Oh, you and your mom and grandmother are in my thoughts today Philip. I am grateful for your family's sacrifices.

Take care.

I love those ads for psych meds. Especially the Abilify one which features a dandy graphic about how Abilify balances out the chemicals in your brain as if it was a math equation and features pictures of people walking down the beach or walking a dog in some sun-dappled daydream nation.

Abilify made me grind my teeth and I was unable to ride the subway I was so jittery. No long walks on the beach for me I guess.

Again,

What specific claims did Dr. Goodwin make during his broadcast that were erroneous?

I will repost below what I took to be the main points from the first third of the broadcast, which I listened to, and I am still awaiting someone to point out what they said that was wrong:

Their main points were as follows:

1. The media sensationalizes the use of antidepressants in disturbed individuals who commit violent crimes while minimizing other factors that are probably more important, such as traumatic childhoods, and disturbed thoughts and behaviour preceding medication use.

2. The term "suicidality" used in the FDA studies is inadequate, because it conflates suicidal ideation and gestures with completed suicides, of which there were none in the FDA studies. Dr. Goodwin stated that a better term should be invented to describe the arousal, agitation and disturbed behaviour of those who have paradoxical reactions on antidepressants, especially given the fact that there were no completed suicides in those studies.

Also, he mentioned a large prospective study where there was a negative correlation between suicidal ideation and completed suicides, because those who seriously want to kill themselves will not tell anyone to prevent their plan from being thwarted. He stated that those who express suicidal ideation should be taken seriously as an expression of distress, but he denied that they were at increased risk of dying.

Dr. Leuchter stated that studies have shown that just having suicidal ideation is not correlated with completed suicides, but having suicidal ideation, plus severe anxiety and insomnia, in the context of a depression, then that is a risk factor for completed suicides, and those people “need to be monitored most closely”.

3. They explicitly mentioned at around 8:10 that in some vulnerable individuals they could have a “paradoxical reaction” to the antidepressants, but that these situations are rare and that they have more to do with the unusual wiring of their brain rather than the medication. Dr. Leuchter agreed that there are “unpredictable reactions” that can occur especially in adolescents and young adults under the age of 25, mainly due to an undeveloped frontal lobe. He then said that these reactions “are extremely rare, but they do occur”. This is actually what the literature says.

4. Dr. Goodwin and Dr. Leuchter explicitly stated that for mild to moderate forms of depression, medications and psychotherapy are equivalent in efficacy, but that for severe forms of depression, medications are essential, and that the best outcomes actually have medications and psychotherapy to reduce relapse rates.

5. They did describe epidemiological data that showed that as antidepressant prescriptions have gone down, completed suicides have gone up. This is probably the most debatable part of their presentation, as the evidence here seems pretty weak and inconclusive.

Please, someone help me see what is wrong with what they said, at least on the portion that I listened to.

DGuller,

Jonathan, Leo, PhD, on this site, http://chemicalimbalance.org/?p=113, refutes Goodwin's arguments point by point.

I don;t have time to summarize it but I thought I would post this since you keep insisting that Goodwin is right.

Here is an exert:

Goodwin (44:27) In fact, the FDA database there was zero – no suicide at all in any of the antidepressant trials – 35,000 patients.

This is simply wrong. This 2003 article puts the number of suicides in SSRI trials at 77, with 0.59% of SSRI trial participants committing suicide. Rates vary depending on what group of studies are examined, but there have certainly been suicides in FDA trials. For instance, see this table from the 1991 Paxil Safety Review taken from Dr. Joseph Glenmullen’s report:

There is no doubt that at least according to the FDA and GSK that some people in the trials committed suicide. Note that the table documents 5 completed suicides in the Paxil group. The debate is not about whether there were any suicides or not but about the significance of five in the Paxil group compared to two in the placebo group. And indeed it is complicated because, as we are learning now, apparently some of the suicides listed under “placebo” did not occur during the actual trial but before and after the trial. In fact, the Senate is investigating Glaxo SmithKline regarding allegations that they have concealed evidence of a Paxil-suicidality link since 1989 by committing research fraud.

