Wrong Diagnosis Quotes

Insanity is everyone expecting you not to fall apart when you find out everything you believed in was a lie.

When he first said my diagnosis, I couldn't believe it. There must be another PTSD than post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought. I have only heard of war veterans who have served on the front lines and seen the horrors of battle being diagnosed with PTSD. I am a Beverly Hills housewife, not a soldier. I can't have PTSD. Well, I was wrong. Housewives can get PTSD, too, and yours, truly did.

It’s funny – you don’t think of doctors getting ill.’ It’s true, and I think it’s part of something bigger: patients don’t actually think of doctors as being human. It’s why they’re so quick to complain if we make a mistake or if we get cross. It’s why they’ll bite our heads off when we finally call them into our over-running clinic room at 7 p.m., not thinking that we also have homes we’d rather be at. But it’s the flip side of not wanting your doctor to be fallible, capable of getting your diagnosis wrong. They don’t want to think of medicine as a subject that anyone on the planet can learn, a career choice their mouth-breathing cousin could have made.

When you get sick you will be surprised by who steps up and who steps away. I can honestly say I did not think this would apply to me. I could not imagine that anyone in my family or circle of friends would not be there for me. Wrong!

In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it’s important to always get a second opinion. While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It’s a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule.

I was, however, a handful. I was overly smart, easily bored, very curious and constantly in motion. Consequently, I got a lot of guidance from adults on how to behave properly. This reined in my more problematic behaviors, but it also made me feel like I was forever in danger of doing something “wrong,” especially when I “wasn’t trying hard enough.

The earth, to man, is an infected planet. The human world wants to hear what is wrong with it. It is satisfied with the diagnosis. It does not want to make effort attempting a basic cure. Man has a stubborn will to circulate poison.

At least when I was an adult, I had a name for what was wrong with me: manic depression. It's easier to make sense of things - even very disturbing things like sexual acting out and suicidality - when there's a big, fat label slapped on top. But as a child, I knew nothing. I had no diagnosis. All I had was a vague and gnawing awareness that I was different from other children, and that different was not good. Different must be kept hidden.

Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation. But public education is not ‘broken.’ Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.

The actual words I used," I said, "were that I followed strict rules to make sure I didn't do anything wrong. It seems like you'd be pretty happy about that, but instead you're yelling at me. This is why I need therapy." "'Happy' is not a son who has to follow rules to keep himself from killing people," she shot back. "'Happy' is not a psychologist telling me that my son is a sociopath. 'Happy' is—" "He said I was a sociopath?" That was kind of cool. I'd always suspected, but it was nice to have an official diagnosis.

When using the medical profession, you must remember that it is influenced by many corporations that may not want your health issues to be fully understood and correctly treated.

The first book that stopped me was for parents dealing with gay children. The introduction was worded like it was intended for readers coping with a late-stage cancer diagnosis. I put the book back on the shelf, wrong side out.

If she'd been bleeding in the street, you would've run to get help. It's the same thing!" "Typical," I could hear you saying back. "The whole point is that I wasn't bleeding in the street . I wasn't dying of cancer. You couldn't take an X-ray and see what was wrngsithme. You couldn't make such an easy diagnosis. You had to guess. And everybody guessed wrong." But the things is, I hadn't even made the guess. I trusted that you knew what you were doing. You were very convincing. And I destroyed you.

We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self. At this point in time there are people who question the validity of the DID diagnosis. The fact is that DID has its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because, as with all psychiatric conditions, a portion of society experiences a cluster of recognizable symptoms that are not better accounted for by any other diagnosis.

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact. But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.

I’ve been told a time or two that I spiral. Zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. One second, I’m perfectly fine, laughing, smiling. The next, I’ve got my hands around someone’s throat, choking the life out of them. There’s probably a name for whatever’s wrong with me, but I’ve got no interest in a diagnosis. I don’t need treatment. Until people stop being ignorant, I’m going to keep on getting pissed. No little mood-stabilizing pill can stop that from happening. But still, sometimes, I can feel it. I feel myself spiraling hard, and falling far, making mountains out of molehills that even I struggle to climb. And today? I’m feeling it. My hands shake. I can hardly see straight.

The USA health care system really sucks!

After many years of using the medical profession, I concluded that it is infested with blatant incompetence.

Ardie wondered if something was wrong with her. Some actual diagnosis. A personality disorder. Something more concrete than just: natural introvert. But, well, to find out, she’d actually have to talk to someone she hardly knew for an extended time period, which was out of the question.

If a doctor has worked through the problem well, there’s a very good chance that one of these possible diagnoses will be right. The rest though, by definition, will be wrong. We are regularly wrong in the pursuit of being right. … The question we are taught to ask ourselves is, if it isn’t that, what else could it be?

In the first sixteen years of my life, my parents took me to at least a dozen so called professionals. Not one of them ever came close to figuring out wheat was wrong with me. In their defense, I will concede that Asperger's did not yet exist as a diagnosis, but autism did, and no one ever mentioned I might have any kind of autistic spectrum disorder. Autism was viewed by many as a much more extreme condition - one where kids never talked and could not take care of themselves. Rather than take a close sympathetic look at me, it proved easier and less controversial for the professionals to say I was just lazy, or angry, or defiant. But none of those words led to a solution to my problem.

In a 2007 cable about Nauru, made public by WikiLeaks, an unnamed U.S. official summed up his government’s analysis of what went wrong on the island: “Nauru simply spent extravagantly, never worrying about tomorrow.” Fair enough, but that diagnosis is hardly unique to Nauru; our entire culture is extravagantly drawing down finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow. For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere - because we can’t see them - will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of whatever mess we have made. And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more “inputs” (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us. We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can’t afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse. At every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing - a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us.

A diagnosis is intimate. It is a conclusion. If it is given after years of uncertainty, it can seem liberating. It affirms that all the worries were not unnecessary, that there was, in fact, something wrong; it proves that your own perception of reality is the right one and that you can be trusted. It can put one at ease. If a diagnosis describes a progressive condition, it can also be a source of unease. It conjures images of the future. It is a road map to a place you don’t want to visit. A diagnosis has its own gravitational field. It can shape identity, like other weighty concepts—gender, sexual orientation. One who has never been diagnosed is free without knowing it. What happens when a diagnosis vanishes suddenly? Something is gone, but it was never there, and that which remains is the same as before.

Like many in their baby boomer generation, they saw doctors as unquestionable experts. You didn’t go to them unless you had a high fever or a bad fall or a wound that needed stitching. In that case, you got a diagnosis, you took medicine or had surgery, and you got better, more or less in that order. But if the doctor told you nothing was wrong, nothing was wrong. My parents believed in the power of Western medicine, and therefore so did I.

