Don't Trust Your Pharmacist? Take a pill!!

If you go to a doctor when you’re sick, what’s wrong with seeing a psychologist?

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

The above question is asked by people who confuse the use of medicine with the practice of psychotherapy. Individuals making such an error assume that the medical and the mental can be thought of and talked about in the same manner and with the same terms. This error is one of using the medical model to justify the use of psychotherapy.

In the field of logic this is what is known as a false analogy. One logic text explains:

An argument from analogy draws a conclusion about something on the basis of an analogy with or resemblance to some other thing. The assumption is that if two or more things are alike in some respects, they are alike in some other respect.1

In regard to a false analogy the text says:

To recognize the fallacy of false analogy, look for an argument that draws a conclusion about one thing, event, or practice on the basis of its analogy or resemblance to others. The fallacy occurs when the analogy or resemblance is not sufficient to warrant the conclusion, as when, for example, the resemblance is not relevant to the possession of the inferred feature or there are relevant dissimilarities.2

In the medical model physical symptoms are caused by some pathogenic agent. For example, a fever may be caused by viruses; remove the pathogenic agent and you remove the symptom. Or, a person may have a broken leg; set the leg properly and the leg will heal. We have confidence in the medical model because it has worked well in the treatment of physical ailments. With the easy transfer of the model from medicine to psychotherapy, many people believe that mental problems can be thought of in the same way as physical problems.

http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/differ22.html

From Webster's 1828 Dictionary

disease

DISEASE, n. Dizeze. dis and ease.

1. In its primary sense, pain, uneasiness, distress, and so used by Spenser; but in this sense, obsolete.

2. The cause of pain or uneasiness; distemper; malady; sickness; disorder; any state of a living body in which the natural functions of the organs are interrupted or disturbed, either by defective or preternatural action, without a disrupture of parts by violence, which is called a wound. The first effect of disease is uneasiness or pain, and the ultimate effect is death. A disease may affect the whole body, or a particular limb or part of the body. We say a diseased limb; a disease in the head or stomach; and such partial affection of the body is called a local or topical disease. The word is also applied to the disorders of other animals, as well as to those of man; and to any derangement of the vegetative functions of plants.

The shafts of disease shoot across our path in such a variety of courses, that the atmosphere of human life is darkened by their number, and the escape of an individual becomes almost miraculous.

3. A disordered state of the mind or intellect, by which the reason is impaired.

4. In society, vice; corrupt state of morals. Vices are called moral diseases.

A wise man converses with the wicked, as a physician with the sick, not to catch the disease, but to cure it.

5. Political or civil disorder, or vices in a state; any practice which tends to disturb the peace of society, or impede or prevent the regular administration of government.

The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where perished.

DISEASE, v.t. dizeze.

1. To interrupt or impair any or all the natural and regular functions of the several organs of a living body; to afflict with pain or sickness to make morbid; used chiefly in the passive participle, as a diseased body, a diseased stomach; but diseased may here be considered as an adjective.

2. To interrupt or render imperfect the regular functions of the brain, or of the intellect; to disorder; to derange.

3. To infect; to communicate disease to, by contagion.

4. To pain; to make uneasy.