I want to make something completely clear. This is not a battle blog. It is a foil to some of the “thinking” blogs that have been posted recently, but it in no way constitutes an attack. It is merely a separate perspective.

Those of you who don't like intellectual discussions should activate the “I” chip in your computers and block this...or just turn away now.

There was a time when the psychological sciences focused on what was called “psychotherapy.” It involved going to an office and talking a lot about what worried you or what troubled you. Often, using this method, it can take years for the patient and doctor to determine where the source of the trouble is, then it can take even longer for them to resolve it so that the patient feels better about the whole problem.

The classic example is a fictitious woman we'll call Milly. Milly has a spider placed on her shoulder by a mean little boy in school. It scared her terribly, and she doesn't even feel like going to school the next day, but she has to. The boy is punished, but Milly continues to avoid spiders because of her memory of the trauma. Now, she is thirty years old. She sprays her entire house with bug spray each night for fear a spider may climb on her while she sleeps. She has to have a co-worker kill any spiders she sees at her job immediately or she can't continue her work. Milly also refuses to return to any restaurant, bar, or friends house where she has been and seen a spider there. She feels terrible inside, and ashamed. The psychotherapist goes through many long sessions to “return” her to the initial source of the trauma and then helps her develop coping strategies to confront her fears.

This whole concept is based on an idea that is a Victorian philosophy, that if you can name something then you have power over that thing.

Then along came B.F. Skinner who said: Bullshit.

He took a look at this and challenged the scientific community to point to a lot of these things that they claimed were inside someone's head. He could see a brain. With the right equipment he could see chemical or electrical changes in the brain. But where are feelings. Where can you point and say: “Ah! I see where the emotional trauma is!” He noted that while psychotherapy can affect people, it was based on an ideal that was nearly a hundred years old and in drastic need of re-working. Most importantly, it was almost completely lacking in empiricism.

A quick note for the casual reader. Empirical thought is based on the idea that there are certain things that are clear observable facts. Things that can be measured with mathematical data. A liter of water at room temperature weighs one kilogram. That's an empirical fact because it can be measured and it is fairly standardized. The “fact” that Sarah Palin is a bitch might be popular conjecture, but it's something that can be debated and any scale of measurement would consistently produce varied results. So that “fact” is not empirical.

Along comes one of the Gods of psychology, Dr. Wolpe, a student of Skinner's. Wolpe comes up with a radical idea. If emotions about a given psychological circumstance are not empirical, then should they even be a valid concern when opting for treatment?

Let's flash back to Milly and put her on another path. She goes to Dr. Wolpe and tells him of her problems. He determines he is a perfect candidate for his new procedure, Systematic Desensitization. With this procedure, instead of talking about how she feels about the spiders and determining where this all began, he simply exposes Milly to common situations in which she could encounter spiders. Eventually, Milly's drastic steps to avoid spiders subsides, and she starts dealing with them on a “normal” level...just whacking one with her shoe when she spots one where she doesn't want it.

The process of how phobias like Millys form, and why Wolpe's system works, is fascinating but not relevant here. I will be skipping it. Of interest, though, are the large numbers of people that are offended by Wolpe's system and the improvements his students and other psychologists have made upon it. Not taking the patient's feelings into consideration seems cold, clinical, and slightly disturbing when one has to imagine if humans are really nothing more than programmable meat robots.

But consider this: If Milly goes to the doctor that helps her talk through her feelings to resolve her problems (and this data is true) then the treatment may take years if not decades. During that entire time she will still be suffering, unable to lead life like most of us do. The other treatment that focuses on more empirical methods is safe, permanent, does not give the patient additional trauma...and most importantly is over with in a matter of weeks.

Now let's go back to some previously blogged-about medical situations. Having worked in the medical insurance industry I can assure you that anesthesia is dangerous. Patients who are placed under total anesthesia must be carefully monitored by one or more doctors just because the anesthesia itself can stop heart function, lung function, or cause brain damage. This is especially dangerous in patients that have neurological, cardiac, or blood-oxygen problems before they even go into surgery. Fortunately, anesthesias exist that actually allow the patient to be awake and aware in an altered state. They still might perceive anything that happens, including the pain. But the anesthesia makes those things “unimportant” to the patient.

So which is the better course of action? Medicine that eliminates your perception of pain but might kill you, or medicine that is safe but allows you to ignore the pain you feel? Psychotherapy that is sensitive to your feelings but leaves you dysfunctional for years, or a process that is over in weeks even if it makes you feel a little uncomfortable?

Obviously, the best thing in the world would be for us to have the technology of some “miracle gun” where a doctor can just point it, shoot you, and instantly cure all of your illnesses painlessly and safely.

But let me offer a new definition of “Utilitarianism” that is a bit more updated than the nineteenth-century version: “Utilitarianism is using what is available to people in the most efficient way to allow the greatest benefit to the greatest number.” Fine, maybe my definition lacks in the aspect that I haven't written volumes of textbooks about it. But I think it gets the point across. Now here's something you philosophers can finally argue about.