Some parents resist the idea of ADD for fear of seeing their children labeled and categorized. They do not like the idea of pinning a medical diagnosis on a child who, except in certain areas of functioning, seems quite well. Such fears are not baseless. Too often ADD seems no more than a judgment that characterizes a child as a problem student, incapable of normal activity. How people use language is quite revealing. People commonly say that this adult or that child “is ADD.” That, indeed, is labeling, identifying the whole person with an area of weakness or impairment. No one is ADD, and no one should be defined or categorized in terms of it or any other particular problem. Recognizing a child’s ADD should be simply a way of understanding that helping him calls for some knowledgeable and creative approaches, not a judgment that there is anything fundamentally or irretrievably wrong with him. This recognition should enable us to support the child in fullfilling his potential, not to further limit him. That even open-minded people may have difficulty coming to terms with this diagnosis is only to be expected. Our usual mode of thinking about illness (or anything else, for that matter) is not comfortable with ambiguity. A patient either has pneumonia or does not; she either has some illness affecting the mind or does not. There is a popular discomfort with any condition of the mind perceived as “abnormal.” But what if illness is not a separate category, if there is no line of distinction between the “healthy” and the “nonheaithy,” if the “abnormality” is just a greater concentration in an individual of disturbed brain processes found in everyone? Then perhaps there are no fixed, immutable brain disorders, and we could all be vulnerable to mental breakdowns or malfunctions under the pressure of stressful circumstances. We could all go crazy. Maybe we already have.

It is very likely an anxiety dream, brought on by your move out of your childhood home and the comfort of the reach of your family’s love and protection.” Gideon reached to stroke her hair soothingly. “I am only surprised it has not happened sooner.” “Are you sure?” Her nervousness was clear, but she was truly relaxing already. “Yes. And so are you. You know everything there is to know about psychology, you tell me what you think.” “But you thought it was this . . . new level of ability.” “And for the first time in a millennium my diagnosis is wrong. I do despise it when such bothersome things occur. Now I shall have to start the ‘No Mistakes’ clock all over again.” Legna giggled at him, which was of course his intention. She swung her arms around his neck, hugging him warmly. “You smell so good,” he murmured against her ear a long minute later. “I smell like sex,” she argued. He nodded, making a loud noise of appreciation as he sniffed and nibbled her neck. “You smell like very good sex,” he amended with a voracious growl and an eager mouth moving over her bare skin with bold appetite. “Gideon!” She squealed as he went straight for her waist, knowing she was ticklish there. The playful flicker of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth drove her mad, and she twisted as she screamed for him to stop. When he tickled her she absolutely could not use her classic escape method. She could barely catch her breath, never mind her concentration.

The women in that ward were simple, ordinary refugee women. They came from villages or very small towns. Even before becoming refugees, they had been poor. They had no education. They had no notion of an outside world where life might be different. They were being treated for various ailments, but in the end, their gender was their ailment. In the first bed, a skinny fourteen-year-old girl lay rolled into her sheets in a state of almost catatonic unresponsiveness, eyes closed, not speaking even in reply to the doctor’s gentle greeting. Her family had brought her to be treated for mental illness, the doctor explained with regret. They had recently married her to a man in his seventies, a wealthy and influential personage by their standards. In their version of things, something had started mysteriously to go wrong with her mind as soon as the marriage was agreed upon – a case of demon possession, her family supposed. When, after repeated beatings, she still failed to cooperate gracefully with her new husband’s sexual demands, he had angrily returned her to her family and ordered them to fix this problem. They had taken the girl to a mullah, who had tried to expel the demon through prayers and by writing Quranic passages on little pieces of paper that had to be dissolved in water and then drunk, but this had brought no improvement, so the mullah had abandoned his diagnosis of demon possession and decided that the girl was sick. The family had brought her to the clinic, to be treated for insanity.

There I was, in black and white. My entire being of weirdness, easily explained with bullet points listed under both “Signs of Adult AD(H)D” and “Signs of Adult Giftedness.” Double trouble. Twice fucked, as I like to say. Getting diagnosed was definitely a mixed blessing for me. On one hand there was a nicely packaged reason for all of the things I felt were wrong with me. On the other hand, it was comparable to a mental-health death sentence. I used to say to my mom, “It shouldn’t be this hard…it isn’t this hard for other people…this isn’t normal.” I used to think I could just fix myself away with my little self-improvement plans. I still do, actually—a different one every week, but getting that diagnosis meant I could do all of the self-improvement plans available in the universe, and I would still come out as messed up as I went in. No improvements for me. Sorry, Charlie. Shit out of luck, my friend. I’ve always felt misunderstood. Though I was never at a loss for friends, I was always told I was weird, which I was totally OK with. Weird

The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patient in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, "what is wrong with me?" They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar a place a name, to know it - on some level - restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure.

Campaign to destigmatize so-called "mental illness" often take a wrong turning here. They try to demonstrate how suffers of some condition have made amazing contributions to the science or the arts. Trying to destigmatize the diagnosis of autism, for example, we read how Einstein and Newton would have received that diagnosis today, and yet made fabulous discoveries in the field of physics. Even if they are acknowledged to have been "different", their worth is still reckoned in terms of how their work has impacted on the world of others. However well-intentioned, such perspectives are hardly judicious, as they make an implicit equation between value and social utility. Taking this step is dangerous, as the moment that human life is defined in terms of utility, the door to stigmatization and segregation is opened. If someone was found to be not useful, what value, then, would their life have? This was in fact exactly the argument of the early-twentieth-century eugenicists who complained for the extermination of the mentally ill. Although no one would admit such aspirations today, we cannot ignore the resurfacing in recent years of a remarkably similar discourse, with its emphasis on social utility, hereditary and genetic vulnerability.

I believe the perception of what people think about DID is I might be crazy, unstable, and low functioning. After my diagnosis, I took a risk by sharing my story with a few friends. It was quite upsetting to lose a long term relationship with a friend because she could not accept my diagnosis. But it spurred me to take action. I wanted people to be informed that anyone can have DID and achieve highly functioning lives. I was successful in a career, I was married with children, and very active in numerous activities. I was highly functioning because I could dissociate the trauma from my life through my alters. Essentially, I survived because of DID. That's not to say I didn't fall down along the way. There were long term therapy visits, and plenty of hospitalizations for depression, medication adjustments, and suicide attempts. After a year, it became evident I was truly a patient with the diagnosis of DID from my therapist and psychiatrist. I had two choices. First, I could accept it and make choices about how I was going to deal with it. My therapist told me when faced with DID, a patient can learn to live with the live with the alters and make them part of one's life. Or, perhaps, the patient would like to have the alters integrate into one person, the host, so there are no more alters. Everyone is different. The patient and the therapist need to decide which is best for the patient. Secondly, the other choice was to resist having alters all together and be miserable, stuck in an existence that would continue to be crippling. Most people with DID are cognizant something is not right with themselves even if they are not properly diagnosed. My therapist was trustworthy, honest, and compassionate. Never for a moment did I believe she would steer me in the wrong direction. With her help and guidance, I chose to learn and understand my disorder. It was a turning point.

