Labeling and Diagnosing Over the Internet

Any thoughts on this anyone?

“I know what’s wrong with YOU”!

Over the internet, it can be dangerous to give advice! You don’t really know who you are giving advice to. Some people may have read a lot of books on analysis or studied psychology, but that doesn’t know that they know you or me. That’s a pretty important part of the equation is it not. You see it all the time, someone who has never met you or had any lengthy conversations with you diagnosing you and giving you a prescription for what is wrong with you. I don’t have any stats here, but I’ve heard before and I’m sure that it is true that a lot of people who study psychology and become ‘experts’ in the field do so precisely because they are so mixed up and confused themselves. They want to figure out what is wrong with themselves and in the process become ‘experts’. Reading a book on psychology makes you more informed than someone who hasn’t, but it doesn’t make you a psychiatrist or a psychologist anymore than reading a book on mountain climbing makes you a mountain climber. Just two cents for you guys. Some experts aren’t really experts. Hell, some experts who really ARE experts aren’t really experts. They even let people teach “Constitutional Law” that don’t understand the Constitution, if ya know what I mean.

Yeah it seems like you can find a lot of experts on the internet. Ever notice how many different kinds of “therapists” there are in your phone book?

Oh and how about financial architects? Regulators in the US won’t let you call yourself a financial adviser without registering with the SEC (Bernie Madoff refused to register) so they call themselves some other kind of expert. Wealth manager. Financial fulfillment guru. etc.

That’s another thing… ‘licensed’! You can’t arrange flowers without a license! You have to have a license so the state can make money and regulate everything. It’s amazing how many laws are set up just to ‘protect’ an established business from competition. Why is it that the first thing any politician wants to do is create a new rule.