When I saw this on the news last night, turn to my wife and asked "so people can't even get pissed off anymore without someone turning it into an illness?"
Its riduculous that some in the science community are trying to rationalize behavior so that no one is resposible for their own actions anymore.
Caliban Darklock
· 3 years ago
There are two factors that contribute to this, which is not a new phenomenon and certainly doesn't need to be given some trendy name.
Factor 1 is high testosterone. So this doesn't tend to happen to women, although it's certainly not impossible.
Factor 2 is low serotonin. The layman calls this "being unhappy".
This combination leads to serious anger outbursts. If you are unhappy and you have high testosterone, you are likely to break things and hurt people.
This has been known for many years to serious bodybuilders, because it's critical to the effective use of STEROIDS. If you can't stay reasonably happy while you're cycling a powerful stack, you can end up losing it and landing in jail.
So no new information here. It's just out of the underground, where it can be misstated and screwed up by the glory hounds for a couple years before it can turn into real accepted science.
But the symptoms are real, the biology that creates them is real, and if you have this problem when you're NOT taking steroids you really do have a fundamental chemical imbalance that really can be resolved by increasing serotonin levels.
But I would first question whether the low serotonin levels aren't just because your life is crap. Drugs to regulate serotonin should be a last resort; you should first attempt to evaluate your life and fix whatever is depressing your serotonin levels.
Unfortunately, teenagers are completely impotent when it comes to altering the things that make their lives suck. Oh well. Give them drugs; we can't be expected to change our lifestyles to make our children happy.
save_the_rustbelt
· 3 years ago
My father, a very wise man with a "doctorate" in common sense and civility, called this the HUA Syndrome.
HUA = Head Up the Ass
I wonder if Merck can invent a pill for this?
Garth
· 3 years ago
Disease?!?!?! Indeed, there are several words for it: "Immature" comes to mind. As does "Asshole" "jerk" "child" and some rude ones as well.
We live in a culture of victims where personal responsibility has been thrown out the window and where you aren't special unless you are afflicted.
We need to grow up and become responsible for what we do and how we feel.
Morgan
· 3 years ago
So now if I murder someone in hot blood, I can plead IED (presuming, of course, I have a history of breaking things and hurting people)?
We used to call people with IED "hotheads". The first-line treatment was an old-fashioned remedy called "good parenting". If that didn't work, social ostracism, lack of career advancement, and legal sanctions were said to be effective at alleviating the symptoms.
I don't think it's possible to overstate how pernicious this biological/mechanistic view of behavior is, because it erodes the fundamental sense of responsibility for one's own behavior. The British doctor who writes under the pseudonym "Theodore Dalrymple" has been cataloging the outcome for years - people who "just can't keep themselves" from assaulting others, stealing their property, abandoning their children; and who inisist that unless the doctor makes the desire to do such things go away they will carry on without any responsibility for their actions as all. After all, they told him about the problem, he just didn't "fix" it.
Our (public) schools have adopted this outlook whole hog. Students exhibit behavior that screams for consequences, but there are no consequences because the student is "behavior disordered". What seems to have gotten lost is that the tried and true method for modifying behavior *is* consequences.
Andrew K
· 3 years ago
Thank you for writing about this, Professor Roberts.
I accidentally just saw a CBS “News” “report” about this, including an interview with the alchemist/soothsayer/wizard who “discovered” this so-called disease.
“This is a real disorder,” said the good doctor. Uh, no, doctor, it’s not. It’s a collection of aggravations, mostly people not paying attention to their driving, and those around them. Nowhere in this horsecrap piece of pseudo-science is any consideration given to poor driving habits of third parties, of which there are plenty, thanks mostly to people like this doctor who invent excuses for people to be irresponsible and unaccountable.
And you thought lawyers were the only ones creating their own markets for their services…..
