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Pornography has been linked to easier, better orgasms in women
This study has linked female porn consumption to orgasms that are easier to achieve and more satisfying during both masturbation and partnered sex.
A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes in women.
Photo by Oleg Elkov on Shutterstock
- A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes for women.
- Researchers had 2,433 women complete an anonymous survey in which they provided both demographic information and completed several assessments related to their sex lives. Both masturbation and partnered sex were taken into account.
- Studies like this can alter misconceptions about how porn impacts our relationships.
A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes in women. In fact, according to this new research, the use of pornography among women is associated with several positive outcomes including better orgasms that are easier to achieve.
"In this particular study, we examined whether frequency of pornography use during masturbation can predict sexual response outcomes such as difficulty reaching orgasm, latency to orgasm, and orgasmic pleasure during both masturbation and partnered sex," explains study author Sean M. McNabney.
Will watching porn really make your sex life better?
Pornography use can be related to less difficulty becoming aroused and an easier time achieving an orgasm, according to new research.
Photo by CandyBox Images on Shutterstock
In this study, researchers had 2,433 women from the United States and Hungary complete an anonymous survey, in which they provided demographic information and completed several assessments related to their sex lives. This study unearthed some very interesting observations that challenge much of the stereotypes and misconceptions people place around female porn viewing habits.
Pornography use is more common in...
Pornography use during masturbation was more common among pre-menopausal women, women who reported persistent anxiety or depression, non-heterosexual women, and women who had two or more partners.
Pornography use during masturbation was also more popular among American women than women from Hungary.
Positive outcomes related to pornography use can include...
More frequent use of pornography was related to positive outcomes during masturbation including less difficulty becoming aroused, less orgasmic difficulty, greater time to orgasm, greater orgasmic pleasure, and a higher percent of time reaching orgasm.
More frequent use of pornography for partnered sex was related to positive outcomes like less difficulty becoming aroused and greater time to orgasm.
Pornography use does not negatively impact relationships as much as many people think.
There was no association between pornography and sexual relationship satisfaction, which challenges the assumption that pornography is harmful to partnered sexual relationships.
More frequent pornography use was not associated with lower sexual responsivity. In fact, pornography use during masturbation predicted great ease becoming aroused during partnered sex.
The missing parameters of this study are important to note.
The study did not assess whether some women perceive themselves as dependent upon (or addicted to) pornography in order to achieve orgasm. This is important to note because distress resulting from pornography use may independently interfere with the female sexual response cycle.
Some other things impacted impaired sexual function in women that are worth taking note of, including lower levels of educational attainment and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression were also associated with lower relationship/sexual satisfaction.
It’s time to rethink how porn impacts our relationships
Audio porn is becoming more and more popular for its immersive and inclusive nature.
Photo by popcorner on Shutterstock
It's more common than ever for women to consume porn. Back in 2016, the average percentage of women who consumed porn was 26 percent worldwide. In 2018, that number was much higher, with 3 out of every 10 PornHub users identifying as female.
While this may be surprising to some, it really shouldn't be considering the lengths this industry has gone to in order to become inclusive, accepting, and more appealing to people of all genders and sexual orientations.
Visual porn platforms (such as PornHub) are still on top, but not for long.
In 2019, there were over 42 billion visits to PornHub, one of the largest visual porn platforms around. This means there was an average of 115 million visits to the website per day. Their statistics outline that the amount of content available on the site at any given time that year would have taken 169 years to watch.
Other visual pornography platforms have similar statistics, however there is a new kind of porn rising—and it's captivating the imagination of women, in particular.
Audio porn is offering a more widely accepted, inclusive, and all-encompassing approach to sexual health and happiness.
"Audio porn" has been around for longer than you may realize, with the first phone sex line being launched in 1977 by Gloria Leonard. The 2010s saw a rise in audio porn, with platforms like Quinn and Dipsea breaking onto the pornography scene in a big way. Now, in 2020, platforms like Audiodesires, Voxxx, and more are following suit.
Audio porn offers a more in-depth, immersive, imaginative experience for women who previously found visual sex to be off-putting, offensive, or crude. More than that, it's making the concept of pornography more "acceptable" and appreciated in mainstream media, with more attention being paid to these new platforms from sources like Yahoo and the New York Times.
