Searching for root causes
rationalpsychiatry.substack.com
Searching for root causes
Deep down, my doubts about psychodynamic theory began to grow. I kept asking myself, “Why would understanding what caused a problem solve the problem? Doesn’t the patient have to do something different in the here and now?”
Barry Michels • Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression & Unleash Your Soul's Potential
So if there is a symptom, the message is that there is usually some experience that caused or is contributing to it.
Francine Shapiro • Getting Past Your Past
Psychology was focused on measurable, outward behavior then. I thought to myself: That’s not what I want to understand about my thoughts. What I want to know is: Why do they come, where do they come from, and why do they persist even if they interfere with attention to the here and now?
Tim Vernimmen • The science of a wandering mind
It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanat
... See moreMarc Fisher • Capitalist Realism
Cognitive causes are ontologically distinct from evolutionary causes. They are made out of a different kind of stuff. Cognitive causes are made of neurons. Evolutionary causes are made of ancestors.
Eliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality
The reason that structural explanations are so important is that only they address the underlying causes of behavior at a level at which patterns of behavior can be changed.