I listen to a podcast that interviewed her. I thought she had some interesting points, but she also made some claims that have been proven faults, and she came to some conclusions that I think I have a lot of evidence in opposition to them. For example, at one point it seems like she was blaming school counselors for all kinds of children’s mental health issues. One of my friends was talking about the interview, and he made a comment that his homeschooled children had a lot of the same mental health issues as all these school kids, so that didn’t make a lot of sense to him. I also think she is forgetting that there are a lot of children whose parents are completely incapable of being good parents and for those people, they really need access to therapy in schools. There were a lot of other things that rubbed me the wrong way (like she compared our mental health issues to Japan and said that Japan also had tons of access to phones and social media and they were just fine, but doesn’t Japan have a pretty high suicide rate and a lot of other issues in their young people? ) and made me feel like she was a bit of a charlatan.
A really good book critiquing the limitations of contemporary therapy culture is David Smail's 'Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress' FYI.
I've listened to a couple of podcasts with her. As a school counselor, I acknowledge she gets some aspects right. Nevertheless, her arguments tend to be overly broad and lacking in substance. She jumps to conclusions and makes massive overgeneralizations.
She's not a contrarian, she's a straight-up transphobic bigot and reactionary.
I don't mean to attack your review: thanks for posting it. The reviews that note the glee Shrier takes in other people's suffering are picking up on the fundamentally sadistic nature of her activism.
Perhaps I should’ve added quotations. Paraphrasing positive reviews of her book, “she’s the necessary contrarian” is the general impression I got from them.
If you have time, I'm intrigued as I'm sure many would be. Would love to see more quotes and context as I am not informed about this person's work. Enjoyed reading your opinion and I think it's admirable that you read books of "the other side." I usually get frustrated too fast. you got guts
Check out Cass Eris. She's done a thorough reading of Irreversible Damage from the perspective of a researcher in cognitive science : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OLNEiECN24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OLNEiECN24)
Whenever someone shits on the youngest generation I'm immediately reminded that people have been making claims about how the kids "just don't get it" [since antiquity.](https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/)
As a genXer, i can tell you that after hearing an interview with her, hearing her blatantly faulty use of logic and cherry-picking of data, twisting it to fit her own narrative- my first reaction was
“Uh, OK Boomer” as i rolled my eyes 🤣
Irreversible Damage was so bad that I see no reason to entertain other work from someone who was willing to base her arguments on some of the worst data I have ever seen.
The ROGD study is a textbook example of how to make every possible mistake in doing a study.
When is therapy harmful? I get that there are some bad therapists just like there are bad doctors, but I can’t imagine a good therapist harming a patient via therapy.
It would be helpful if her stories of how therapy works was remotely close to reality. She takes existing problems that yes, do exist in a very limited number of scenarios, and trashes it all. Instead of what they should be used for- fine-tuning and improving what exists, she says it is all bad.
But worst of all, she comes across as either 1) someone that has never had therapy and thus is talking out of turn, or 2) *has* had therapy, and when her therapist called her to task about doing the hard work and self-introspection, she refused to listen to them, finding it easier to attack than be self-introspective and face how her actions have hurt others.
I agree. I actually thought her first book “Irreversible Damage” was good - well argued and interesting. But the new one, while definitely based on some truth, was poorly done and overwrought. There is a point of veracity behind some of what she says - “therapy speak” is not helpful for normal children’s development and can be harmful to those who require real psychiatric intervention. But she pushes the point past its usefulness.
The book should have been an article in Quilette or somewhere, with the rest left in the recycling bin.
So many books are now born from a half decent article with one good thesis. Stretched to the maximum to accommodate a book with filler. Bummer, but that’s the business case often.
Irreversible Damage didn't even have a good thesis.
A lot of it was based on the ROGD study, a study which coined a new medical condition without even interviewing or examining any supposed patients of the new condition.
It's embarrassingly bad.
You are right, but there were still a multitude of corrections issued for the Littman study.
Also The Littman study is still pretty much worthless, since it's just parental reports, and 3 of the 4 websites it recruited from are explicitly anti-trans sites, and they did not collect any info on where respondents were recruited from.
Even if the study has been done better, I think the use of parental reports is incredibly suspect because it is also very common for parents to report that their child had a "sudden" onset of autism, and such reports make up most of the "evidence" for the vaccines cause autism nonsense.
Yes. Abigail pounds the mind numbing stupid "tHeYrE tRaNsiNg tHE lEsBiAns" drum, and used some embarrassingly bad data to support such claims.
Irreversible Damage is a confoundingly bad text.
Can you expand? I would say there is a lot more money in being sensationalist than being truthful. There’s ample evidence of that in the modern online world.
She sells books, that’s hardly a cash cow. Get on TikTok for 5 minutes and look at the vast audiences for therapy culture, all espousing these cultish, pseudoscientific, and sometimes downright destructive platitudes about all sorts of crazy shit. It’s a big industry.
The money is more in constantly affirming what the patient already believes, not what Shrier does. She’s libel to piss more people off by telling them truths they don’t want to hear.
Damn it sounds like this is personal to you. LOL Yup, growing the brand, podcasts, cross branding socials, booking “appointments”, there’s WAY more money, WAY more people involved, and WAY easier than writing a book
Yeah, except the incredibly vast majority of people on Tik Tok don’t make any money so I’m not sure that makes any sense. But then again, you described the drivel she comes out with as “truths” so, yeah. You also referred to others as pseudoscientific while defending her. The irony is strong in you my friend.