Studies like this can alter misconceptions about how porn impacts our relationships.
"Some readers may be relieved to learn that pornography use is fairly common among women and is unlikely to interfere with sexual functioning during partnered relationships. Other variables such as ongoing anxiety/depression or sexual relationship dissatisfaction appear to more consistently predict sexual problems," said McNabney.
From Your Site Articles
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
18 January, 2021
Surprising Science
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
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<div class="amazon-assets-widget__title" style="display: block;">Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps</div>
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<p>Imagine it's 2045. You start hearing rumors from your well-heeled friends about a mysterious corporation based on an undisclosed island that's offering an unprecedented service: the ability to genetically design your baby.</p><p>The baby will have some of your genetics, and some genetics from a sperm or egg donor, selected by you. But the rest of your child's genetic profile will be engineered by science. These changes will make it impossible for your child to develop genetic diseases. They'll also allow you to customize your child for dozens of traits, including intelligence level, emotional disposition, sexual orientation, height, skin tone, hair color, and eye color, to name a few. </p><p>This raises unsettling philosophical questions for some customers. "When does my child stop being my child?" they ask the corporate representatives. These wary customers are reminded of how risky it is to reproduce the old-fashioned way. The Better Genetics Corporation's motto sums it up: "Only God plays dice—humans don't have to."</p><p>This is the world described in a new science-fiction series by Eugene Clark titled <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"Genetic Pressure"</a>, which explores the moral and scientific implications of a future in which designer babies are becoming a major industry. The first book begins with the story of Rachel, a renowned horse breeder who befriends a billionaire client, and soon gets the funding to visit the tropical island on which the Better Genetics Corporation is headquartered. </p><p>There, corporate executives walk her through the process of designing a baby—an experience that feels like an uncanny mix between visiting a doctor and designing a luxury car. The series is told from multiple perspectives, serving as a deep dive into a complex moral web that today's scientists may already be weaving.</p>
<blockquote>[T]he introduction of designer babies would create a labyrinth of philosophical dilemmas that society is only beginning to explore. </blockquote>
<p>Case in point: In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he had helped create the world's first genetically engineered babies. Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR on embryos, He Jiankui modified a gene called <a href="https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/CCR5" target="_blank">CCR5</a>, which enables HIV to enter and infect immune system cells. His goal was to engineer children that were immune to the virus.</p><p>It's unclear whether he succeeded. But what's certain is that the experiment shocked the international scientific community, which generally agreed that it's unethical to conduct gene-editing procedures on humans, given that scientists don't yet fully understand the consequences.</p><p>"This experiment is monstrous," Julian Savulescu, a professor of practical ethics at the University of Oxford, told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/26/worlds-first-gene-edited-babies-created-in-china-claims-scientist" target="_blank"><em>The Guardian</em></a>. "The embryos were healthy. No known diseases. Gene editing itself is experimental and is still associated with off-target mutations, capable of causing genetic problems early and later in life, including the development of cancer."</p><p>Importantly, He Jiankui wasn't treating a disease, but rather genetically engineering babies to prevent the future contraction of a virus. These kinds of changes are heritable, meaning the experiment could have major downstream effects on future generations. So, too, would a designer-baby industry, even if scientists can do it safely.</p><p>With major implications on inequality, discrimination, sexuality, and our conceptions of life, the introduction of designer babies would create a labyrinth of philosophical dilemmas that society is only beginning to explore. </p>
<a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" ><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2MTEzNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDcxMzY4M30.5fwCPH_6sQ0RF19aAH4FQFue9HFJykzdEc0Xka1TY04/img.jpg?width=980" id="affdd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="76374e8775bd9441a338cf513bb1fa55" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="924" data-height="520" /></a>
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>
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Designer uses AI to bring 54 Roman emperors to life
It's hard to stop looking back and forth between these faces and the busts they came from.
05 October, 2020
Meet Emperors Augustus, left, and Maximinus Thrax, right
Credit: Daniel Voshart
Technology & Innovation
- A quarantine project gone wild produces the possibly realistic faces of ancient Roman rulers.
- A designer worked with a machine learning app to produce the images.
- It's impossible to know if they're accurate, but they sure look plausible.