It seems like Goodwin's research isn't as solid as you infer it is. But even if it was perfect, it is common sense that you can't have the appearance of improper ethics. I have a relative who is a prominent attorney who drums that point home constantly.


AA

It goes to character, something your profession revels in casting aspersions on people with psychiatric disabilities. As it happens I agree that character counts.

So here we have a committed racist, who is famous (or not famous enough) for declaring that certain people of bad character (blacks, the poor) be massively dosed with psychotropics like the animals they are, to improve their characters.

I'm not speaking for anyone else's criticism of Goodwin, which may be all about the content, but for me it is not. I could give a fuck. Once some shitstain alludes to African American youth as "monkeys" they tend to fall off my radar as deserving a scintilla of my intellectual consideration.

You cannot cherry-pick these matters. If character counts for Cluster-B's like me, it damn sure better count for the population that determines what a Cluster B entails.

AA:

Thank you for the article. It was very informative.

I agree that Dr. Goodwin and his guest were misstating their case by using imprecise language while -- ironically -- complaining about those who do precisely that and cause confusion. I understood them to be speaking specifically about the black box warning on SSRI's in children and adolescents when they were discussing the lack of evidence linking SSRI's to violence and suicide, but I now agree that they should have been more precise in their statements.

That said, there were no completed suicides in the children and adolescents involved in the FDA studies involved in the black box warning. Therefore, saying that SSRI's increase the rate of suicide -- meaning completed suicides -- in children and adolescents is false, but saying that they increase the rate of suicidal ideation and gestures in children and adolescents is completely true.

His point that we have to be careful in terms of what we say to avoid confusion is also true, but sadly, he did not follow his own advice in this case.

Regardless, they did acknowledge the rare "paradoxical reactions" in some individuals who take SSRI's, especially children and young adults, that can result in suicidal and violent behaviour that must be closely monitored. That is a far cry from saying that they are perfectly safe and that there are no risks of harming oneself or others while taking them.

Dawdy. You hypocrite. You actually accepted an award from Eli Lilly? As part of a NAMI group? It's there on-line at http://www.heroesinthefight.org/past_heroes/index.jsp Where do you come off? Do you have any idea how much drug money NAMI gets? You are a total fraud. Look for WhoIsPhilipDawdy.com coming soon.

PHILIP DAWDY RESPONDS (ALL CAPS SIMPLY FOR DELINEATION): NICE USE OF AN ANONYMOUS GERMAN WEBSITE TO COME HERE AND WAY TO GO WITH A FAKE EMAIL ADDRESS. ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE ANGRY AUSSIES WHO'VE HARASSED ME BEFORE, GOING OFF ALL DRUNKEN AND HALF-COCKED?

THE REALITY IS THE LOCAL NAMI AFFILIATE HERE IN SEATTLE AWARDED ME ONE OF THE HEROES IN THE FIGHT AWARD IN 2007, PARTLY FOR WORK I HAD DONE AT SEATTLE WEEKLY AND PARTLY FOR WORK ON THIS SITE, ESPECIALLY MAKING THE ZYPREXA DOCUMENTS PUBLIC. I COULDN'T SAY NO TO THE IRONY OF LILLY GIVING ME A SMALL CHUNK OF GLASS FOR, IN EFFECT, REVEALING SOME OF THEIR WORST CORPORATE SECRETS. SOME OF THE LOCAL NAMI FOLKS WERE IN ON THE JOKE AS WELL. I WROTE ABOUT THIS ON MY SITE AS WELL:

http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/05/i_get_an_award_from_lilly_hell_freezes_over.html

I RECEIVED NO MONEY FROM LILLY OR NAMI-SEATTLE.

GOT MORE QUESTIONS OR WISH TO DENOUNCE ME FURTHER FOR PLAYING A JOKE ON LILLY? DROP ME AN EMAIL.