In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. Hogarth noted a famous New York City physician renowned for his skill as a diagnostician. The man’s particular specialty was typhoid fever, and he examined patients for it by feeling around their tongues with his hands. Again and again, his testing yielded a positive diagnosis before the patient displayed a single symptom. And over and over, his diagnosis turned out to be correct. As another physician later pointed out, “He was a more productive carrier, using only his hands, than Typhoid Mary.” Repetitive success, it turned out, taught him the worst possible lesson.

We were stereotyped the way many athletes with disabilities or illnesses are, particularly in participatory sports such as biking, running, and triathlon. After a while I could pretty much fill in the thought balloons over these people's heads. "Oh, look at these heroic young people, courageously struggling to get themselves across the finish line, in order to raise money for thier cause. How inspiring!" Don't get me wrong; while we appreciate the good wishes and realized that they were usually genuine, something in that attitude rankled me, and still does. We're athletes, dammit, and we want to be accorded the same respect as other competitors. That's how you treat somebody with illness or disability, in my opinion. Not as a special-needs person, but as a person.

I don't know. It kind of sucks not knowing for sure, because when I explain it to people, they just look at me like I'm making it up. But if someone has a diagnosis and medication? Then it's 'legitimate'. And don't get me wrong, those things are super important for a lot of people. But I feel like associating legitimacy with a formal diagnosis sometimes leaves people behind--people like me, whose families really frown on anything to do with therapy and meds, or people who have found their own ways of coping with it, or people who can't afford it. It doesn't mean they don't still feel what they feel--they just don't have the privilege of being told by someone with a degree what they're allowed to call it. Shouldn't the focus be on what we're feeling rather than what box we can neatly fit ourselves into?

Dr. Noyes. He came, made the examination, and actually showed the widow the diseased aortic valve which had been the material, the “illusory,” cause of death. But now Mrs. Eddy rallied her forces. The doctor’s diagnosis, though confirmed by autopsy, had been wrong. Asa had not died of heart disease, but had been killed by “metaphysical arsenic,” by “mental poison.” Her enemies and his had slain him by telepathic influence. To console herself for her failure to avert the death, and to counteract the effect it might have on the weak-kneed, she gave an interview to a representative of the Post of Boston, and it appeared in that paper two days after the death. Here are some significant extracts: “My husband’s death was caused by malicious mesmerism... I know it was poison that killed him, but not material poison, but mesmeric poison... After a certain amount of mesmeric poison has been administered, it cannot be averted. No power of mind can resist it.

One other thing. And this really matters for readers of this book. According to official Myers–Briggs documents, the test can ‘give you an insight into what kinds of work you might enjoy and be successful doing’. So if you are, like me, classified as ‘INTJ’ (your dominant traits are being introverted, intuitive and having a preference for thinking and judging), the best-fit occupations include management consultant, IT professional and engineer.30 Would a change to one of these careers make me more fulfilled? Unlikely, according to respected US psychologist David Pittenger, because there is ‘no evidence to show a positive relation between MBTI type and success within an occupation…nor is there any data to suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types’. Then why is the MBTI so popular? Its success, he argues, is primarily due to ‘the beguiling nature of the horoscope-like summaries of personality and steady marketing’.31 Personality tests have their uses, even if they do not reveal any scientific ‘truth’ about us. If we are in a state of confusion they can be a great emotional comfort, offering a clear diagnosis of why our current job may not be right, and suggesting others that might suit us better. They also raise interesting hypotheses that aid self-reflection: until I took the MBTI, I had certainly never considered that IT could offer me a bright future (by the way, I apparently have the wrong personality type to be a writer). Yet we should be wary about relying on them as a magic pill that enables us suddenly to hit upon a dream career. That is why wise career counsellors treat such tests with caution, using them as only one of many ways of exploring who you are. Human personality does not neatly reduce into sixteen or any other definitive number of categories: we are far more complex creatures than psychometric tests can ever reveal. And as we will shortly learn, there is compelling evidence that we are much more likely to find fulfilling work by conducting career experiments in the real world than by filling out any number of questionnaires.32

Within this narrative, creation itself is understood as a kind of Temple, a heaven-and-earth duality, where humans function as the “image-bearers” in the cosmic Temple, part of earth yet reflecting the life and love of heaven. This is how creation was designed to function and flourish: under the stewardship of the image-bearers. Humans are called not just to keep certain moral standards in the present and to enjoy God’s presence here and hereafter, but to celebrate, worship, procreate, and take responsibility within the rich, vivid developing life of creation. According to Genesis, that is what humans were made for. The diagnosis of the human plight is then not simply that humans have broken God’s moral law, offending and insulting the Creator, whose image they bear—though that is true as well. This lawbreaking is a symptom of a much more serious disease. Morality is important, but it isn’t the whole story. Called to responsibility and authority within and over the creation, humans have turned their vocation upside down, giving worship and allegiance to forces and powers within creation itself. The name for this is idolatry. The result is slavery and finally death. It isn’t just that humans do wrong things and so incur punishment. This is one element of the larger problem, which isn’t so much about a punishment that might seem almost arbitrary, perhaps even draconian; it is, rather, about direct consequences. When we worship and serve forces within the creation (the creation for which we were supposed to be responsible!), we hand over our power to other forces only too happy to usurp our position. We humans have thus, by abrogating our own vocation, handed our power and authority to nondivine and nonhuman forces, which have then run rampant, spoiling human lives, ravaging the beautiful creation, and doing their best to turn God’s world into a hell (and hence into a place from which people might want to escape). As I indicated earlier, some of these “forces” are familiar (money, sex, power). Some are less familiar in the popular mind, not least the sense of a dark, accusing “power” standing behind all the rest. Called

I pulled up at home and saw Marlboro Man’s truck next to the house. When I walked in the door of our little white house, he was there, sitting on the bench, taking off his boots. “Hey,” he said, leaning back against the wall. “How’re you doing?” “Better,” I replied. “I had a Frosty.” He pulled off his left boot. “What’d you find out?” “Well,” I started. My lip began to quiver. Marlboro Man stood up. “What’s wrong?” he said. “I’m p…” My lip quivered even more, making it difficult to speak. “I’m pregnant!” I cried. The tears started rolling. “What?” he exclaimed, moving toward me. “Really?” All I could do was nod. The lump in my throat was too big for me to talk. “Oh, wow.” He moved in, hugging me close. I guess he hadn’t expected it either. I just stood there and cried silently. For our past…for our future. For my nausea and my fatigue. For receiving a diagnosis. As for Marlboro Man, he just stood there and held me as he always had when I’d broken into unanticipated crying attacks, all the while trying his best not to explode with excitement over the fact that his baby was growing in my belly.