<p>Imaginative as humans are, it's often hard not to see historical figures depicted in black-and-white photos as being somehow of another species. Confronted with colorized images can be startling — hey, they look like us — bringing home at last what they were really like. Maybe that person evens look like someone we know.</p><p>The same is true of figures whose appearance we know only from their statues, maybe even moreso. We may know their names and something about them, but, again, it's all sort of not quite real. Now cinematographer and virtual reality designer <a href="https://voshart.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Daniel Voshart</a> has published amazing, life-like images of 54 Roman emperors based on their statues. He used machine learning and filled in the (many) remaining blanks with his imagination. While he's careful to point out that his renderings are merely what these individuals <em>may</em> have looked like, they're remarkably plausible, and also remarkably familiar.</p><p>Voshart describes the whole thing as a quarantine project that got out of hand, but lots of people are excited about what he's done, and are <a href="https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Voshart" target="_blank">purchasing posters</a> of his Roman emperors.</p>
How the Roman emperors got faced
<a href="https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/6/201108/14127595/2K-ENGLISH-24x36-Educational_v8_WATERMARKED_2000.jpg" ><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTUzMzIxMX0.OwHMrgKu4pzu0eCsmOUjybdkTcSlJpL_uWDCF2djRfc/img.jpg?width=980" id="775ca" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="436000b6976931b8320313478c624c82" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="lineup of emperor faces" data-width="1440" data-height="963" /></a>Credit: Daniel Voshart
<p>Voshart's imaginings began with an AI/neural-net program called <a href="https://www.artbreeder.com" target="_blank">Artbreeder</a>. The freemium online app intelligently generates new images from existing ones and can combine multiple images into…well, who knows. It's addictive — people have so far used it to generate nearly 72.7 million images, says the site — and it's easy to see how Voshart fell down the rabbit hole.</p><p>The Roman emperor project began with Voshart feeding Artbreeder images of 800 busts. Obviously, not all busts have weathered the centuries equally. Voshart told <a href="https://www.livescience.com/ai-roman-emperor-portraits.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Live Science</a>, "There is a rule of thumb in computer programming called 'garbage in garbage out,' and it applies to Artbreeder. A well-lit, well-sculpted bust with little damage and standard face features is going to be quite easy to get a result." Fortunately, there were multiple busts for some of the emperors, and different angles of busts captured in different photographs.</p><p>For the renderings Artbreeder produced, each face required some 15-16 hours of additional input from Voshart, who was left to deduce/guess such details as hair and skin coloring, though in many cases, an individual's features suggested likely pigmentations. Voshart was also aided by written descriptions of some of the rulers.</p><p>There's no way to know for sure how frequently Voshart's guesses hit their marks. It is obviously the case, though, that his interpretations look incredibly plausible when you compare one of his emperors to the sculpture(s) from which it was derived.</p><p>For an in-depth description of Voshart's process, check out his posts on <a href="https://medium.com/@voshart/photoreal-roman-emperor-project-236be7f06c8f" target="_blank">Medium</a> or on his <a href="https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>.</p><p>It's fascinating to feel like you're face-to-face with these ancient and sometimes notorious figures. Here are two examples, along with some of what we think we know about the men behind the faces.</p>Caligula
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MzQ1NTE5NX0.LiTmhPQlygl9Fa9lxay8PFPCSqShv4ELxbBRFkOW_qM/img.jpg?width=980" id="7bae0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce795c554490fe0a36a8714b86f55b16" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Caligula, left
Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula" target="_blank">Caligula</a></span> was the third Roman Emperor, ruling the city-state from AD 37 to 41. His name was actually Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus — Caligula is a nickname meaning "Little Boot."</p><p>One of the reputed great madmen of history, he was said to have made a horse his consul, had conversations with the moon, and to have ravaged his way through his kingdom, including his three sisters. Caligula is known for extreme cruelty, terrorizing his subjects, and accounts suggest he would deliberately distort his face to surprise and frighten people he wished to intimidate.</p><p>It's <a href="https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-caligula" target="_blank">not totally clear</a> if Caligula was as over-the-top as history paints him, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from churning out some <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">howlers</a> in his name.</p><p>A 1928 journal, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172009" target="_blank">Studies in Philology</a>, noted that contemporary descriptions of Caligula depicted him as having a "head misshapen, eyes and temples sunken," and "eyes staring and with a glare savage enough to torture." In some sculptures not shown above, his head <em>is</em> a bit acorn-shaped. </p>Nero
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NTAwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTQ2ODU0NX0.AgYuQZzRQCanqehSI5UeakpxU8fwLagMc_POH7xB3-M/img.jpg?width=980" id="a8825" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9e0593d79c591c97af4bd70f3423885e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Nero, left
Credit: Bibi_Saint-Pol/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p>There's a good German word for the face of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nero</a>, that guy famous for fiddling as Rome burned. It's "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Backpfeifengesicht" target="_blank">backpfeifengesicht</a>." Properly named Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, he was Rome's fifth emperor. He ruled from AD 54 until his suicide in AD 68.</p><p>Another Germanicus-family gem, Nero's said to have murdered his own mother, Agrippa, as well as (maybe) his second wife. As for the fiddling, he <em>was</em> a lover of music and the arts, and there are stories of his charitability. And, oh yeah, he may have set the fire as an excuse to rebuild the city center, making it his own.</p><p>While it may not be the most historically sound means of assessing an historical personage, Voshart's imagining of Nero does suggest an over-indulged, entitled young man. Backpfeifengesicht.</p>
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A psychiatric diagnosis can be more than an unkind ‘label’
A popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields.