I kept your mom in my thoughts today.

flawedplan: completely agree. Is there any need to analyze the content when such grotesque facts about the man stand on public record? And, please blog more!!! Your writing is so damn tight. And I totally appreciate what you do.

dguller: I understand your argument about the ways behaviors are classified and then sometimes mis-represented by less sophisticated media outlets, but I would like to point out several things.

#1 I'm unsure if you know about the details of what was alluded to by the commenter above you concerning Fred Goodwin.

[ For what its worth, really, for what it's worth (I know we are also sewn from different political stripes here), but according to FundRace at the Huffington Post, Fred Goodwin contributed to the Bush and McCain campaigns multiple times. In fairness, Nemeroff donated to the Obama campaign. Make of that what you will. In case you wanted to know. ]

#2 SSRI's can cause akathesia-like states and that can obvious drive someone to erratic behavior.

#3 In many "highly publicized" cases of violence there is often a clear pattern of out-of-character behavior by the person consuming the drug, and often no prior psychiatric history.

#4 An increase in suicidal gestures and behaviors should be regarded just as seriously as completed suicides in children and adolescents, despite a lack of demonstrated associations with completed suicide in these cases. #1 Because it's a pretty damn awful set of symptoms for a drug to apparently be increasing. #2 There is nothing known about these "paradoxical reactions". Fred Goodwin should stick to figuring out why these drugs don't work more than half the time, and why they're so crappy when they do. In other words he should be trying to figure out their miserable literature instead of shaking the magic 8-ball of unfalsifiable psychiatric explanations, and #3 The literature on suicides in children, and especially adolescents, is replete with so much nonsense about correlations and non correlations between completed suicide and this and that. I'm often worried it distracts many psychiatrists from considering risk factors individually and especially ones that can't be standardized in any way. The more you lean into psychological phenomena, the more likely a psychiatrist is to pop up with some outdated heuristic or clinical "common knowledge" that makes you feel sorry for the world.

Also,

PCOS and Bipolar Women:

H Joffe, (et al) Biol Psychiatry 2006 Dec. 15;60(12):1378-81

H Joffe, (et al) Biol Psychiatry 2006 Jun. 1;59(11):1078-86

Sampling of Metabolic Armaggedon :

Wadzinski J, (et al) J Am Board Fam Med 2007 Sept-Oct;20(5):499-502

The Heroes in the Fight award was well-deserved for being recognized in your local (large) community, for doing things outside of this blog that most readers do not know, how much you do to support the mental health community Philip.

The perfect irony in the award being given by Lilly was that the ZYPREXA DOCUMENTS THEY NEVER WANTED THE PUBLIC TO READ (hidden data, you know, lawsuit material)are hosted right on this site and for FREE.

Reader support and freelance writing by an award winning journalist(Seattle Weekly, Good Cop, Sad Cop awarded by MHA)among other awards are reason why people read this site by the thousands.

fraud buster, you are a twit.

McManamy has a plaque too from NAMI CT. In the long run, what is the plaque good for, cept to put on the wall and gather dust?

Philip is a person of integrity. McManamy isn't, he is a bloody hypocrite, and as for Goodwin- I am still - like that 16 Sox- Say it ain't so. I am hoping it will be a bad dream and I can wake up.

Hubris, Karma, it's nasty. But it will get you in the end.

JC:

Thank you for your post. It was informative, as always. I have my own set of points.

First, Dr. Goodwin and his guest explicitly mentioned SSRI-induced akathasia in rare instances in vulnerable individuals.

Second, you are correct that there are instances where someone taking an SSRI without a previous psychiatric history develops abnormal thoughts and behaviour. However, the opposite is also true, and should not be forgotten. My understanding of Dr. Goodwin’s point was that even when there is a previous history of psychiatric problems, that history is downplayed and the SSRI use is highlighted, because it is more sensational, even if inaccurate. Perhaps we can agree that these situations should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, and when a psychiatric history is present, then that should be taken into consideration, and when it is not present, then the burden upon the medication is much higher.

