Product Description

What causes psychiatric disorders to appear? Are they primarily the result of people s environments, or of their genes? Increasingly, we are told that research has confirmed the importance of genetic influences on psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
This timely, challenging book provides a much-needed critical appraisal of the evidence cited in support of genetic theories of psychiatric disorders, which hold that these disorders are caused by an inherited genetic predisposition in combination with environmental agents or events. In fact, the field of psychiatric genetics is approaching the crisis stage due to the continuing failure, despite years of concerted worldwide efforts, to identify genes presumed to underlie most mental disorders.

The belief that such genes exist is based on studies of families, twins, and adoptees. However, the author shows that these studies provide little if any scientifically acceptable evidence in support of genetics. In fact, researchers initial "discoveries" are rarely replicated. As this becomes more understood, and as fruitless gene finding efforts continue to pile up, we may well be headed towards a paradigm shift in psychiatry away from genetic and biological explanations of mental disorders, and towards a greater understanding of how family, social, and political environments contribute to human psychological distress. Indeed, Kenneth Kendler, a leading twin researcher and psychiatric geneticist for over two decades, wrote in a 2005 edition of The American Journal of Psychiatry that the "strong, clear, and direct causal relationship implied by the concept of a gene for ... does not exist for psychiatric disorders. Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover genes for psychiatric illness."
The author devotes individual chapters to ADHD, autism, and bipolar disorder. Looking specifically at autism, despite the near-unanimous opinion that it has an important genetic component, the evidence cited in support of this position is stunningly weak. It consists mainly of family studies, which cannot disentangle the potential influences of genes and environment, and four small methodologically flawed twin studies whose results can be explained by non-genetic factors. Not surprisingly, then, years of efforts to find "autism genes" have come up empty.
This is an important book because theories based on genetic research are having a profound impact on both scientific and public thinking, as well as on social policy decisions. In addition, genetic theories influence the types of clinical treatments received by people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Yet, as the author demonstrates, these theories do not stand up to critical examination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1279522 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 332 pages

Review
A clinical psychologist based in San Francisco, Joseph examines and finds serious flaws in the family, twin, and adoption studies generally used to support a genetic basis for schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He argues that in failing to control for environmental influences, such kinship studies lead to overestimation of the likelihood of a genetic basis for the target disorder. He also documents questionable methodological practices and motives for the research. In the last chapter, Joseph contends that molecular genetic research in psychiatry has failed to find specific genes that cause psychiatric disorders because such genes are unlikely to exist. Joseph's analyses of the family, twin, and adoption studies are exhaustive, if somewhat repetitive, and he does a good job reminding the reader of the difficulties of conducting and interpreting this research. But although Joseph would have the reader abandon the search for biological causes of psychiatric disorders, he provides little evidence that the search for environmental causes is any more fruitful. Summing Up: Optional. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals. -- C. R. Timmons, Drew University --Choice

THEORIES based on genetic research are having a profound impact on both scientific and public thinking, as well as on policy decisions and the treatments received by people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Joseph s last book, The Gene Illusion, challenged the evidence for a genetic basis for schizophrenia. In this new book, he extends his scope from schizophrenia to ADHD, autism and bipolar disorder, challenging positions viewed by mainstream psychiatry and psychology as established facts and calling for greater emphasis on how family, social and political environments contribute to human psychological distress. --Human Givens Journal Volume 13, No. 3 2006

The genetics revolution, if you can call it that, has been going on now for about twenty years. Great advances have been made in connecting genetic defects to physical illnesses, or more specifically to vulnerability to illnesses. There has been a great deal of effort expended to try to find a genetic component to the mental illnesses. In this book Dr. Joseph reports that any evidence relating to the genetic basis of mental disorders is stunningly weak. The author claims, that 'it is very possible that genes for diagnoses such as schizophrenia, ADHD, autism, and bipolar disorder are not, as researchers often write, elusive, but that they are non existent.' The trouble with this book is that it is theoretically impossible to prove a negative. And there is just enough evidence that some of these mental illnesses tend to occur more frequently in some families than in others. Some forms seem to have genetic components, but researchers still know very little why this occurs. The book makes good sense, but could be overturned immediately by the next announcement. The good points about this book are that it is very readable and opens the subject up to we interested laymen. It gives a good analysis of Dr. Joseph's opinions, and he knows a lot more about this than I do. Still, he is a clinical psychologist, not a research scientist. If you do a search on Amazon for 'Genetics Mental Illness' you'll get a lot of entries. Most of these are quite expensive and clearly relate to ongoing or even proposed research. --Books-On-Line

About the Author
Jay Joseph, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1998, he has published many articles focusing on genetic theories in psychiatry and psychology. He is currently an Associate Editor of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and an Assessing Editor of The Journal of Mind and Behavior. His first book, "The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope," was published in 2003 in the United Kingdom by PCCS Books, followed by a 2004 North American edition published by Algora.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Author’s Preface The authors of a 2005 twin study published in a major American political science journal argued that people’s inherited tendency toward particular political viewpoints had an important impact on the 2004 United States presidential election. This study, and the subsequent media attention it attracted, is a good indicator of the bizarre lengths that genetic theories, based primarily on twin research, have taken us over the past few decades.