Alexander
· 3 years ago
It may be that every emotion, physical expression, or attitude may be the result of electrochemical neural activities in our brains. If that's true, though, then any time anyone does something "bad" it's a mental disorder of some sort. It seems to me that most psychologists believe this (not without reason). However, if this is the case, then the story is completely unnewsworthy--the media could concoct an endless stream of stories about different positive and negative things individuals do, and then attribute them to likely chemical culprits in the nervous system.
What WOULD be newsworthy would be a story showing how road rage has a demonstrable chemical source while other negative behaviors have no such link. But when the article gives us no reason to believe that road rage is special, nor does it even prove that road rage is chemically founded, I don't really see what the big deal is.
Russell Nelson
· 3 years ago
I've noticed a pattern ... wherein doctors suffer from the things they specialize in. Chiropracters have bad backs, podiatrists have bad feet, ophthalmologists are nearsighted, and psychiatrists are crazy. Q.E.D.
Half Sigma
· 3 years ago
Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?
Hmmm, interesting. I thought you were a libertarian. I guess not.
Keith
· 3 years ago
"Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?"
I think the point is that socialism makes people think nothing is their fault or responsibility and that everything should be fixable by somebody else. The pharmaceuticals industry is simply filling a market need based on their customers' irrational beliefs. There's nothing wrong with individuals having irrational beliefs until the socialists decide everybody is required to have them.
B's Freak
· 3 years ago
Another reminder of the timelessness of the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper".
Swimmy
· 3 years ago
"Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?"
People should be free to waste their money on medicine that quack scientists have sold them on, certainly. And libertarian bloggers should feel welcome to criticize said quacks. What should not happen is a change to our legal structure or penal system because a doctor has waved his moneymaking wand.
Bob White
· 3 years ago
This is isolated anecdotal evidence, but a dozen years ago when I first started taking anti-depressants, I tried taking two Prozac capsules per day rather than one. I became subject to seemingly uncontrollable fits of rage. Rationally, consciously I could feel myself overreacting and thinking to myself, "Stop shouting. This isn't getting you anywhere". When I adjusted the dosage, the urge to "explode" went away.
This is not to say that I couldn't have controlled the urge, but what felt so bizarre was just having the strong urge to begin with.
Luckily, my experience was induced pharmaceutically and was easily corrected. To say that others could not possibly be dealing with similar afflictions seems ignorant and dismissive to me.
Half Sigma
· 3 years ago
"People should be free to waste their money on medicine that quack scientists have sold them on, certainly."
It's amazing how stupid people are. I know someone who insists upon a highly bogus diet because she's convinced it's for her health, and nothing I do can talk her out of it.
I think there is a huge negative externality when people make money by getting other people to do stuff that actually HARMS their health.
Keith
· 3 years ago
Quote from Half Sigma: "I think there is a huge negative externality when people make money by getting other people to do stuff that actually HARMS their health."
Well, as long as we have a huge population of do-gooders like yourself that are more than willing to step in to protect us, then we should be just fine.
Tell me, do you have any little vices that maybe we could save you from?
Marie
· 3 years ago
Keith, she said "friend" and that's what "friends" and family do. We interfere in each others' lives. We tell you that your boyfriend is all wrong for you and such. We are not the state or a large corporate body. Friends, true friends, interfere because they love/care for their friends. You can't buy or regulate love which is why I (and I guess others) are opposed to the State or some mass of strangers who don't care about me as an individual making decisions that would harm me.
Didn't know that libertarianism was anti- friends and family.
Sheldon Richman
· 3 years ago
Good post, Russell. Of course, Thomas Szasz has been writing about this witch-doctory for roughly half a century. Someday his courage will be appreciated -- maybe even by libertarians.
George Anderson
· 3 years ago
I like your site and agree with most of the comments. I am a major provider of anger management classes for volunteer and mandated clients.
These classes begin with a pre and post test which focuses of stress, anger, communication and emotional intelligence. The class teaches skills in these four areas.
Anger is a normal human emotion. It is a problem when it is too intense, occurs too frequently, is harmful to self or others or leads to violence.