If two people with no symptoms in common can both receive the same diagnosis of schizophrenia, then what is the value of that label in describing their symptoms, deciding their treatment, or predicting their outcome, and would it not be more useful simply to describe their problems as they actually are? And if schizophrenia does not exist in nature, then how can researchers possibly find its cause or correlates? If psychiatric research has made so little progress in recent decades, it is in large part because everyone has been barking up the wrong tree. It is not a question of getting a bigger and better scanner, but of going right back to the drawing board. What’s more, medical-type labels can be as harmful as they are hollow. By reducing rich, varied, and complex human experiences to nothing more than a mental disorder, they not only sideline and trivialize those experiences but also imply an underlying defect that then serves as a pseudo-explanation for the person’s disturbed behaviour. This demeans and disempowers the person, who is deterred from identifying and addressing the important life problems that underlie his distress.

Read the following chain of events and see whether a similar pattern might apply to other toxic products that were reported in the news during your lifetime: 1. Workers were told that the paint was nontoxic, although there was no factual basis for this declaration. The employers discounted scientists. The workers believed their superiors. 2. Health complaints were made in ever-increasing frequency. It became obvious that something was seriously wrong. 3. U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies began a campaign of disinformation and bogus medical tests - some of which involved X-rays and may even have made the condition worse. 4. Doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with U.S. Radium's and other companies' requests and refused to release their data to the public. 5. Medical professionals also aided the companies by attributing worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis was often cited as the diagnosis, which had the added benefit to management of being a smear on the victims' reputations. 6. One worker, Grace Fryer, decided to sue U.S. Radium. It took Fryer two years to find a lawyer who was willing to take on U.S. Radium. Only four other workers joined her suit; they became known as the "Radium Girls." 7. In 1928, the case was settled in the middle of the trial before it went to the jury for deliberation. The settlement for each of the five "Radium Girls" was $10,000 (the equivalent of $124,000 in 2009 dollars), plus $600 a year while the victim lived and all medical expenses. Remember the general outline of this scenario because you will see it over and over again: The company denies everything while the doctors and researchers (and even the industrial hygienists) in the company's employ support the company's distorted version of the facts. Perhaps one worker in a hundred will finally pursue justice, one lawyer out of the hundreds of thousands in the United States will finally step up to the plate, and the case will be settled for chump change.

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

CONFESSIONS OF A CLING-ON If a man is walking in a forest and makes a statement, but there is no woman around to hear it, is he still wrong? Or if a woman is walking in the forest and asks for something, and there is no man around to hear her, is she still needy? These Zen koans capture some of the frustrations people have with the opposite gender. And where is the dividing line between someone simply having a need, and someone being a needy person? Is it written in heaven somewhere what is too much need, too little need and just right amount of need for the “normal person?” Ask pop radio psychologists Dr. Laura, or Sally Jessie Rafael, or any number of experts who claim to know for sure, and you’ll get some very different answers. And isn’t it fun to see the new sophisticated ways our advanced culture is developing to make each other wrong? You better keep up with the latest technical terminology or you will be at the mercy of those who do. Whoever has read the latest most recent self-help book has the clear advantage. Example: Man: “Get real, would you! Your Venusian codependency has got you trapped in your learned helpless victim act, and indulging in your empowerment phobia again.” Woman: “When you call me codependent, I feel (notice the political correctness of the feeling word) that you are simply projecting your own disowned, unintegrated, emotionally unavailable Martian counterdependency to protect your inner ADD two year old from ever having to grow up. So there!” Speaking of diagnosis, remember the codependent. Worrying about codependency was like a virus that everyone had from about 1988 to 1994. Here’s a prayer to commemorate the codependent: The Codependent’s Prayer by Kelly Bryson Our Authority, which art in others, self-abandonment be thy name. Codependency comes when others’ will is done, At home, as it is in the workplace. give us this day our daily crumbs of love. And give us a sense of indebtedness, As we try to get others to feel indebted to us. And lead us not into freedom, but deliver us from awareness. For thine is the slavery and the weakness and the dependency, For ever and ever. Amen.

But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18) The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously — particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost — this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19) Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)

In 2009, Kahneman and Klein took the unusual step of coauthoring a paper in which they laid out their views and sought common ground. And they found it. Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform. The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. In golf or chess, a ball or piece is moved according to rules and within defined boundaries, a consequence is quickly apparent, and similar challenges occur repeatedly. Drive a golf ball, and it either goes too far or not far enough; it slices, hooks, or flies straight. The player observes what happened, attempts to correct the error, tries again, and repeats for years. That is the very definition of deliberate practice, the type identified with both the ten-thousand-hours rule and the rush to early specialization in technical training. The learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better. Kahneman was focused on the flip side of kind learning environments; Hogarth called them “wicked.” In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. Hogarth noted a famous New York City physician renowned for his skill as a diagnostician. The man’s particular specialty was typhoid fever, and he examined patients for it by feeling around their tongues with his hands. Again and again, his testing yielded a positive diagnosis before the patient displayed a single symptom. And over and over, his diagnosis turned out to be correct. As another physician later pointed out, “He was a more productive carrier, using only his hands, than Typhoid Mary.” Repetitive success, it turned out, taught him the worst possible lesson. Few learning environments are that wicked, but it doesn’t take much to throw experienced pros off course. Expert firefighters, when faced with a new situation, like a fire in a skyscraper, can find themselves suddenly deprived of the intuition formed in years of house fires, and prone to poor decisions. With a change of the status quo, chess masters too can find that the skill they took years to build is suddenly obsolete.

One example of this damage occurs when ill-informed physicians diagnose brown recluse spider bites as the cause of skin lesions in areas of the continent where recluse spiders of any species are exceedingly rare or have never been found. When the quantity of brown recluse bite diagnoses greatly outnumbers the verified specimens of recluse spiders in a particular area, it logically follows that the spiders cannot be responsible for all these incidents. Some of these misdiagnosed skin conditions, such as cancer, lymphoma, group A Streptococcus bacterial infection, and Lyme disease, can cause great suffering, irreversible damage, and possibly death. When a wrong diagnosis is made, spider bite treatment is ineffective and the correct treatment is delayed or never given.