Around the same time, Ronald Kessler and his colleagues published a study in the prestigious Archives of General Psychiatry in which they concluded that "about half of Americans will meet the criteria for a DSM-IV disorder [Fourth Edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] sometime in their life, with first onset usually in childhood or early adolescence." Critics, of course, could explain this finding on the basis of the DSM’s tendency to label a wide range of subjective states and deviant behavior as "mental disorders." The authors of the DSM-IV seem to be saying to us (with apologies to comedian George Carlin), "You are all diseased."

But suppose that Kessler, et al., despite whatever flaws their study may have contained, did show that a sizable portion of Americans will experience some level of chronic or acute psychological dysfunction or distress during their lifetimes. Having established this, the question remains open whether the causes are mainly biological, or whether they reflect the impact of a wide range of psychologically harmful environmental influences that people experience in American society.

An important pillar of the biological argument is genetic theory, which holds that most people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders are genetically predisposed to manifest these disorders. However, if 50% of Americans will develop a genetically-based mental disorder, according to genetic theory a sizable percentage of the 50% who do not develop a mental disorder nevertheless carry pathological genes. Thus, according to the logic of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and currently ascendant theories of genetic causation, a sizable majority of Americans carry pathological genes predisposing them to mental disorders.

Or, perhaps not. In this book, I assess the surprisingly shaky foundations of genetic theories in psychiatry in the context of the current crisis in psychiatric molecular genetic research. It was expected that genes for the major psychiatric disorders would have been found by now. However, they have not been found. Indeed, a prominent genetic researcher could write in the July, 2005 edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry as follows: "The strong, clear, and direct causal relationship implied by the concept of ‘a gene for …’ does not exist for psychiatric disorders. Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover ‘genes for’ psychiatric illness." It remains to be seen whether statements such as this will lead to the abandonment of gene searches for psychiatric disorders in the near future.

A belief in the hereditary basis of mental disorders is a very old one. In this book I will show that, following a critical reading of the scientific literature, this age-old belief has little evidence in its favor.

Customer Reviews

They didn't tell you this in med school
This book looks closely at the genetics research of ADHD, Autism, and
Bipolar disorder, plus some on schizophrenia too.

The books goes in depth and documents bias and misinformation
parroted by secondary sources reporting this research. The final
chapter reports the ongoing unproductive and frenzied search for
genes in psychiatry.

The genetics of psychiatric illness is another of science's "sacred
cows". It is another example of psuedoscience, passed off as
unquestioned fact on a trusting public, at the expense of
enviornmental causes.

I have been a Jay Joseph fan since his first book, The Gene
Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology under
the Microscope (2004).

Promissory Genes
Some of us, most of us, take what science tells us very seriously. Our view of ourselves, and of others, is heavily informed by what we believe is the scientific position. If it turns out that we are little more than our genes, that we are biochemical robots, then we must face up to the truth, dispiriting as it may be, and deal with it as best we can. We must not shirk. The philosopher J.R. Lucas said: `Modern man is inclined to be a metaphysical masochist, drawn to any world-view that denies his humanity by cutting him down to merely animal or thingly size.' In the face of genetic determinism, we are many of us masochists, and nearly all of us half-believers. Our `thingly size' is the size of a gene.

Is this masochism really necessary? Is this view of ourselves really demanded by current science? Concentrating on the field of psychiatric genetics, Jay Joseph argues that the genetic determinism so taken for granted in modern times is not based on sound science. This is a serious and controversial claim. Many people become angry if you even so much as suggest that a psychiatric disorder may not be genetic. Strong arguments are therefore needed. With the knowledge that he is militating against a well-entrenched orthodoxy, Joseph has written this extremely detailed, rigorously argued book, dedicating many of its chapters to lengthy critical assessments of original research papers. While some may be put off by the rather pedantic level of argumentation, it is, to my mind, absolutely necessary; and if you are willing to put the time in, occasionally exhilarating. It is too easy for genetically oriented researchers to blithely dismiss serious criticism as the work of know-nothing `armchair critics' with ideological agendas. Joseph is no armchair critic. Although he is a clinical psychologist and not a research scientist, his doctoral thesis was a critical examination of the schizophrenia twin studies literature, and the majority of his publications since then have been dedicated to this very specific, and very important, area. As the book makes clear, he is often more familiar with the foundational research of psychiatric genetics than the researchers themselves.