L K Tucker
· 3 years ago
IED has existed as Culture Bound Syndromes for centuries. CBS's are disturbing behaviors that are limited to ethnic cultures. Many of the syndromes involve attacks on people and things. Amok is a sudden violent attack in Malaysia. Often the attacker must be killed to stop the attack. Going Postal is the name used for the same event in the United States. Here the shooter often commits suicide.
Understanding causation is more complex. The phenomenon to cause these syndromes was accidentally found in the 1960's. Office workers using newly designed close-spaced workstations began having mental breaks. The designers of Systems Furniture, cubicles, believe the phenomenon only causes a harmless temporary period of confusion and pseudo-psychotic behavior.
Those designers and psychologists did not understand what they found. They failed to understand it is a problem of physiology not offices. The "special circumstances" that allow exposure from Subliminal Distraction are so simple they can be created anywhere even primitive societies.
When the mental event happens in ethnic cultures they attach a local explanation and reason for causation. Often this involves magic, hexing, or the breaking of taboos.
The office design problem is unknown in any area of mental health professional services. No one is screening patients for exposure.
My site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net, is a collection of cases to establish that the phenomenon is a major stressor for many disorders.
Alcohol Testing Den
· 3 years ago
In your post entitled “Fake Science on Rage,” you said that according to the WebMD story “To qualify as intermittent explosive disorder, those attacks must not have been linked to drugs, alcohol, or conditions such as depression.”
Question: When people experience fits of rage while driving and these outbursts of anger ARE associated to alcohol, drugs, or depression, what do the psychiatrists call this?
You concluded your post with the following: “Psychiatry is intellectually and morally bankrupt.” Have you been reading a little too much information about Tom Cruise and his scholarly views about psychiatry?
J
· 1 year ago
I have IED, and it is nothing I am proud of or boast about. I do not consider myself a jerk, nor do most other people (unless they are lying to me). I work on a customer service oriented IT help desk where I consistently receive communication telling me that I am one of the nicest and most helpful people they have ever spoken with. Yet, when certain events hit me just right (generally very stressful events) my thoughts becomes incredibly hazy and for some reason I end up screaming and generally breaking something (either an object, or something on myself), and only then am I able to think clear enough to understand the situation.
It is not completely a matter of "good parenting." My parents are two of the most thoughtful caring people I know of. When I was diagnosed with cancer as a child, I constantly depended on their love and support, and they never let me down. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying they are perfect, but I have never done drugs or drank, am fairly spiritual, and have been told that I have very high morals. To the point that when no one else in my wife's family would, we took in her ailing grandmother, moved her out of her condemnable, decaying house and was by her side when she had a heart-attack and passed away in our home.
Psychologically, I have no history of depression, never had serious suicidal/homicidal thoughts. No previous family history of mental disorders outside of my uncle who was a Vietnam vet, and even his have been easily controlled. I have no constant thoughts on hurting people, or any regular desire to destroy property, mine or otherwise. I do not have any hormonal conditions related to high testosterone. In fact, I am on the borderline for low testosterone. Yet when the situation is right, I cannot control myself, I have no clear thoughts on the situation, and when enough damage is done (which is grossly disproportionate to the situation that set me off), I will calm down.
I do not claim any lack of responsibility on my behavior, I openly admit (and regret) the results of the episode, and do what I can to repair them at any cost. I have gone to anger management counseling and it worked for a long time, but eventually the problem was no longer controlled by therapy or calming techniques. I am now on a path of trying different medications in combination with stress/anger management techniques.
I have a problem, I admit I have a problem, and am trying everything within my power to fix it. I do not see how I am not claiming responsibility for my actions. I am using every available avenue of help I can to fix the problem, not just for me, but for my family and friends, because they deserve better than that.
However, according to Chris (Comment 1) the medical community is rationalizing a reason for me to be lax in my responsibility.