Because it can take two to even six years for a man to reach his PSA nadir after radiation, this initial “false rise” in PSA level after the hormonal therapy ends might lead to needless worry from a wrongful diagnosis

What's wrong with the world? It's easy to probe the ills of the nation, the Church, and the planet and come up with a grave diagnosis... But it takes all the strength we can muster to stand at Mass and honestly say, 'I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do..." Sin is not out there; it's deep inside you and me... What's wrong with the world? I am, because I sin, and my sins well up from the darkness in my own heart.

January 18th, the forty-seventh anniversary of the founding of the German Empire, brought melancholy reflections for all Germans. The Bolshevist-hued Socialists were impotently raging in defeat; the bourgeoisie lamented past glories; the Majority Socialists were under a crossfire from both sides. The Conservative Kreuz-Zeitung wrote: "January 18th: What feelings are awakened on this day under prevailing conditions! In other times we celebrated today the Empire's glory, its resurrection from impotence and dissension to unity and strength. We believed its existence and power assured for centuries. And today? After less than half a century the old misery has come upon us and has cast us down lower than ever. This time, too, Germany could be conquered only because it was disunited. In the last analysis it was from the Social-Democratic poison of Internationalism and negation of state that the Empire became infected and defenseless. How painfully wrong were those who, in smiling optimism, ever made light of all warnings against the Social-Democratic danger. It will be our real danger in the future also. If we do not overcome the Social-Democratic spirit among our people we cannot recover our health." The Kreuz-Zeitung's diagnosis was correct, but it had required a national post-mortem to establish it.

It is also wrong to think that Bible exposition can’t have a very strong focus on human need. Nearly all Bible texts do address such existential issues directly or indirectly. However, if we start with our questions and only then look to the Bible for answers, we assume that we are asking all the right questions—that we properly understand our need. However, we need not only the Bible’s prescription to our problems but also its diagnosis of them. We may even have maladies we are completely unaware of. If we don’t begin with the Bible, we will almost certainly come to superficial conclusions, having stacked the deck in favor of our own biases and assumptions.

Erich Fromm made an extensive diagnosis of this in his book The Revolution of Hope. He saw our overactivism as a sign of the restlessness and lack of inner peace that flows from our shame. We are human doings because we have no inner life. Our toxic shame won’t let us go inward. It is too painful. It is too hopeless. As Sheldon Kopp says, “We can change what we are doing, but we can’t change who we are.” If I am flawed and defective as a human person, then there’s something wrong with me. I am a mistake. I am hopeless.

Such terms as 'diagnosis' and 'pathology' are of course used analogically here, but I am using the word 'science' deliberate and unequivocally in its original and broad sense of discovery and knowing, rather than its conventional sense of isolating the secondary causes of natural phenomena. For if I believe anything, it is that the primary business of literature and art is cognitive, a kind of finding out and knowing and telling, both in good times and bad; a celebration of the way things are when they are right, and a diagnostic enterprise when they are wrong.

In the group of disorders referred to as tendonitis, the tendon is correctly identified as the offending part, but the reason given for the pain is incorrect. The anatomy is right, but the diagnosis is wrong. It is generally assumed that the painful tendon is inflamed because of overuse. So the treatment is to immobilize and rest the part and/or inject the tendon with a steroid (cortisone). Relief is often only temporary. Many years ago, the suspicion dawned on me that tendonitis (more properly called tendonalgia) might be part of TMS when a patient reported that not only had his back pain resolved with treatment but also his elbow had ceased to hurt. I put this to the test and, indeed, found that I could get resolution of most tendonalgias. I now consider tendon/ ligament to be the third type of tissue involved in TMS. Common sites of tendonalgia are the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle, and foot. (page 138)

Investigate my life, O God . . . See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong.

I wrote to Samantha telling her my feelings, asking why she hadn’t been more open about C-PTSD. She explained that she had brought it up during our first session—but that was eight years ago. Our first session was so strange and new for me, I’m sure I’d missed that one little word of difference: complex. In terms of why it never again came up, Samantha said that whenever I was in a depressive state, she didn’t want to add to my burden by bringing up the weight of my diagnosis. And whenever I was happy, she didn’t want to cloud my joy. She was protecting me, she insisted, and she saw now that it might have been the wrong decision, even though it was made with love. I thanked her for her explanation and for her help over the years. But as grateful as I was for her love and support, I knew I couldn’t see her anymore. This lack of communication bordered on deception for me. I needed someone new.

Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I'm about; See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong—then guide me on the road to eternal life.

Under Wisconsin law, the burden of proving insanity lies with the defense. To be proven insane, a defendant must show that they suffered from a mental disease, and that the disease kept them from knowing right from wrong or made them unable to stop themselves from committing the crimes. Boyle’s claim was that Dahmer suffered from a sexual disorder, a paraphilia that compelled him into actions that were beyond his control. Of all the experts Boyle put on the stand, Dr. Frederick S. Berlin was the most credible. In technical terms, his diagnosis was that Dahmer was an antisocial, schizoid, and schizotypal personality. He was a chronic alcoholic who suffered from three distinct paraphilias: necrophilia, the desire to have intercourse with a dead body; frotteurism, the uncontrollable urge to rub or grind one’s self on another person or thing, including masturbation; and splanchnophilia or partialism, the extreme urge to cut open a body and look in to it. Both Boyle and Berlin hammered home the fact that Dahmer suffered from a biological or psychological predisposition that rendered him unable to control himself, therefore making him a victim of these sexual diseases, and rendering him legally insane.

I knew what was wrong, but I had refused to start psychotherapy or obtain an official diagnosis. Sure, this refusal might have been pathological, but not in the sense that Black people all have some disabling stigma around getting help for our mental health issues. Some of us do stigmatize therapy, thinking that it indicates a person is weak.

Eager. I like that, Manny." "Good morning to you too, Sleeping Beauty. Or should that be good afternoon?" "It's still morning, though I feel like I've slept away the day." "You must've needed it." "Is that your medical opinion?" "No. I'm off duty." Just hearing his deep voice had Harper snuggling back under the covers, wishing he was next to her. "Pity. Because I'm not feeling so good, and I was hoping you made house calls." "What's wrong?" "A distinct case of I-miss-you-itis." "Damn it, if I wasn't halfway along this Craters of the Moon geothermal hike, I'd be there in a flash." He muttered a curse. "I know. I can give you a more accurate diagnosis over the phone if you do one thing." Smiling, she said, "What?" "Tell me what you're wearing." Her thighs clenched as her smile extended into a grin. "My, my, Doctor, I didn't think this was one of those calls." "You're in bed. You're missing me. What did you expect?" "A little decorum." "Yeah, sure." "You're right. I want to torture you a little." "A lot, considering I'm now envisaging you cute and sleep rumpled." "What are you wearing?" "Why?" he asked. "Because I'm assuming there are families on that hike, and too much envisaging may lead to more than one tent pole in that national park." He laughed so loudly she had to hold the cell away from her ear. "You really are something else," he said. "And for the record? I miss you too." "So I'll meet you in the foyer at four for our picnic?" "Yeah. I found the perfect spot." "Secluded?" "Babe, you're killing me." "Not yet, but maybe this will help." She lowered her voice. "I'm wearing nothing and I'm thinking of you." She hung up on his garbled cry, grinning madly.