19 January, 2021
Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Sotheby's
Mind & Brain
When I was training as a clinical psychologist, I had a rotation in a low-cost psychotherapy clinic.
<p> Among the first people I met was a young man who believed that he might be responsible for harm coming to his family if he didn't engage in time-consuming rituals, including arranging his shoes very particularly for up to half an hour. The logic motivating this man's behaviour was notably rather magical and unrealistic, appealing to notions of spirit possession and evil, which were culturally alien to his family. My supervisor, a sensitive and empathic clinician, who believed that most issues could be addressed by attentive listening and interpretation, tended to have a single diagnostic concern. The central question for him was whether the person was experiencing anxiety or manifesting the early symptoms of a psychosis. The latter ought to receive a more thorough assessment and more support than our clinic could offer.</p><p>Because of the magical quality to this person's reasoning, my supervisor decided that this might be an early sign of psychosis. He instructed me to refer the man to a new research clinic near my training site, which specialised in treating and researching the 'at risk' state for psychosis.</p><p>Of course, sensible and cautious though this seemed to me, it entailed telling this young man that he could not be seen by us for talking therapy. Instead, he should go to a clinic that specialised in something serious and frightening-sounding. When I broke the news, he was devastated. He left our clinic, and I later learned that he never followed up with the referral.</p>
<p>What I failed to appreciate at the time – and what some remedial reading later painfully revealed to me – was that, rather than being an early manifestation of psychosis, this man's presentation was more likely a case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a common condition in which people develop obsessive thoughts and feel compelled to engage in actions to prevent feared harms. If I'd had the diagnostic knowledge and confidence to assert this to my supervisor during the initial consultation, the man I met would likely have received help, rather than being referred to an inappropriate clinic that led to him falling through the cracks.</p><p>Yet, a popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields, and should be left to psychiatrists, if at all. This is not a fringe view, it has been perennially present in clinical psychology since at least the 1960s, when the iconoclastic psychiatrists Thomas Szasz and R D Laing presented a dual challenge to their profession.</p><p>Szasz, a Hungarian émigré to the United States, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1961-01456-001" target="_blank">argued</a> that mental illness is a 'myth', rooted in a misuse of language. Neurological diseases are real, Szasz suggested, because they can be confirmed by a postmortem examination of the brain. In contrast, he argued that psychiatric 'illness' has no such neurological basis, and is just a medicalised way of talking about problems in life that could be solved by taking responsibility for yourself and your actions.</p><p>Meanwhile, Laing, a Scot who trained at the Tavistock Institute in London, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/274343/the-divided-self-by-r-d-laing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">argued</a> in <em>The Divided Self</em> (1960) that psychosis is a psychic response to an increasingly alienated 'false self' obscuring the true emotional core of an individual. He held that so-called 'symptoms' (hearing voices, believing unusual things) were actually attempts at recovery in the face of this alienation.</p>
<p>These ideas resonated and had significant influence over psychiatric thinking throughout the 1960s. They contributed to diagnostic approaches to mental health – the idea that there are illnesses called schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression – becoming decidedly <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-psychiatrist-who-didn-t-believe-in-mental-illness" target="_blank">unfashionable</a>. Indeed Szasz's and Laing's critiques became so popular that already by the early 1970s, the influential US clinical psychologist Paul Meehl grumbled in his 1973 paper 'Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences' about an 'antinosological' (ie, antidiagnostic) bias taking hold in his profession.</p><p>Recently, the animus against psychiatric diagnosis has become more formal and scientifically argued. The British Psychological Society's Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) – one of the official bodies representing the profession – published <a href="https://dxrevisionwatch.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/position-statement-on-diagnosis-master-doc.pdf" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="http://www.newvisionformentalhealth.com/2018/01/26/guidelines-on-language-in-relation-to-functional-psychiatric-diagnosis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">documents</a> in 2013 and 2015 articulating the difficulties with diagnosis, and promoting instead the value of individualised 'formulations'. While it is clear that the DCP's position on diagnosis is not universally held by practitioners in the UK, British psychologists are around half as likely to report regular use of a diagnostic classificatory system as their colleagues in some other countries (for <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207594.2013.804189" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">example</a>, fewer than 35 per cent of psychologists in the UK say that they use diagnosis regularly, compared with more than 70 per cent of psychologists in the US, Germany and South Africa). This likely reflects a UK professional culture steeped in suspicion of diagnostic thinking.