Joseph's scholarship is outstanding; his level of familiarity with the science and history of psychiatric genetics is immense. Primary and secondary sources are quoted often and at length, everything is thoroughly sourced, the arguments proceed clearly and logically, and his tone is measured, professional. In cases of obvious academic fraud and gross incompetence, Joseph is careful not to ascribe conscious intent, opining more generally at the `unfortunate' state of affairs. Only once does he explicitly get angry with a few modern psychiatric geneticists, and it's to call them `poor historians indeed' in a footnote. Seeing as it was in the context of their attempted absolution of the leaders of the Munich School (an early psychiatric genetic organisation) from complicity in the Nazi eugenic and extermination programs, when widely available documentary evidence suggests very strongly otherwise, one can understand Joseph's academic `outburst'. That the founder of the school is claimed by a certain psychiatric geneticist to have been disgusted by Hitler's misuse of his research, even though it is widely known that he was not only a fervent support of the Nazi government but a formal legislator of some of its most draconian eugenics policies, is enough to make one pause and consider the lengths that people will go to defend their world-view, and just how many readers they are willing to lead astray.

Although the historical analyses in this book are fascinating, and even disturbing, the large majority of its contents are devoted to scientific analysis. This is where Joseph is at his most brilliant. His critique of the Equal Environment Assumption in all its varied and bizarre reformulations is a supreme example of logical analysis. Here Joseph cuts to the quick of psychiatric genetics, because if the EEA is invalid, as Joseph cogently argues, then the vast majority of twin studies done to date are scientifically useless. When one considers their many other, more particular, invalidating flaws (biased statistical manipulation, the post hoc redefinitions of the disorder under study to achieve statistical significance, among many others) the case for the genetic transmission of psychiatric disorders is about as scientifically compelling as phrenology.

There is much more to this book than a one thousand word review can do justice to. By the book's conclusion, I was convinced that the well-publicised claims about the genetic determination of psychiatric disorders are based more on politics, rhetoric and second-hand information than sound science. It took a book of this level of complexity and detail to convince me. Vague humanistic platitudes, while comforting for a time, are hard to sustain against a countervailing science. It is liberating to know that, in the case of psychiatric and behavioural genetics, the `countervailing science' is largely built on air, and that the evidence, in fact, supports a more open view, where human beings are genuine individuals, not shambling automata, whose psychological difficulties are not the fault of their broken genes, but caused by well-known, and repairable, psychological and environmental factors. I will end this review as I began it: with a quotation from J.R. Lucas, former president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. His writings on human identity and value are among the best I've ever read, and show that to be scientific does not imply belief in the brutal pessimism of reductionist science, of which psychiatric and behavioural genetics are complementary parts. I am confident that Joseph would agree with the following passage.

`Each [of us] is a definite individual, ultimately responsible for what he decides to do, while being also an indeterminate shimmering of different personalities, revealed and developed in different personal relationships. Each is unique, of infinite complexity, transcending all stereotypes and neat classification, while needing also to be a safe pair of hands, who can be relied on to do his bit when required.'

Relating Genetics to Mental Illness
The genetics revolution, if you can call it that, has been going on now for about twenty years. Great advances have been made in connecting genetic defects to physical illnesses, or more specifically to vulnerability to illnesses. There has been a great deal of effort expended to try to find a genetic component to the mental illnesses. In this book Dr. Joseph reports that any evidence relating to the genetic basis of mental disorders is stunningly weak. It is possible, the author claims, that 'it is very possible that genes for diagnoses such as schizophrenia, ADHD, autism, and bipolar disorder are not, as researchers often write, elusive, but that they are non existent.'

The trouble with this book is that it is theoretically impossible to prove a negative. And there is just enough evidence that some of these mental illnesses tend to occur more frequently in some families than in others. Some forms seem to have genetic components, but researchers still know very little why this occurs. The book makes good sense, but could be overturned immediately by the next announcement.

The good points about this book are that it is very readable and opens the subject up to we interested laymen. It gives a good analysis of Dr. Joseph's opinions, and he knows a lot more about this than I do. Still, he is a clinical psychologist, not a research scientist. If you do a search on Amazon for 'Genetics Mental Illness' you'll get a lot of entries. Most of these are quite expensive and clearly relate to ongoing or even proposed research.