The History of Psychiatry

Let me preface this post with two remarks.
1) this is in response to a post on the JK about Tom Cruise's controversial interview on the Today Show with Matt Lauer.

2) Tom, I'm a fan of your movies. I like them a lot. I like Katie Holmes, and I hope that despite what everyone else says or seems to think) that the two of you are in love and will live happily ever after. I'm quite serious about this.

But the comments you have made on the Today Show to Matt Lauer, berating and belittling him, some might even say trying to bully, because he "doesn't know the history of psychiatry, and [you] do," are, quite simply, absurd. First of all, I doubt that this is true since you didn't attend college. I suppose that you could have studied it on your own, but outside of an academic environment, at the risk of coming off as an elitist intellectual snob, your studies are liable to be biased and incomplete. You seem to misunderstand what history is, and the limitations of this kind of knowledge--the JK details this nicely.

My point is this--even if we set all of this aside and accept that you have become schooled in the history of psychiatry, it doesn't matter. You could be a complete expert in Freud, his practices and his publications. You could have studied the history of the asylum, how "lunaticks" were treated back in the day, metods for dealing with hysterics, etc. None of that is at all relevant to current psychiatric practices, treatments, or diagnoses. If you don't have a medical degree, and you don't, then you have no authority in this arena.

Furthermore, someone should point out to Mr. Cruise that all drugs are not created equal. Ther is a huge qualitative difference between prescription medication and illegal street-drugs. Mr. Cruise seems to assume that "Say No to Drugs" means, say no to all drugs. In other words, he equates heroin with ritalin, methamphetamines with anti-depressants. Yes, anti-depressants and ritalin are over-prescribed in the US, but there are certain instances when they have provided much needed relief.