Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”

> Book falls apart

My claim: there is no psychiatric body of work that is impervious to criticism. Not a single piece of psychological science is 100% true.

Drugs work but often don't. Therapies work but often don't. Alice's research falls apart under Bob's scrutiny.

It's a soft science, it is what it is.

There is always somebody, especially on HN, who will comment on an article debunking pop psychology, "Well that makes sense because it's all bullshit."

I understand there is a bias towards the hard sciences here (which is somewhat odd, because the vast majority of commenters here do not practice any hard science). But I think there is extra skepticism of psychiatry and psychology (which get lumped together), and I wonder why that might be.

Well, I have a theory, but it relies on psychology and it isn't very charitable.

Science involves doing experiments, collecting data, and testing hypotheses, i.e. claims are falsifiable.

We don't have the technology to collect the necessary data to be able to test hypotheses for psychiatric and psychological phenomenoms, and even many other non brain related medical claims about the human body.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

Seems pretty reasonable to take claims about unverifiable subjects with a grain of salt.

It is fine to be a sceptic.

However, if you were unlucky enough to suffer with a completely debilitating mental illness, and all you have to treat it are a series of therapies that appear to work for some people, would you not try them?

Trauma therapies like EMDR and CBT can save or transform your life. Maybe they work no better than crystal healing or prayers for some people, but if your life was derailed I bet you would try anything...