Third, I agree that suicidal ideation and gestures should be taken seriously, and so does Dr. Goodwin in his broadcast. He and his guest explicitly stated that they should be taken seriously as cries for help that require clinical attention. They never implied that they were minor and should be ignored. Their only point, as far as I understand, was that an increase in suicidal ideation does not mean an increase in completed suicides, which was what the media reports implied. They wanted to bring more balance to the story by highlighting those facts, but do not confuse an attempt to avoid one extreme – “antidepressants cause people to commit suicide!” – with another – “antidepressants never cause people to commit suicide!” – because the reality is often in between – “in rare cases, antidepressants can cause dysphoric states that result in suicidal ideation and gestures, and even rarer, completed suicides”.

Fourth, I would not minimize the “nonsense about correlation and non-correlations”, because statistics is the best tool we have to derive objective facts about the world that cannot be explained by simple chance. We underestimate the role of chance in our lives and assume causal relationships where often there are none. There are several confounding factors that contribute to this fact. Therefore, we must use controlled studies to help differentiate random chance from genuine causation, and thus are stuck with the “nonsense” that you mentioned earlier, I’m afraid. :)

Fifth, thank you for the studies about the Valproate and PCOS in bipolar women. They confirm what we both agreed upon, which was that Valproate increases the chance of developing PCOS in women, whether bipolar, epileptic or otherwise. I never disputed that fact, and stated that the incidence was around 9-15%, but that the incidence of spontaneous PCOS in bipolar and epileptic women was still unclear, and thus the true incidence of Valproate-induced PCOS remains unknown. However, it is certainly higher than PCOS rates in the general population, and thus should be monitored for in all patients on Valproate. I hope we agree on that, as well.

Flawedplan:

Do you believe that human beings have aggressive instincts grounded in our evolutionary history that are largely inhibited by societal restrictions, e.g. legal authorities, cultural norms, etc?

Just wondering.

I believe human aggression is not inhibited by cultural norms, moral instructions, law, restrictions or any hapless but necessary social engineering of our civilized world.

I believe aggression is triggered by subjective experience of fear, frustration, and vengeance.

Goodwin's social aggression is extra sickening because it is not evidently rooted in these visceral elements; he presents well, yes? In my judgment his advocacy of drugging young dark people is rooted in all the above, and attenuated by the opportunism in exploiting racial prejudice for the sake of perceived material gain.

At the least it's clear what he's done for prestige and profit is pander to the backward fears, frustrations and resentments of the normal, respectable and white majority with no regard for the poor, uneducated, and conveniently disenfranchised instruments of his own and like-minded aggressors.

Ugh, sorry about the grammar, am off to inhale coffee.

Flawedplan:

So human aggression is not inhibited by the law. Those who have an impulse to assault, rob or kill someone would engage in those impulses to the same rate in societies with laws versus those without any? If we abolished all rules and regulations, then there would be no increase in violence and aggression? In times when anarchy reigns, there is no looting, increase in murder, rape and pillaging?

Perhaps the subjective experiences that you cited -- fear, frustration and vengeance --occur more commonly in dangerous and threatening environments where life is unpredictable due to the absence of laws and regulations? Wouldn't you feel afraid in such an environment? Wouldn't your fear make you do things that you otherwise wouldn't had you been in a safe environment?

Also, why is social engineering "necessary"? What is its use? What does it do that makes it essential in some way?

Thanks!

Welp must say I find it amusing to be interrogated about what it means to live dangerously but what the hell. To your first question yes dguller, people rob, rape and kill even in America where doing so is against the law.

Second, if we abolished all laws there would be an increase in mayhem, since those who are held in check by consequences would lose incentive not to act badly.

As for the benefits of social engineering, I give you post-genocide Rwanda, where forgiveness and reconciliation is public policy under the benign dictatorship of his Excellency, Paul Kagame.

Flawedplan:

You wrote:

(1) "I believe human aggression is not inhibited by cultural norms, moral instructions, law, restrictions or any hapless but necessary social engineering of our civilized world."

(2) "if we abolished all laws there would be an increase in mayhem, since those who are held in check by consequences would lose incentive not to act badly."

