The Loose Screw Awards -- psychology's top 10 misguided ideas.

As seen in Psychology Today.

The mental health fields have, now and then, spawned and nurtured some completely crazy ideas. Physicians in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, inflicted strange and extremely cruel treatments on their mentally ill patients based on equally bizarre theories of human nature. To try to shock schizophrenics into "regaining consciousness of the true self," for example, doctors bled them until they fainted, or blindfolded them and allowed them to fall through a trapdoor into cold water -- the so-called "Bath of Surprise." It's unlikely that such techniques had any therapeutic value.

Our own era has also produced theories and techniques of dubious worth. In the 1990s, for example, practitioners by the thousands began "facilitating communication" with nonverbal children by strategically guiding their clients' hands over keyboards. Some of these children appeared to claim that they had been sexually abused, and one even wrote a novel this way. A barrage of research soon demonstrated that the technique was nonsense; all of the ideas came from the facilitators, not the children. Unfortunately, no matter how persuasive the evidence, people often cling to bad ideas, including facilitated communication.

Here are 10 faulty concepts from the mental health professions that have yet to disappear. Sometimes their effects have been benign; other times, put into practice, such ideas have harmed many people.

We are providing a quick summation, for the full details, see the full article at the link.

Psychology's top 10 misguided ideas.


1. Projective Tests - Things like the Rorschach test, and Skinner's muffled audio tests with similar results.
2. Recovered Memories - which lead to the recall of hundreds of memories of satanic child sex abuse and other monstrosities which simply did not occur.
3. Correctional Boot Camps for the misbehaving teen
4. The Cult of Self-Esteem - rewards without accomplishment.
5. Codependency, Enabling and Tough Love
6. Mozart Babies - music education for the very young does not make them geniuses.
7. Stages of Dying never was scientifically tested, and many people are unique, any how
8. Rebirthing Therapy which led to the deaths of a few innocents.
9. Adolescent Angst - the trauma of growing up
10. Catharsis - rebirthing therapy for all the other traumas of your life, stirring up much, accomplishing nothing.

As with every thing, there is probably a kernel of truth that inspired each of these, but the kernel was so buried by the time they got rolling, nothing good came out of these efforts.