Yet after my diagnosis and despite my hunch about the disease’s fatality, I did undergo all the operations, therapies, and interventions specialists advised. Given my love of life and of the people in my life, it seemed wrong simply to submit to the cancer’s inevitable progress, to succumb passively and helplessly to the determinism of a preordained death. I had to embark on doing what could be done against the disease—even if, even though it would eventually terminate my existence. To treasure the gift of life and the people in my life, I wanted to take responsibility for dealing with a condition admittedly beyond my control. Like many people with cancer, I sought to cultivate acceptance while consulting and following the advice of medical specialists.

There was nothing really wrong with us: we wanted to be ill. I knew more about the stigma around my diagnosis than the history of it. I knew it was not what you wanted to be diagnosed with. The ‘difficulty’ of diagnosing it transfers onto the person being diagnosed – they too are labelled difficult. What does a sick woman look like anyway?

People who suffer from IS may feel as though they just lucked their way into success. They may not be able to celebrate victories, instead looking to the next thing they need to complete. You may be only able to focus on the one thing that went wrong, instead of ALL the things that went right. You may be dismissive of compliments and praise, feeling you do not deserve them. And you may constantly compare yourself to others.

There's nothing wrong with me. This has been medically proven, once. My former insurance company stopped honoring my requests for more diagnostics and labs. A therapist gave me medicine but I didn't take it because she didn't even run tests. She based her diagnosis on my answers, on the things I told her, and I bullshitted so much I couldn't even remember which parts were genuine. How could I take a pill based on that? And what if it worked? What if my bullshit was the right-sized hole for a pill-shaped fix? I felt helpless in the face of someone helping me.

If you’ve ever been met by an incurious doctor, you know how important Redelmeier’s mission is. Redelmeier’s heuristics have an ambitious aim for doctors during the critical diagnosis stage: to keep their minds open and not succumb too quickly to what psychologists call a need for cognitive closure (NFC). NFC is almost counter to the very state of mind we’re describing as optimal—it’s our aversion to ambiguity and desire for certainty. There is nothing inherently wrong or flawed with this attribute of human cognition, but a high need for closure correlates with drops in creativity and rationality. Do you often leap to the quick, easy, and safe answer? Do you over-rely on one way to solve a problem—especially if you’ve met with success in the past by using that method? It’s okay. We all do. But we don’t all notice ourselves doing it. That’s the key to creating a new perspective.

A misdiagnosis can send a patient veering off into a series of unfortunate directions; wrong medications, dangerous unnecessary therapies, and personal turmoil are just a few of the potential outcomes. For example, they may be misdiagnosed with a mental illness and spend years trying to cure something autoimmune with verbal therapy. Or, they may be given an inaccurate diagnosis of a common disease, when in fact, their disease is rare.

She wasn’t a robot or a walking diagnosis. She was herself. She was enough. She could be anything. She could make herself into anything. She could prove everyone wrong.

The doctor was clueless!

Most of us know far more facts than we can intelligently use. This point is illustrated by a statement the great German clinician, Traube, was wont to make when the autopsy showed that a wrong diagnosis had been made: “The facts were there but we did not think right.

Semi-enclosed within a rampart of books, she was reading intensely, oblivious of everything except the volumes she had gathered around her. Freddy tilted his head and read the titles on the bindings, whispering them as he read. He had assumed that her selection would be heavy on fashion, makeup, and “celebrities,” but he was wrong. With her left hand resting possessively on Who’s Who in Zimbabwe, she was deep in Sources and Methods of Hiccup Diagnosis. She had also chosen the Directory of Polish Hydraulic Fluid Wholesalers; the Encyclopaedia of Angels; the Catalogue of Chuvash Books in German Libraries; Aboriginal Science Fiction; The Register of Non-Existent Churches; A Bibliography of Indonesian Military Poetry; Orators Who Possessed Horses; Lloyds’ Survey of Failed Board Games; A Dictionary of the Efik Language; The Picture Book of Albanian Idioms—a list in her handwriting lay next to the latter, beginning with the entry, “I ka duart të prera, ‘to have one’s hands cut off,’ ”—The Language of the French & Indian War, Vol. I, Obscene Expressions; Glossary of Dead Architects (Freddy couldn’t wait to read the latest entries); and, finally, though not least, Nicknames of Popular Fish. “You see,” he told her, “it’s fascinating.” “Yes, I love it. Now go away.” “I have our press.” “I couldn’t care less about our press.” She held up Who’s Who in Zimbabwe. “There’s a whole world out there, Freddy, that has nothing to do with us.

Make a list of some of the things that can go wrong from the last two chapters: elevated insulin levels in the blood. Elevated glucose levels. Elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Insulin resistance. Too much LDL-cholesterol. Too little HDL. Too much fat or cholesterol in the blood. Suffer from a subset of these, and you’ve got Metabolic syndrome (the formal diagnosis involves “one or more” from a list of some of these problems, and “two or more” from a list of the others).