Help me understand how (1) and (2) do not contradict each other.

Thanks!

Flawedplan:

Oh, and you're the one who said that social engineering was "hapless but necessary". I'd like to know why it is necessary?

Thanks!

(1) "I believe human aggression is not inhibited by cultural norms, moral instructions, law, restrictions or any hapless but necessary social engineering of our civilized world."

(2) "if we abolished all laws there would be an increase in mayhem, since those who are held in check by consequences would lose incentive not to act badly."

You know the difference between murder and aggression? Perhaps you see a contradiction because we have different definitions of the latter. I think it should go without saying that if more people could get away with violent mayhem we would see more violent mayhem.

But my definition of human aggression pertains in this discussion to the subject you're avoiding; mass drugging of black kids proposed by a massive asshole. Which would be an infliction.

---

You can poo-poo the necessity of social engineering, but get back to me once you've spent time studying a government that has no other option and where the most riveting attempt at changing the psychology of a citizenry happens to be taking place in our own time, on the world stage.

http://www.nurc.gov.rw/

Flawedplan:

First, I think that we can now agree that human institutions are essential to restraining aggressive impulses in people, and that when those institutions collapse, often the worst elements of our natures come out and result in "mayhem", as you put it.

Second, I was not "poo-poo"ing the necessity of social engineering. I happen to agree with you that it is essential. You are the one who called it "hapless", which means "unlucky, unfortunate". So, it actually was you who was speaking in a derogatory fashion about it, not me.

Third, look at what Dr. Goodwin said that got him in such trouble in 1992:

"Now, one could say that if some of the loss of social structure in this society, and particularly within the high impact inner-city areas, has removed some of the civilizing evolutionary things that we have built up and that may be it isn't just the careless use of the word when people call certain areas of certain cities jungles, that we may have gone back to what might be more natural, without all the social controls that we have imposed upon ourselves as a civilization over thousands of years in our evolution."

In other words, in inner city regions where the restraining elements of human society have broken down, the more natural and primitive parts of our evolutionary heritage -- which yes, we do share with other primates -- becomes free to result in "mayhem", as you put it.

Fourth, I agree that his choice of words was ill considered -- "monkeys" and "jungle" -- but that is only because of the negative connotations that have become associated with them over time in our culture. The actual denotation, or first-rank meaning, is absolutely scientifically accurate. That said, black people are not monkeys, and neither are the hispanics or caucasians who live in inner cities who are also engaged in violent crime. Once again, the content of what he said was almost entirely correct, but the manner in which he said it was dubious, and so he was publicly crucified.

Fifth, Dr. Goodwin was hoping to identify the genetic predisposition towards violence and then intervene to prevent it from expressing itself fully or modify it once it has been expressed. Yes, in hindsight, that is looking to be a dubious possibility, becuase of the complexity of genetics and the environment's interaction with our genes. I happen to put more stock in the environment's impact on children, and that that would be the most appropriate intervention. I am unaware of Dr. Goodwin proposing to mass drug an entire population. Perhaps you could dig up the quote?

Finally, I just want to say that I do condemn Dr. Goodwin for using words that are highly charged in America, and that he should have chosen them more carefully, and I think that his stepping down from his position was the appropriate course of action. However, I do not believe that being insensitive in one's language makes one an explicit racist who deliberately says things to insult an entire people.

Take care.

Be that as it may I stand by my carefully chosen words. The pursuit is hapless I declare (as in cursed, unfortunate, which are synonyms) because social engineering is necessary. Not to mention unwieldy and ill-equipped to achieve an often misbegotten mission.

And Goodwin is still a racist, according to American psychiatrist Peter Breggin, one expert I hold in regard, and who killed Goodwin's Violence Initiative. As he first reported in Journal of African American Men 1:No. 3, 3-22. Winter 1995/96:

At the head of now disbanded Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA), psychiatrist Frederick Goodwin was the federal government's highest ranking psychiatrist and one of the world's leading biological psychiatrists. He was thrust into the hot lights of national media attention in early 1992 after he allegedly made remarks that compared inner city youth to monkeys who live in a jungle, and who just want to kill each other, have sex and reproduce. The statements in question were made at a February 11 meeting of the prestigious National Advisory Mental Health Council. One person in attendance, an African American government employee, was offended enough to phone the Washington Post.