According to save_the_rustbelt (Comment 3), there is no issue and either I or the professionals trying to help me, just have our "heads up our asses". According to Garth (Comment 4), I am just immature, a jerk, and an asshole and I just need to grow up. And according to Morgan (Comment 5) my parents should be taught better parenting skills, I need to socially ostracized, fired from my career, and legally punished to fix my problems.
All Comments
When I saw this on the news last night, turn to my wife and asked "so people can't even get pissed off anymore without someone turning it into an illness?"
Its riduculous that some in the science community are trying to rationalize behavior so that no one is resposible for their own actions anymore.
There are two factors that contribute to this, which is not a new phenomenon and certainly doesn't need to be given some trendy name.
Factor 1 is high testosterone. So this doesn't tend to happen to women, although it's certainly not impossible.
Factor 2 is low serotonin. The layman calls this "being unhappy".
This combination leads to serious anger outbursts. If you are unhappy and you have high testosterone, you are likely to break things and hurt people.
This has been known for many years to serious bodybuilders, because it's critical to the effective use of STEROIDS. If you can't stay reasonably happy while you're cycling a powerful stack, you can end up losing it and landing in jail.
So no new information here. It's just out of the underground, where it can be misstated and screwed up by the glory hounds for a couple years before it can turn into real accepted science.
But the symptoms are real, the biology that creates them is real, and if you have this problem when you're NOT taking steroids you really do have a fundamental chemical imbalance that really can be resolved by increasing serotonin levels.
But I would first question whether the low serotonin levels aren't just because your life is crap. Drugs to regulate serotonin should be a last resort; you should first attempt to evaluate your life and fix whatever is depressing your serotonin levels.
Unfortunately, teenagers are completely impotent when it comes to altering the things that make their lives suck. Oh well. Give them drugs; we can't be expected to change our lifestyles to make our children happy.
My father, a very wise man with a "doctorate" in common sense and civility, called this the HUA Syndrome.
HUA = Head Up the Ass
I wonder if Merck can invent a pill for this?
Disease?!?!?! Indeed, there are several words for it: "Immature" comes to mind. As does "Asshole" "jerk" "child" and some rude ones as well.
We live in a culture of victims where personal responsibility has been thrown out the window and where you aren't special unless you are afflicted.
We need to grow up and become responsible for what we do and how we feel.
So now if I murder someone in hot blood, I can plead IED (presuming, of course, I have a history of breaking things and hurting people)?
We used to call people with IED "hotheads". The first-line treatment was an old-fashioned remedy called "good parenting". If that didn't work, social ostracism, lack of career advancement, and legal sanctions were said to be effective at alleviating the symptoms.
I don't think it's possible to overstate how pernicious this biological/mechanistic view of behavior is, because it erodes the fundamental sense of responsibility for one's own behavior. The British doctor who writes under the pseudonym "Theodore Dalrymple" has been cataloging the outcome for years - people who "just can't keep themselves" from assaulting others, stealing their property, abandoning their children; and who inisist that unless the doctor makes the desire to do such things go away they will carry on without any responsibility for their actions as all. After all, they told him about the problem, he just didn't "fix" it.
Our (public) schools have adopted this outlook whole hog. Students exhibit behavior that screams for consequences, but there are no consequences because the student is "behavior disordered". What seems to have gotten lost is that the tried and true method for modifying behavior *is* consequences.
Thank you for writing about this, Professor Roberts.
I accidentally just saw a CBS “News” “report” about this, including an interview with the alchemist/soothsayer/wizard who “discovered” this so-called disease.
“This is a real disorder,” said the good doctor. Uh, no, doctor, it’s not. It’s a collection of aggravations, mostly people not paying attention to their driving, and those around them. Nowhere in this horsecrap piece of pseudo-science is any consideration given to poor driving habits of third parties, of which there are plenty, thanks mostly to people like this doctor who invent excuses for people to be irresponsible and unaccountable.
And you thought lawyers were the only ones creating their own markets for their services…..