Your five-year-old son wanders around his kindergarten classroom distracting other kids. The teacher complains: he can’t sit through her scintillating lessons on the two sounds made by the letter e. When the teacher invites all the kids to sit with her on the rug for a song, he stares out the window, watching a squirrel dance along a branch. She’d like you to take him to be evaluated. And so you do. It’s a good school, and you want the teacher and the administration to like you. You take him to a pediatrician, who tells you it sounds like ADHD. You feel relief. At least you finally know what’s wrong. Commence the interventions, which will transform your son into the attentive student the teacher wants him to be. But obtaining a diagnosis for your kid is not a neutral act. It’s not nothing for a kid to grow up believing there’s something wrong with his brain. Even mental health professionals are more likely to interpret ordinary patient behavior as pathological if they are briefed on the patient’s diagnosis.[15] “A diagnosis is saying that a person does not only have a problem, but is sick,” Dr. Linden said. “One of the side effects that we see is that people learn how difficult their situation is. They didn’t think that before. It’s demoralization.” Nor does our noble societal quest to destigmatize mental illness inoculate an adolescent against the determinism that befalls him—the awareness of a limitation—once the diagnosis is made. Even if Mom has dressed it in happy talk, he gets the gist. He’s been pronounced learning disabled by an occupational therapist and neurodivergent by a neuropsychologist. He no longer has the option to stop being lazy. His sense of efficacy, diminished. A doctor’s official pronouncement means he cannot improve his circumstances on his own. Only science can fix him.[16] Identifying a significant problem is often the right thing to do. Friends who suffered with dyslexia for years have told me that discovering the name for their problem (and the corollary: that no, they weren’t stupid) delivered cascading relief. But I’ve also talked to parents who went diagnosis shopping—in one case, for a perfectly normal preschooler who wouldn’t listen to his mother. Sometimes, the boy would lash out or hit her. It took him forever to put on his shoes. Several neuropsychologists conducted evaluations and decided he was “within normal range.” But the parents kept searching, believing there must be some name for the child’s recalcitrance. They never suspected that, by purchasing a diagnosis, they might also be saddling their son with a new, negative understanding of himself. Bad

I was tiny, with no idea of why, or how, or even where I was on fire all of the time. "You're not on fire!" people metaphorically told me. "We're all on fire! Everyone feels this way." But they were wrong.

Note: The first incident happened after the arrest by the Netherlands police in May 1980. I suffered from that, which destroyed my career, future, health, and life. I tried and tried to investigate that, but the police didn't even register the first information report (FIR). It stayed, refusing since 1980 until now, which creates suspicious questions about what the reasons are for not filing the case. It mirrors whether the Netherlands government victimised me or whether the hired ones of the international intelligence agencies have been a hindrance or the criminal groups. - The second incident happened in the shape of uncurable cancer; it was a deliberate mistake and ignorance of the Netherlands Urologists, who did not follow even the primary medical borderlines for the checkup during one year from 2016 to 2017. After the diagnosis, they are hiding the reality, and they still do not take it seriously. I still hope that the Netherlands' neutral and free media will awaken to help me investigate the incident. It will save millions of lives around the world. In God's name, take it seriously to protect me and others. I feel suspicious elements around me. I cry and pray day and night for God's protection since I do not exclude the Qadeyanis witches and magicians, who keep doing black magic continuously that the West does not understand. My Real Story In A Poem *** I never thought I would suffer from cancer The metastatic prostate gland I still cannot decide that It is natural or human-made Since everything is possible In the medical-criminal world How it happened in Western society; Civilized urologists ignored it deliberately From 2016 to 2017 Telling that nothing was wrong Whereas I was suffering from Bleeding, burning, and pain During urinating I begged urologists for a wide-scale checkup With MRI scans and other new technologies But urologists stayed rejecting; Whereas I was paying insurance for that Consequently, at the beginning of 2017 The diagnosis became a time bomb that I had metastatic prostate gland cancer, Which was not curable, They listed me on the death list, Treating for longer life expectancy However, they do tell not the truth And stay suspicious It confuses me and creates grave fear Since then I am bearing terrible side effects Factually, I became victimized twice By criminals, Intelligence Agencies And underground-mafias Which I am unable to trace alone In this regard, I approached Western Media, Ministries, police, courts, Euro Union Unfortunately, none of those responded Even my motherland media cruelly ignored It seems as if I am in the grip of the demon And The Prisoner Of The Hague Everyone has left me alone in pain, Stress, fear, depression Even my children don't care And realize my tears Where resides sympathy, empathy, And humanity? I feel death before death It is a silent cruelty Ah, where should I ask and beg For justice, help, and investigation That civilized world should know An innocent is under victimization I believe God will help and protect And someone from somewhere Appear to hold my hands To eliminate all criminals and demons My cancer will be curable With a longer life expectancy, in some ways Amen, O' merciful God amen.

For the United States of America, remote in a hemisphere whose isolation the war had forever destroyed, World War II was mainly an expedition, a crusade of sorts to set to rights a world gone wrong. Many Americans equated the world's troubles with Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini - or some "ism" - and honestly expected that when the symptoms of the sickness were treated, a better day would surely dawn. Government propaganda, and even business advertising, continually bolstered this hope. It was an attitude among all parties, typically American, and in the light of American history and ethos, inevitable.

According to Barna “Almost half of practicing Christian Millennials say evangelism is morally wrong.”25

First I have to discover what exactly is wrong with each patient. Medical students today don't spend enough time on simple diagnostic skills. They rely too heavily on technology. But when you have a whole bunch of symptoms and a complicated medical history, you have to listen and look and use your hands.

Listen to me, Dad. When Dylan’s first cornea went bad, I grieved for the perfect child he should have been. I told myself that the diagnosis was wrong. I bargained with God—you know, make his eyes right and I’ll do anything. When that didn’t work I was absolutely furious that my child had to face this. In the end I had no choice. I had to accept it, because that was the only way I could help Dylan.” She straightened. “Grieving is a process. Anger is part of it.” She paused. “Right now, you’re angry that Mom left you alone. But you’re taking it out on Jill and me, and we both need you. You can drink all you want—

On one level, accepting that I was one of several — possibly hundreds of — personalities turned my head inside out. It was like trying to catch your breath standing under a waterfall. There was too much information to take it all in at once. I needed time to process - but time was the thing I was always missing. On the other hand, it explained so much I felt a weight rise from my shoulders. It wasn't like the diagnosis for schizophrenia, which I'd always instinctively known was wrong. This feels right.

It used to be that people went to their doctor to find out what was wrong. That was the expectation when someone made an appointment with their local family doctor: they wanted to know what they had and how they could feel better. Ear infection: what should I take? Pulled muscle: what should I do? Broken ankle: how can you fix it? Over the years, something happened to this common sense approach. “Algorithms” and “pathways” have proliferated in ways that have reduced each person’s unique story to simplistic recipes. More often than not, this cookbook approach ends up telling patients what they don’t have—which, while potentially reassuring, does not result in a real diagnosis.1

What’s wrong with her, Doctor?” asked Porkins. “My diagnosis is that she’s eaten too many cakes,” said the cowman healer, lifting Alex’s head.

Greta has a diagnosis, but it doesn’t rule out the fact that she’s right and the rest of us have got it all wrong.

