
Review: The alliance between the psychiatric and legal establishments is a dangerous one that may pose a threat to the civil liberties of everyone in society. The author alleges that much of the standard psychiatric testimony is incoherent and that many of the so-called "experts" are not competent.
R.D. Laing has said: "Doctors in all ages have made fortunes by killing their patients by means of their cures. The difference in psychiatry is that it is the death of the soul." The growing number of victims of psychiatric torture have formed several organizations that provide assistance and solidarity.
It is important to realize that this situation can be changed, that it is not "for anyone's good" to be so treated.
If YOU are a survivor of such experiences, then please believe that you are not alone and there is help available.
Rating:
Summary: On the Death of Souls ...
Review: This astonishing and horrifying book details the corrupt and nefarious practices resulting from the alliance between the psychiatric and legal establishments, together with the threat they pose to the civil liberties of everyone in society. The author demonstrates with overwhelming evidence and unanswerable arguments the incoherence of standard psychiatric testimony and the incompetence of many of the so-called "experts."R.D. Laing has said: "Doctors in all ages have made fortunes by killing their patients by means of their cures. The difference in psychiatry is that it is the death of the soul." The growing number of victims of psychiatric torture have formed several organizations that provide assistance and solidarity. They have developed the slogan: "Psychiatry Kills!" It is important to realize that this situation can be changed, that it is not "for our own good," but (after reading this book) I'd say that it certainly seems to be for the psychiatrists' good. If YOU are a psychiatric survivor, then please believe that you are not alone and there is help available.
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