</p><p>The suspicion is not unwarranted. One of the most interesting recent critiques of diagnosis has come from the Belgian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist Stijn Vanheule. He <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22903905" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">invoked</a> the philosophy of language to argue that diagnosis necessarily draws our attention to the shared meanings conjured by diagnostic language, rather than to the individual meanings inherent to people's experiences. Thus, for example, when I say 'schizophrenia', I focus attention on a generalised, clinical definition that exists in a book, rather than on the individual, personal significance of hearing voices or believing unusual things. For psychotherapists, Vanheule argued, the former is irrelevant, the latter vital.</p>
<p>These arguments are valuable, and they are correct in important ways. Their conclusions are a significant part of what inspired me to get into clinical psychology in the first place. Reading Laing as a teenager, I thrilled to the challenge he presented: to understand people as they endure the most extreme and bewildering psychic states; to try to find coherence even where it seems to be absent. This impulse is essential. Patience and careful listening can reveal that people are capable of engaging in communication more often than we tend to give them credit for. But my clinical training has shown me that, despite the importance of understanding people in an individualised way, having a knowledge of diagnostic categories is also essential.</p><p>To return to the example above, my supervisor and I were ignorant of valuable diagnostic information; we were ignorant of the ways that clinicians can distinguish magical obsessions from the early hints of delusion. We were ignorant of the fact that even quite magical ideas are well within the range of the former without shading into the latter. We were ignorant of how easy it would have been to provide effective help without raising the prospect of a terrifying psychosis down the pipeline. Our ignorance cost someone dearly.</p><p>Diagnosis is often vital for ensuring good care. Apart from the importance of ruling out organic causes for apparently straightforward instances of depression and anxiety (which can be symptomatic of a surprising range of endocrine, infectious and neurological diseases), linking psychological distress into a broader framework also helps clinicians make sense of the people they are trying to help. Certain forms of substance misuse could represent attempts at self-medication for highly treatable disorders of mood or attention, for instance. Correct identification of trauma symptoms can avert diagnosis of a psychotic illness. Proper diagnosis of depression in later life can frequently account for changes in memory and attention that might otherwise be mistaken for dementia, as unfortunately often happens. Diagnosis of bipolar mood disorder can prevent people being inappropriately treated for personality disorders.</p><p>Psychology's antinosological tendency encourages a belief that diagnostic thinking is somehow inherently unkind; that in thinking about categories you are always only 'labelling' people, and that this is an inhumane thing to do.</p>
<p>Conversely, it also encourages a belief that all you really need in mental healthcare is sympathy, rapport and interpretative heroics. This appeals to some of the questionable impulses of professionals: to our desire to see ourselves as people uniquely able to understand others, and to our ordinary human laziness. Who would want to engage in learning about taxonomy if to do so is both unkind and unnecessary?</p><p>Understanding people is a multifaceted enterprise. We all manifest a splendid idiosyncrasy, living out lives that could never be copied or repeated, so it makes sense to consider one another in the light of this uniqueness. But we also bear resemblances to one another. Important though it is to be seen in all your individuality, it is also helpful to know when your problems have precedent.</p><p>Psychiatric diagnoses are imperfect, sketchy theories about how people's minds can give them trouble. We know that they are largely less precise and valid than is popularly understood, but this does not render them totally uninformative. We have learned snippets of useful information by considering psychological problems in terms of categories: the effectiveness, or not, of treatments for particular groups of people; the elevated risk of suicide among others. Many symptoms can seem to 'make sense' in the context of a person's life, but we know that humans are sense-making machines, so we need to be vigilant against 'making sense' where it is only illusory. The great intellectual challenge of clinical psychology is to integrate knowledge about reasons and people with knowledge about causes and mechanisms. We should avoid relying solely on diagnostic information, but we shouldn't discard it altogether.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/3533ace3-823d-4522-8d68-702c1e19f406.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Huw Green</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/a-psychiatric-diagnosis-can-be-more-than-an-unkind-label" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Spinal cord injury breakthrough makes paralyzed mice walk again
Scientists regenerate damaged spinal cord nerve fibers with designer protein, helping paralyzed mice walk again.