Uggggh …” groaned Alex, clutching her stomach. She had one more cake left in her pile, but her opponent had one more cake in his pile as well, and he’d already started to eat it. Alex’s eyes were rolling into the back of her head, and her skin was even paler than usual. “Alex, you can give up if you want to,” said Dave. “Don’t make yourself sick.” “Yes, we won’t think any less of you, dear girl,” said Porkins. “I’ll think less of you,” said Carl. “Carl!” said Dave. “What?” said Carl, shrugging. “I’m only being honest.” The elderly cowman was halfway through his last cake, and Alex hadn’t even started hers. It’s all over, thought Dave. There’s no way that Alex can catch up. Alex looked like she was going to pass out at any moment, but then, finding strength from somewhere, she picked up her final cake and opened her mouth wide. FLOOOONCH!!!!!! To Dave’s amazement, Alex shoved the entire cake into her mouth. Her cheeks were so stuffed full of cake that her head was about twice as wide as it usually was. Then, with a large gulp, she swallowed the cake down whole. She opened her mouth to show everyone that the cake was gone. “We have a winner!” The cowman hosting the competition shouted. Everyone in the inn let out an enormous cheer. The elderly cowman dropped the remainder of his cake on the table, admitting defeat. “Well done, dear girl!” Porkins said to Alex. “Yeah, well done, Alex,” said Carl. “If ever I need someone to eat a big pile of cakes, you’ll be the first person I ask.” “I still think this whole competition was completely foolish,” said Spidroth. “Nevertheless, Alex, I congratulate you on your victory. Like a true warrior, you bested all your opponents, showing them no mercy.” “Uggghh …” groaned Alex. Then she fainted, her face hitting the table. “Alex!” yelled Dave, rushing over to her. “Is anyone here a healer?” “I am,” said a cowman with grey fur, rushing over. “What’s wrong with her, Doctor?” asked Porkins. “My diagnosis is that she’s eaten too many cakes,” said the cowman healer, lifting Alex’s head. “I could have told you that,” said Carl, rolling his eyes. “What should we do with her?” asked Dave. “I think a good night’s rest should do the trick,” said the healer. “Are you sure you’re a healer?” said Carl. “None of this advice seems very professional.

O’Toole believes firmly enough in this goal that she thinks everyone who suffers with an eating disorder of any kind should always be evaluated in terms of a possible larger spectrum diagnosis, not to discover what’s wrong, but to assure them of what’s okay about their thoughts and feelings and to help move them toward recovery.

Carter delivered his diagnosis of America’s malaise, Reagan responded, “I find no national malaise. I find nothing wrong with the American people.” He even had the daring to tell voters they should reelect Carter “if he instills in you pride for your country and a sense of optimism about our future”—a brilliant parry that just reminded people how much they wanted to feel patriotic again.

When I tell my doctor aunt about my endometriosis diagnosis (“endo” for those in the know), she says I better get cracking. “In medical school, that was the first thing we were taught,” she says. “After an endo diagnosis you say get started now.” My doctor never said that to me. He was casual—now that I consider it, too casual? I had been right all along, known better than any doctor: something really was wrong down there. So I have to get started now. It’s time to get started now. And why not? I wonder. I have a job. I am in love. We have an extra bedroom that we are currently using for shoes, boxes, and occasional guests. I am told my dog is unusually good with children. I already look fucking pregnant. Why the hell not? I can feel them. The babies. They’re not crawling all over me. They’re not vomiting in my hair or shrieking. They’re doing perfectly normal baby things, and I’m keeping them alive. But I resent them. Their constancy, their intrusion on my relationship and my free time and my naps and my imagination and my heart. They’ve come too soon, and I can’t do any of what I had planned. All I can do is survive. My

A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves “completely certain” about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time. When a group of students made estimates that they believed had only a 1% chance of being wrong, they were actually wrong 27% of the time.

Why is this? How can experience be so valuable in some professions but almost worthless in others? To see why, suppose that you are playing golf. You are out on the driving range, hitting balls toward a target. You are concentrating, and every time you fire the ball wide you adjust your technique in order to get it closer to where you want it to go. This is how practice happens in sport. It is a process of trial and error. But now suppose that instead of practicing in daylight, you practice at night—in the pitch-black. In these circumstances, you could practice for ten years or ten thousand years without improving at all. How could you progress if you don’t have a clue where the ball has landed? With each shot, it could have gone long, short, left, or right. Every shot has been swallowed by the night. You wouldn’t have any data to improve your accuracy. This metaphor solves the apparent mystery of expertise. Think about being a chess player. When you make a poor move, you are instantly punished by your opponent. Think of being a clinical nurse. When you make a mistaken diagnosis, you are rapidly alerted by the condition of the patient (and by later testing). The intuitions of nurses and chess players are constantly checked and challenged by their errors. They are forced to adapt, to improve, to restructure their judgments. This is a hallmark of what is called deliberate practice. For psychotherapists things are radically different. Their job is to improve the mental functioning of their patients. But how can they tell when their interventions are going wrong or, for that matter, right? Where is the feedback? Most psychotherapists gauge how their clients are responding to treatment not with objective data, but by observing them in clinic. But these data are highly unreliable. After all, patients might be inclined to exaggerate how well they are to please the therapist, a well-known issue in psychotherapy. But there is a deeper problem. Psychotherapists rarely track their clients after therapy has finished. This means that they do not get any feedback on the lasting impact of their interventions. They have no idea if their methods are working or failing—if the client’s long-term mental functioning is actually improving. And that is why the clinical judgments of many practitioners don’t improve over time. They are effectively playing golf in the dark.11

But here comes a big, fat caveat. No matter how assiduously they build up their database of experience, experts are never as clever or infallible as they (or we) like to believe. Study after study confirms that specialists in almost every field, from law to medicine to finance, overestimate their expertise and underestimate their mistakes. In one study of autopsy reports, doctors who were completely certain of their diagnosis while a patient was still alive turned out to be wrong 40 percent of the time. Or look at the corporate world, where three of every four large mergers end up destroying rather than creating shareholder value, despite the blustering endorsements from legions of CEOs, consultants, and pundits.

The fact is that despite liberalization of the economy, benefits are not reaching everyone. Yes, they reach the top 10 per cent. However, the other 90 per cent are still untouched. In fact, these people get the worst of badly implemented capitalism—inflation kills their savings and purchasing power, their land gets stolen by corporate houses and their politician cares only about the rich guys. They are not in any advertiser's target group so the media dismisses them and they don't get a voice. Every now and then, a politician tosses cheap rice or wheat at them, keeps them alive on drip feed, and hopes to swing some votes. Our rural poor never see the benefits of liberalization. Add to this, poor education, archaic caste-based social discrimination, poorly implemented welfare policies and a general lack of job opportunities, and it leads to a kind of passive frustration that urban citizens can never understand. The leaders of these movements apparently do, and that is why a youth, with his whole life ahead of him, takes up arms against the state and becomes a rebel. The Wrong Diagnosis, page 25 and 26