I don’t follow the connection though between a study that proves that revenge is often detrimental to the avenger with the notion that the diagnosis of mental disorders is bad. My suspicion is that this is yet another rant against how bad psychiatry is because they try to attribute a specific disorder name. First of all, the whole name diagnosis thing is not such big deal. I mean, my guess is I will never hear of this Embitterness thing again. Just because some psychologist at some point 30 years ago diagnosed homosexuality as a disorder doesn’t mean that the whole field of psychiatry is deeply flawed.
If anyone knows that mental health is a very complex field, it’s psychiatrists. That’s why they don’t merely write you a prescription and then send you on your way (like a medical doctor would)–instead they provide counseling over hours of time, for months and months. As for depression, again, even if if psychiatrists were wrong about that, that doesn’t mean they are wrong about everything. Diagnosing disorders merely means to apply a name and common traits to similar abnormal psychological traits exhibited by people under similar pretenses. That is a fundamental tenant of psychology and has been proven scientifically in countless areas.

Eponymous: it is good news (I really hope it is true).

Lasker, I think you misunderstood me. I wasn’t ruminating about my GP or blaming him. I was ruminating (probably totally pointlessly) about this SSRI question. You hear so many stories about “My boyfriend left me and I can’t stop crying, I was given tablets” and then others like Mr BadScience “I don’t recommend SSRIs for mild depression ’cause it is only placebo.”
Hm.

Oh, and the story about my GP was only there because I would have thought they test you a bit more thoroughly before prescribing SSRIs.
(Lasker, do you work for the NHS? There is always somebody else to blame there wherever there seems to be a problem.)

I just kept wondering why they appeared to work despite my skepticism.

emen,

That sounds like ‘Winter depression’ – I’ve had that too (presumably’ll have it again next Winter). Try getting one of those silly high-luminousity lamps. It seemed to work for me. I rigged it up to a timer and had it wake me about half an hour before I needed to get up.

You’re right that ‘Vengeance is mine’ can be read that god is telling people not to take personal revenge. However, that doesn’t really fit with the ‘eye for an eye’ approach (the usual case of bits of the Bible that contradict each other). And yes, this is the OT god but many people will cherry-pick bits of the OT to justify their behaviour, despite the NT message of peace, love etc. In fact, many fundies seem more OT than NT.

As to Les Liaisons, I studied it at college (ALERT – Arts grad!!)

Punishing cheaters is a necessary part of maintaining a stable group. Enjoying it is another matter. Maybe it takes higher cognitive functioning to be spiteful. Mind you, saying ‘I forgive you’ in a really patronising way can be quite satisfying too.

The government has recently put millions of pounds in to improving access to psychological therapies. Locally to me (and it is now a similar story nationally), the waiting list is about 2 months maximum and the majority of people are seen before that. They are also properly assessed by a psychological therapist, who listens to your answers and everything.

The “Vengeance is mine” sentiment rather predates Christianity as it’s from Deuteronomy. Not to say that at least some parts of Christianity haven’t adopted the notion. As Richard Dawkins observed, the Old Testament god is a particularly bloodthirsty one. A more recent and charitable interpretation, more in line with the New Testament thinking, is that it is comparable to the state having the duty to punish wrong doings rather than the individual settling the issue through revenge. However in, reading the original context it does seem rather more consistent with a bunch of bronze-age tribal folklore makers comforting themselves with the notion that the big man upstairs will sort their enemies out on their behalf. The Old Testament abounds with all that sort of stuff – the deaths of the poor unfortunate Egyptian first-born sons and all that kind of thing.

I assume that personal revenge has some form of evolutionary advantage under some cirumstances. It would be interesting to know how prevalent it is in the animal kingdom. I believe chimpanzees are known to exact and take delight in revenge. Of course there are plenty of other “lower order” animals where there are power-driven social structures, alpha males (and females) and all that sort of stuff. I rather doubt that a young stag will seek to beat an elder he has lost to in an earlier rutting season simply to settle a grudge. It just looks like a simple competition for the right to breed to me – you need higher cognitative behaviour to turn into something really nasty and personal. But there is surely some connection. I rather suspect it is just yet another of those bits of behavioural legacy that we are all, to one extent or another, left with to reconcile with operating in human society. But the eye-for-an-eye vs the turn-the-other-cheek argument has surely been going on for as long as humans have organised themselves into social groups.

