Psychics and inability to admit being wrong

[Ashles]

I like your hypothesis. I'd like to add that alternatively, if the critics of MPD are correct that MPD is an artificial condition, then the psychics could be like the therapists (rather than the patients), manipulating the subject's perceptions and creating the illusion that another presence in the room besides the psychic and subject.

Actually Jambo's post above got me thinking that it could be the people getting the readings who were acting as the 'therapist role'.

After all they are the ones encouraging the presence of the other personalities.
It is they who the 'psychic' is trying to please by manifesting these other personalities.
It is they who the 'psychic' is trying to please by saying things that might be relevant or interesting to them.
It is their suggestions that may be helping to create the 'alter' of the dead person.

Another thing - does anyone know the ratio of female to male mediums and psychics? Because 85% of MPD patients are female. I wonder how closely this would correlate?

 

[sophia8]

Going back to Ashle's mention of MPD, I know there have been a number of MPD patients who have been cured by the simple expedient of stopping the therapy that encouraged their 'alters' to manifest. I'd like to know if any MPD patients have actually been cured by this type of therapy.
My personal opinion is that none of them have - I've read quite a lot of accounts by MPD patients and their therapists, and all the therapy seems to do is to develop more 'alters' in the patient. Which of course means the patient has to have more therapy.....

 

[tommyz]

Humans have trouble admiting they are wrong, no matter if they are "skeptics" or "believers", I would say its a human condition, I would add that it is necessary for survival in complex societies.

Excellent observation. I find it all too common that when individuals aren't progressing as they would like in thier lives or just not exactly where they want to be that they come to the depressing (albeit subconscious) realization that their existance is slowly taking on a less and less signficant role in the lives of others. They immediately feel threatened and overwhelmed with all these feelings of inferiority and inadequacy --especially when someone of equal age, talent, educational background, training, or whatever the case might be excels them at what they do. Many individuals in this weakened mindset simply can't stand the thought of someone else doing better than they themselves. So quite naturally, the tendancy is to feel jealousy and unwarranted resentment, along with arrogance, egotism, and/or megalomania.

For example, instead of wishing them a genuine
"congratulations" along with a firm handshake, they simply resort to making arrogantly puerile comments like "Oh come on! That's nothing! I could do better!" Or insteading of realizing that they are wrong by saying something like "Nobody's perfect, and that includes me. I never really thought of it that way, and want to thank you for pointing out the errors in my thinking. I stand corrected" they have to incessantly argue with you INSISTING that they are "right."

While there's nothing wrong with feeling a hearty and healthy sense of pride for your legitimate and worthwhile accomplishments, along with the confidence and self esteem that comes with it --it's an entirely different ball of wax to feel that way about something that's illegitimate and fundamentally erroneous. Yes, we ALL want to be loved and/or respected by others; we ALL want to feel important and remembered, and feel that our contributions mean something to others in the long run. But to achieve those ends by dishonest, unethical, illegal and/or immoral means is a surefire way to mediocrity.

You mentioned that the inability to admit being wrong "is necessary for survival in complex societies." I thoroughly disagree. Look where it got individuals like Hitler or Saddam Hussein...

Try humility and kindness instead. The way to personal greatness is not so much in doing the "right" things...but more so in doing the kind things.

 

[Ashles]

Going back to Ashle's mention of MPD, I know there have been a number of MPD patients who have been cured by the simple expedient of stopping the therapy that encouraged their 'alters' to manifest. I'd like to know if any MPD patients have actually been cured by this type of therapy.

I assume Sopia8 knows this anyway, but for everyone else the quote in her sig comes from a 'sufferer' of MPD:

The MPD community suffered another serious attack on its credibility when Dr. Bennett Braun, the founder of the International Society for the Study of Disassociation, had his license suspended over allegations he used drugs and hypnosis to convince a patient she killed scores of people in SATANIC RITUALS. The patient claims that Braun convinced her that she had 300 personalities, among them a child molester, a high priestess of a satanic cult, and a cannibal. The patient told the Chicago Tribune: "I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it." The patient won $10.6 million in a lawsuit against Braun, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital, and another therapist.

From Skepdic (and Dr Adequate posted a thread about this not long ago).

 

[Dr Adequate]

People in the field always seem to rationalize their way out of being wrong.

Well, remember, many of them are charlatans. Of course they have their excuses. If failure is rare or debateable, and apparent success frequent, then these excuses will become normal and unexceptionable to the woowoo community as "the battery's gone flat" would sound to you or me as a reason why a gadget wasn't working. These excuses become normal in the woowoo community, and are equally up for grabs for other would-be psychics to use.

The result is that so many excuses have now been added, each of which can be invoked so arbitrarily, that it would be impossible to distinguish between a world where people had psychic powers and all the excuses aplied, and a world where no-one had any psychic powers.

(See also the case of the missing deity.

"But if God's all powerful, why doesn't etc?"
"Free will, blah blah blah..."
"Oh... but what about...?"
"Original sin, blah blah..."
"Oh... but what about...?"
"Mysterious ways, blah, blah, who are we to etc?"
"Oh... okay."
"So, little Johny, do you see now why the most important entity in the Universe is completely indistinguishable from nothing at all?"
"Yes. He is truely Almighty!")

The underlying principle, which I have named Occam's Haddock, may be stated as follows:

To any hypothesis, no matter how much it is in apparent conflict with reality, additional hypotheses may be added to save the appearances.

Of course, anyone who starts applying this principle can believe anything they like. I'm told this is fun: I just can't get the knack.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

You mentioned that the inability to admit being wrong "is necessary for survival in complex societies." I thoroughly disagree. Look where it got individuals like Hitler or Saddam Hussein...

Try humility and kindness instead. The way to personal greatness is not so much in doing the "right" things...but more so in doing the kind things.

I agree in your description, and in that is kind of sad. I would say that strong liders have to be right, always, at any cost, and thats sad too.

But I still think that the world organization is a reflection of our animal instincts (that were necessary to survival).