It may be that every emotion, physical expression, or attitude may be the result of electrochemical neural activities in our brains. If that's true, though, then any time anyone does something "bad" it's a mental disorder of some sort. It seems to me that most psychologists believe this (not without reason). However, if this is the case, then the story is completely unnewsworthy--the media could concoct an endless stream of stories about different positive and negative things individuals do, and then attribute them to likely chemical culprits in the nervous system.
What WOULD be newsworthy would be a story showing how road rage has a demonstrable chemical source while other negative behaviors have no such link. But when the article gives us no reason to believe that road rage is special, nor does it even prove that road rage is chemically founded, I don't really see what the big deal is.
I've noticed a pattern ... wherein doctors suffer from the things they specialize in. Chiropracters have bad backs, podiatrists have bad feet, ophthalmologists are nearsighted, and psychiatrists are crazy. Q.E.D.
Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?
Hmmm, interesting. I thought you were a libertarian. I guess not.
"Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?"
I think the point is that socialism makes people think nothing is their fault or responsibility and that everything should be fixable by somebody else. The pharmaceuticals industry is simply filling a market need based on their customers' irrational beliefs. There's nothing wrong with individuals having irrational beliefs until the socialists decide everybody is required to have them.
Another reminder of the timelessness of the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper".
"Are you saying that laissez faire competition in the phramceuticals industry is producing BAD RESULTS that HARM SOCIETY?"
People should be free to waste their money on medicine that quack scientists have sold them on, certainly. And libertarian bloggers should feel welcome to criticize said quacks. What should not happen is a change to our legal structure or penal system because a doctor has waved his moneymaking wand.
This is isolated anecdotal evidence, but a dozen years ago when I first started taking anti-depressants, I tried taking two Prozac capsules per day rather than one. I became subject to seemingly uncontrollable fits of rage. Rationally, consciously I could feel myself overreacting and thinking to myself, "Stop shouting. This isn't getting you anywhere". When I adjusted the dosage, the urge to "explode" went away.
This is not to say that I couldn't have controlled the urge, but what felt so bizarre was just having the strong urge to begin with.
Luckily, my experience was induced pharmaceutically and was easily corrected. To say that others could not possibly be dealing with similar afflictions seems ignorant and dismissive to me.
"People should be free to waste their money on medicine that quack scientists have sold them on, certainly."
It's amazing how stupid people are. I know someone who insists upon a highly bogus diet because she's convinced it's for her health, and nothing I do can talk her out of it.
I think there is a huge negative externality when people make money by getting other people to do stuff that actually HARMS their health.
Quote from Half Sigma: "I think there is a huge negative externality when people make money by getting other people to do stuff that actually HARMS their health."
Well, as long as we have a huge population of do-gooders like yourself that are more than willing to step in to protect us, then we should be just fine.
Tell me, do you have any little vices that maybe we could save you from?
Keith, she said "friend" and that's what "friends" and family do. We interfere in each others' lives. We tell you that your boyfriend is all wrong for you and such. We are not the state or a large corporate body. Friends, true friends, interfere because they love/care for their friends. You can't buy or regulate love which is why I (and I guess others) are opposed to the State or some mass of strangers who don't care about me as an individual making decisions that would harm me.
Didn't know that libertarianism was anti- friends and family.
Good post, Russell. Of course, Thomas Szasz has been writing about this witch-doctory for roughly half a century. Someday his courage will be appreciated -- maybe even by libertarians.
I like your site and agree with most of the comments. I am a major provider of anger management classes for volunteer and mandated clients.
These classes begin with a pre and post test which focuses of stress, anger, communication and emotional intelligence. The class teaches skills in these four areas.
Anger is a normal human emotion. It is a problem when it is too intense, occurs too frequently, is harmful to self or others or leads to violence.