19 January, 2021
The paralyzed mice started to walk two to three weeks following treatment.
Credit: Lehrstuhl für Zellphysiologie
Surprising Science
- Researchers from Germany use a designer protein to treat spinal cord damage in mice.
- The procedure employs gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibers that carry signals to and from the brain.
- The scientists aim to eventually apply the technique to humans.
<p>When spinal cord injuries result in paralysis, science hasn't so far been able to provide a way to repair the damage and reverse the condition. Now a team of researchers from Germany used a designer protein to help paralyzed mice to walk again, raising hopes for a cure that can extend to humans.</p><p>The study was carried out by a team from the Department for Cell Physiology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany, led by Professor Dietmar Fischer. The scientists restored the walking ability of mice who were paralyzed in both hind legs by manipulating the supply of the protein <em>hyper-interleukin-6</em> that causes nerve cells to regenerate.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This is a so-called designer cytokine, which means it doesn't occur like this in nature and has to be produced using genetic engineering," <a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-cytokine-paralyzed-mice.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">explained</a> Dietmar Fischer.</p>
<p>The protein works by taking on a key feature of spinal cord injuries that produce disability – damage to nerve fibers known as <em>axons</em> that transport signals back and forth between the brain, the muscles, and the skin. When these fibers stop working, the communication ceases as well. What's more, the fibers don't grow back if severed, leaving patients paralyzed and numb, with no current treatments available.<br></p><p>This is why advancements in this field are so vital, underscoring the achievement of the Bochum team. The researchers used viruses to make nerve cells in the motor-sensory cortex to produce hyper-interleukin-6 on their own. The viruses injected into the brains of the paralyzed mice were specially-tailored for gene therapy, carrying blueprints for protein production to nerve cells known as <em>motoneurons</em>. These motoneurons used axonal side branches to transport the proteins to cells involved in movement functions like walking, explained the <a href="https://news.rub.de/english/press-releases/2021-01-15-paraplegia-designer-cytokine-makes-paralyzed-mice-walk-again" target="_blank">press release</a> from the University. Normally these key cells are very hard to reach.</p><p>The technique succeeded and in a few weeks, the paralyzed mice began to walk.</p>
What is a spinal cord injury?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88b8d4e44e46b7d5fe49d1f3bca56078"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKtBC2Sg_Bg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><blockquote>"Thus, gene therapy treatment of only a few nerve cells stimulated the axonal regeneration of various nerve cells in the brain and several motor tracts in the spinal cord simultaneously," <a href="https://news.rub.de/english/press-releases/2021-01-15-paraplegia-designer-cytokine-makes-paralyzed-mice-walk-again" target="_blank">elaborated</a> Fischer. "Ultimately, this enabled the previously paralyzed animals that received this treatment to start walking after two to three weeks. This came as a great surprise to us at the beginning, as it had never been shown to be possible before after full paraplegia."<br></blockquote><p>Next the team plans to investigate further regenerative effects it can achieve with hyper-Interleukin-6, while striving to understand how these advancements in treatment can be applied to humans. </p><p>Check out the study published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20112-4" target="_blank">Nature Communications. </a></p>
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