Ten days of escalating media debate and criticism ensued, at the end of which Goodwin issued an apology. On February 21, 1992 he said he had "learned all too painfully that the absence of malice or bad intentions does not excuse the insensitivity" of his comments, adding, "In an effort to shed light on the violence problem, I juxtaposed primate research to the problems in our cities in a careless way. I regret this insensitivity."

Media controversy continued, but as yet no one had seen the actual transcript of Goodwin's speech to the National Advisory Mental Health Council. Meanwhile, Goodwin resigned as head of ADAMHA; but Louis Sullivan immediately appointed him to a post he was already scheduled to assume, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Goodwin remained well-placed to lead the Violence Initiative.

The media coverage of Goodwin's apparently racist remarks was considerable, and Congressman John Conyers, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, demanded Goodwin's resignation. ...In an effort to lend support to Congressman John Conyers, Ginger Ross Breggin and I visited his office on March 17, 1992. There we read the newly arrived verbatim transcript of Goodwin's remarks to the National Advisory Mental Health Council. The transcript not only confirmed Goodwin's comparison between monkeys and inner-city youth, it contained something far more threatening. The government was indeed planning a program of urban biomedical social control aimed at identifying and treating children with presumed genetic and biological "vulnerabilities" that might make them prone to violence in later years.

Goodwin described this inner city psychiatric intervention as "one of the planning initiatives that is the top priority of the agency now for its planning for the future-and what we mean here is the 1994 budget."

Goodwin emphasized NlMH's unique expertise and role in identifying the vulnerable individual-the youngster who might grow up to be violent. He spoke of "early detection" and "preventive interventions." While he acknowledged that "psychosocial variables" do contribute to crime, he focused on psychiatric concepts of "impulsivity," "biological correlates" and "genetic factors." He said that genetic factors in violence and crime "are very strong."

He discussed the need to identify specific populations for "extensive and expensive productive interventions." Because the interventions would be costly, it would be necessary to "narrow your focus on your population that you are going to intervene in" to "hone down to something under 100,000."

Goodwin noted the public's concern over violent crime, and suggested that there would be more political support or "leverage" for focusing on individuals rather than on social reform or "large social engineering of society." He cited gun control as an example of social engineering that would draw less support than focusing on individual criminals. It was in this overall context that Goodwin had made his comparison between inner-city youth and monkeys in a jungle:

If you look, for example, at male monkeys, especially in the wild, roughly half of them survive to adulthood. The other half die by violence. That is the natural way of it for males, to knock each other off and, in fact, there are some interesting evolutionary implications of that because the same hyperaggressive monkeys who kill each other are also hypersexual, so they copulate more and therefore they reproduce more to offset the fact that half of them are dying. Now, one could say that if some of the loss of structure in this society, and particularly in the high impact inner city areas, has removed some of the civilizing evolutionary things that we have built up and that maybe it isn't t just careless use of the word when people call certain areas of certain cities jungles, that we may have gone back to what might be more natural, without all of the social controls that we have imposed upon ourselves as a civilization over thousands of years in our own evolution.

...By the spring of 1992, the government was trying to evade the flak that Goodwin had drawn over his comparison between monkeys and urban youth living in a jungle.

No kidding. Breggin's entire report can be read here:

http://www.breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53

Flawedplan:

First, Dr. Beggin appears to have fallen short of calling Dr. Goodwin's remarks definitively racist, since he says that they are "apparently racist". They are not definitively racist, because his words can be construed to have an alternative, scientifically valid interpretation.

Namely, that we share an evolutionary heritage with other primates, and that includes aggressive and reproductive instincts, which are inhibited to a great degree by human culture and civilization. To remove those restraints would allow those primitive instincts free reign and result in a great deal of mayhem.

