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[bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic): MAD CONFIDENCE DISEASE STRIKES WHIZZ-KIDS]

------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Wed, 05 Sep 90 17:50:02 -0700 
From:    bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
To:      /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: MAD CONFIDENCE DISEASE STRIKES WHIZZ-KIDS

Headline:        MAD CONFIDENCE DISEASE STRIKES WHIZZ-KIDS 

Thousands of high-fliers in the financial and business worlds are suffering
from "really useful syndrome," a senior clinical psychologist has found. They
have fallen into a state of mind which he calls "assumed usefulness."  The
main symptom is unwarranted self-confidence.  There is no instant cure. 

Paul Whitby, senior clinical psychologist at Tonna Hospital, West Glamorgan,
has pinpointed other symptoms, including high self-esteem and a behaviour
pattern of persistent activity and enthusiasm fostered by the occasional and
random reward of a good profit which arrives independently of the person's
efforts.  The dominating emotional state of people suffering the condition is
their conviction that what they are doing is really useful.  Dr. Whitby says
the phenomenon of unwarranted self-confidence is not restricted to people in
commerce.  The implications could be even more serious when it afflicted
those working in other fields. 

He explains his ideas in the latest issue of the Psychologist, the monthly
bulletin of the British Psychological Society, published today [7/2/90]. His
article carries a warning for psychotherapists.  He suggests that they and
other physicians who tend to blame patients for the failure of therapies are
probably suffering from the "assumed usefulness" syndrome themselves. Dr.
Whitby says that where a depressed patent thinks "I am responsible for all
bad things and failures,"  a mistakenly self-confident therapist has a frame
of mind that believes "I am responsible for all good things, improvements and
cures."  Whereas depressed people are likely to see any performance which
falls short of perfection as abject failure, the self-confident
psychotherapist may see any performance which falls short of complete failure
as satisfactory. 

Dr. Whitby suggests that his idea of assumed usefulness can be employed to
analyze the thoughts and behaviour of psychotherapists in the type of study
that has mostly been applied to examining the condition of the patients
suffering personality disorders and neuroses.  He has conceived the notion
in an effort to resolve a controversy over the effectiveness of
psychotherapy.  He says, "Without a twinge of embarrassment nurses, doctors,
psychologists, social workers and others describe themselves as
psychotherapists." Yet, judged on any objective criteria of the available
research, the psychotherapies were not even moderately successful.  "If
psychotherapy is so effective, then sensible people would not practise it,
but they do." 

Dr. Whitby's approach should reveal which psychotherapists suffer the assumed
usefulness syndrome.    [Let's hope it can be extended to the technical 
community soon.]

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