Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you had to look at a piece of writing and step back and ask whether the author was telling the whole truth? If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he’s writing about this subject at all.
It seems to me that The Last Psychiatrist makes up theories about what people really mean according to his mental habits. Is there any way of checking his claims?
What I’ve gotten out of reading TLP is not detailed psychological theories so much as suggestions for where to look for hypotheses about why people do what they do, e.g. hypotheses focused on preserving a particular self-image. If I find that looking for such hypotheses helps me predict what people do in the future better than looking for other types of hypotheses, that might be considered evidence that TLP’s point of view is a fruitful one.
-- Paul Graham
— Doug Henwood
This one is excellent! Thankyou satt! (Almost disappointing that it was ‘wasted’ as a mere reply.)
This is one lesson I think The Last Psychiatrist is good at teaching.
It seems to me that The Last Psychiatrist makes up theories about what people really mean according to his mental habits. Is there any way of checking his claims?
What I’ve gotten out of reading TLP is not detailed psychological theories so much as suggestions for where to look for hypotheses about why people do what they do, e.g. hypotheses focused on preserving a particular self-image. If I find that looking for such hypotheses helps me predict what people do in the future better than looking for other types of hypotheses, that might be considered evidence that TLP’s point of view is a fruitful one.