Please note (before I’m flamed): I’m saying nothing about my own views on religion/faith/etc here. But I am still saying give me French any day over Klingon.

The point that mikewhit makes about divorced mothers endlessly punishing the spouse by using the children is an interesting one that I have seen played out. I guess it’s some primitive response to the removal of resources but it is odd that the woman would be so focussed on punishing the man that she would potentially harm the children – psychologically if not physically.

It’s not uncommon for these mothers to cause the children a lot of distress by lying about the father’s behaviour or feelings towards them. If the revenge impulse overcomes the maternal one, then it must be very strong.

It’s not hard to see why the Christian god is so big on revenge (Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord) when it’s so deeply ingrained in us and we project our nature onto our (made-up) deities.

But it never works, because the revenge I take on you has a specific time, whereas the original hurt (real or imagined) has a timeless quality.

Revenge makes me feel better for a while, but only a while. After that, I need to rebalance again, because the revenge happens only once while the original hurt is renewed every time I think about it.

It seems that there has been some research which showed that in mild depression, antidepressants are not significantly better than placebo. They are better, but not much. These data were hidden for a while, as well as some data about side-effects and withdrawal symptoms. That is, of course, pretty bad behaviour.
But even as placebo, they can work brilliantly.

But then the question is: what do you do to help someone with depression instead of prescribing SSRIs? Psychotherapy? About 2 years on the waiting list. Placebo? You are not allowed. You just tell them you can’t help them and tell them to go home and start doing exercises? Or give them antidepressants and chances are they will feel better in a few weeks’ time because of the placebo effect? Or who knows, maybe if you are a VERY good doctor and you have time, you can reaasure patients that they are not seriously depressed and that alone will make them feel better?

What is “mild” depression anyway? I once felt very tired and unwell all winter and went to see the GP about it. He put the depression questionnaire in front of me, it took me 30 seconds to fill it in. There were questions about my sleep, whether I had lost interest in things I normally enjoy, did I feel that I was letting my family down etc.
At the end, he quickly added up the “agree” answers WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT WHAT THE QUESTIONS WERE, told me he can see signs of endogenous depression and was already printing the prescription for an SSRI. I told him I didn’t want to take tablets as I was only very tired rather than depressed, and that was the end of it.

If this is how depression is normally diagnosed then I’m not surprised it is not clear who is depressed and who isn’t, or who is “midly” depressed and who is severely depressed.

The interesting part is that if you’re killed (accidently or not) by your own team member you can exact revenge by picking various options from a long menu of punishments. They include instant kill, blind the player, turn the player into a ticking bomb, etc. You can also forgive them for doing it. Punishing them didn’t make you feel that much better generally especially if they said sorry (over ingame chat) but if you did forgive them it actually made you feel surprisingly good. Wierd.

Oh the ignorance of geeks! There are better sources of information than Star Trek (and better than Wikipedia too, though even that would tell you that “revenge is a dish best served/eaten cold” was not originally made up for the Klingons).

Disclaimer: I am a linguist who finds so much of interest in real languages that I just can’t get why people can be so obsessed with the bloody Klingons. It’s only a story, you know.

I have seen some examples of this in a couple of my acquaintances, in both these cases it was the mother making things hard (changing day of visit at short notice, notifying court that child had suffered injury while in partner’s care – i.e. had fallen off bike – resulting in temporary withdrawal of contact and necessity for more court time at great expense … she was on Legal Aid of course, so no skin off her nose).

It would appear on the evidence to be some kind of psychological condition, albeit one unrecognised by the courts when dealing with the fallout.

My impression is that this situation should be detected by the professional parties involved and some kind of mandatory psychological intervention applied to avoid things deteriorating seriously as I have seen happen.