IED has existed as Culture Bound Syndromes for centuries. CBS's are disturbing behaviors that are limited to ethnic cultures. Many of the syndromes involve attacks on people and things. Amok is a sudden violent attack in Malaysia. Often the attacker must be killed to stop the attack. Going Postal is the name used for the same event in the United States. Here the shooter often commits suicide.
Understanding causation is more complex. The phenomenon to cause these syndromes was accidentally found in the 1960's. Office workers using newly designed close-spaced workstations began having mental breaks. The designers of Systems Furniture, cubicles, believe the phenomenon only causes a harmless temporary period of confusion and pseudo-psychotic behavior.
Those designers and psychologists did not understand what they found. They failed to understand it is a problem of physiology not offices. The "special circumstances" that allow exposure from Subliminal Distraction are so simple they can be created anywhere even primitive societies.
When the mental event happens in ethnic cultures they attach a local explanation and reason for causation. Often this involves magic, hexing, or the breaking of taboos.
The office design problem is unknown in any area of mental health professional services. No one is screening patients for exposure.
My site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net, is a collection of cases to establish that the phenomenon is a major stressor for many disorders.
In your post entitled “Fake Science on Rage,” you said that according to the WebMD story “To qualify as intermittent explosive disorder, those attacks must not have been linked to drugs, alcohol, or conditions such as depression.”
Question: When people experience fits of rage while driving and these outbursts of anger ARE associated to alcohol, drugs, or depression, what do the psychiatrists call this?
You concluded your post with the following: “Psychiatry is intellectually and morally bankrupt.” Have you been reading a little too much information about Tom Cruise and his scholarly views about psychiatry?
I have IED, and it is nothing I am proud of or boast about. I do not consider myself a jerk, nor do most other people (unless they are lying to me). I work on a customer service oriented IT help desk where I consistently receive communication telling me that I am one of the nicest and most helpful people they have ever spoken with. Yet, when certain events hit me just right (generally very stressful events) my thoughts becomes incredibly hazy and for some reason I end up screaming and generally breaking something (either an object, or something on myself), and only then am I able to think clear enough to understand the situation.
It is not completely a matter of "good parenting." My parents are two of the most thoughtful caring people I know of. When I was diagnosed with cancer as a child, I constantly depended on their love and support, and they never let me down. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying they are perfect, but I have never done drugs or drank, am fairly spiritual, and have been told that I have very high morals. To the point that when no one else in my wife's family would, we took in her ailing grandmother, moved her out of her condemnable, decaying house and was by her side when she had a heart-attack and passed away in our home.
Psychologically, I have no history of depression, never had serious suicidal/homicidal thoughts. No previous family history of mental disorders outside of my uncle who was a Vietnam vet, and even his have been easily controlled. I have no constant thoughts on hurting people, or any regular desire to destroy property, mine or otherwise. I do not have any hormonal conditions related to high testosterone. In fact, I am on the borderline for low testosterone. Yet when the situation is right, I cannot control myself, I have no clear thoughts on the situation, and when enough damage is done (which is grossly disproportionate to the situation that set me off), I will calm down.
I do not claim any lack of responsibility on my behavior, I openly admit (and regret) the results of the episode, and do what I can to repair them at any cost. I have gone to anger management counseling and it worked for a long time, but eventually the problem was no longer controlled by therapy or calming techniques. I am now on a path of trying different medications in combination with stress/anger management techniques.
I have a problem, I admit I have a problem, and am trying everything within my power to fix it. I do not see how I am not claiming responsibility for my actions. I am using every available avenue of help I can to fix the problem, not just for me, but for my family and friends, because they deserve better than that.
However, according to Chris (Comment 1) the medical community is rationalizing a reason for me to be lax in my responsibility.
According to save_the_rustbelt (Comment 3), there is no issue and either I or the professionals trying to help me, just have our "heads up our asses". According to Garth (Comment 4), I am just immature, a jerk, and an asshole and I just need to grow up. And according to Morgan (Comment 5) my parents should be taught better parenting skills, I need to socially ostracized, fired from my career, and legally punished to fix my problems.