Yes, his words could also be interpreted to be stating that inner city youth are monkeys living in a jungle, but do you honestly believe that a person of his reputation in the scientific community would explicitly state such an overtly racist statement in a public forum? Also, I wonder if those who were offended by his "apparently racist" statement are similarly offended by his implication that white and latino inner city youth who commmit violent crime are also monkeys?

Perhaps this entire affair is in the eye of the beholder. Those who seek to find objectionable things in his statements will naturally interpret them in the most negative light, and those who seek to absolve him will do the oppositive.

I doubt that he was being racist, but was being insensitive and should have been more careful in his remarks. That being said, the onus is upon those who give him a negative interpretation to demonstrate why a man of his intelligence would in full public view make overtly racist statements.

Flawedplan:

Oh, and one more thing. I appreciate that you chose your words carefully, but I would still like you to consider their implications.

You say that social engineering is unfortunate BECAUSE it is necessary. So, if it is necessary to have social norms and structure in order to restrain our primitive and aggresive urges, then that is an unfortunate state of affairs?

Does that mean that you would prefer that there would be no social order or structure? That there be chaos and anarchy? I highly doubt that that is what you mean, because that is absurd.

So, you must mean that in a perfect world, there would be no need of such social control, because that everyone would spontaneously gravitate towards the good. Is that what you mean?

If it is, then your criticism of those who attempt to address social problems with various programs appears quite toothless, and essentially comes down to: "Well, in a perfect world, this would be unnecessary, but given the fact that we live in an imperfect world, I still condemn you for trying to change it for the better!" It is certainly a shame that we do not live in a perfect world -- that is unfortunate -- but the world we live in has several problems that need to be addressed.

I guess what I am asking you is: Is your problem with Dr. Goodwin's attempt to create social programs to address inner city violence, or with social engineering in general? If not in general, then what forms are acceptable and what forms are unacceptable?

Thanks!

Perhaps ...those who seek to find objectionable things in his statements will naturally interpret them in the most negative light

Perhaps. And perhaps you're slipping into smarmy strawman argument by painting your opponent as a crazy irrational hyper-sensitive uber-bitch who's finely-tuned sense of grievance seeks to be offended at the expense of the innocent.

And perhaps you're experiencing cognitive dissonance in presenting yourself as an apologist for a white supremacist. Who's to say?

Perhaps this entire affair is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps well duh. Goodwin's remarks aren't a question of science but behavior, which is open to interpretation. People interpret behavior in line with their phenomenology, do you agree?

So having read Breggin's report and seen the African American community's response to Goodwin's poetics and proposal is that your interpretation -- that black people are just looking to be aggrieved by the innocent going about their important business, minding their affairs? Think about the aggrieved's phenomenology, and think how it differs from Goodwin's and your own. Where necessary, stretch.

It seems you are quibbling with subjectivity, when you could be musing on the entirely comprehensible boundary between us. If you're going to be a psychiatrist you'll have to get over that.

Flawedplan:

I never thought you were crazy or irrational. I just thought that it was interesting that where Dr. Goodwin's remarks could be given an innocuous meaning or a sinister meaning, you chose the sinister meaning. I was curious why you wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt, and the only conclusion is that your hostility skewed your interpretation of his remarks towards the negative.

I do not believe that black people are looking to be aggrieved. They are naturally sensitive to even the hint of racism in one's remarks, as any oppressed group would do. Again, Dr. Goodwin should have chosen his words more carefully, but not because their direct meaning was inaccurate or racist, but that their indirect meaning could have been undedrstood as racist. However, just because someone's words CAN be racist does not mean that they ARE racist. Appearance-reality distinction here.

And I am not quibbling about anything. You used extremely hostile language to describe Dr. Goodwin,and I simply disagree that his linguistic imprecision implies that he is an evil racist monster. That's all.

I am hostile to Goodwin and his ilk. Let's establish that. And thank you for yet another interesting and spirited debate, dguller.

Flawedplan:

The appreciation is certainly mutual. :)