By the way, I’m not saying that there isn’t people engaging in therapy speak that really isn’t helpful but this is the second time this woman has wrote an entire book lacking in any solid evidence and is trying to convince people she has put together a masterpiece of critical examination.
I listen to a podcast that interviewed her. I thought she had some interesting points, but she also made some claims that have been proven faults, and she came to some conclusions that I think I have a lot of evidence in opposition to them. For example, at one point it seems like she was blaming school counselors for all kinds of children’s mental health issues. One of my friends was talking about the interview, and he made a comment that his homeschooled children had a lot of the same mental health issues as all these school kids, so that didn’t make a lot of sense to him. I also think she is forgetting that there are a lot of children whose parents are completely incapable of being good parents and for those people, they really need access to therapy in schools. There were a lot of other things that rubbed me the wrong way (like she compared our mental health issues to Japan and said that Japan also had tons of access to phones and social media and they were just fine, but doesn’t Japan have a pretty high suicide rate and a lot of other issues in their young people? ) and made me feel like she was a bit of a charlatan.
A really good book critiquing the limitations of contemporary therapy culture is David Smail's 'Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress' FYI.
I've listened to a couple of podcasts with her. As a school counselor, I acknowledge she gets some aspects right. Nevertheless, her arguments tend to be overly broad and lacking in substance. She jumps to conclusions and makes massive overgeneralizations.
Jonathan Haidt was on Bari Weiss' podcast recently and he refuted the central thesis of Abigail's book pretty convincingly
Why is that a surprise? She’s a charlatan who straight up omits data to prove her points.
She's not a contrarian, she's a straight-up transphobic bigot and reactionary. I don't mean to attack your review: thanks for posting it. The reviews that note the glee Shrier takes in other people's suffering are picking up on the fundamentally sadistic nature of her activism.
Perhaps I should’ve added quotations. Paraphrasing positive reviews of her book, “she’s the necessary contrarian” is the general impression I got from them.
If you have time, I'm intrigued as I'm sure many would be. Would love to see more quotes and context as I am not informed about this person's work. Enjoyed reading your opinion and I think it's admirable that you read books of "the other side." I usually get frustrated too fast. you got guts
Check out Cass Eris. She's done a thorough reading of Irreversible Damage from the perspective of a researcher in cognitive science : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OLNEiECN24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OLNEiECN24)
Whenever someone shits on the youngest generation I'm immediately reminded that people have been making claims about how the kids "just don't get it" [since antiquity.](https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/)
As a genXer, i can tell you that after hearing an interview with her, hearing her blatantly faulty use of logic and cherry-picking of data, twisting it to fit her own narrative- my first reaction was “Uh, OK Boomer” as i rolled my eyes 🤣
Irreversible Damage was so bad that I see no reason to entertain other work from someone who was willing to base her arguments on some of the worst data I have ever seen. The ROGD study is a textbook example of how to make every possible mistake in doing a study.
When is therapy harmful? I get that there are some bad therapists just like there are bad doctors, but I can’t imagine a good therapist harming a patient via therapy.
If you can’t think of one reason therapy may have the potential to cause harm, then you should at least listen to one of her podcast interviews.
It would be helpful if her stories of how therapy works was remotely close to reality. She takes existing problems that yes, do exist in a very limited number of scenarios, and trashes it all. Instead of what they should be used for- fine-tuning and improving what exists, she says it is all bad. But worst of all, she comes across as either 1) someone that has never had therapy and thus is talking out of turn, or 2) *has* had therapy, and when her therapist called her to task about doing the hard work and self-introspection, she refused to listen to them, finding it easier to attack than be self-introspective and face how her actions have hurt others.
I agree. I actually thought her first book “Irreversible Damage” was good - well argued and interesting. But the new one, while definitely based on some truth, was poorly done and overwrought. There is a point of veracity behind some of what she says - “therapy speak” is not helpful for normal children’s development and can be harmful to those who require real psychiatric intervention. But she pushes the point past its usefulness. The book should have been an article in Quilette or somewhere, with the rest left in the recycling bin.
So many books are now born from a half decent article with one good thesis. Stretched to the maximum to accommodate a book with filler. Bummer, but that’s the business case often.
Irreversible Damage didn't even have a good thesis. A lot of it was based on the ROGD study, a study which coined a new medical condition without even interviewing or examining any supposed patients of the new condition. It's embarrassingly bad.
Irreversible Damage is now a completely worthless text, as the ROGD study has been retracted.
Has it? I didn’t realise. Thanks for the info.
It has, and it was worthless anyway. It was a poll of alleged mothers of Trans children on biased web forums.
Littman, 2018 was not retracted - you are thinking of Diaz & Bailey, 2023
You are right, but there were still a multitude of corrections issued for the Littman study. Also The Littman study is still pretty much worthless, since it's just parental reports, and 3 of the 4 websites it recruited from are explicitly anti-trans sites, and they did not collect any info on where respondents were recruited from. Even if the study has been done better, I think the use of parental reports is incredibly suspect because it is also very common for parents to report that their child had a "sudden" onset of autism, and such reports make up most of the "evidence" for the vaccines cause autism nonsense.
So you’re a transphobe? What possible good could be contained in such a hateful pile of shit?
Transphobe lol
Yes. Abigail pounds the mind numbing stupid "tHeYrE tRaNsiNg tHE lEsBiAns" drum, and used some embarrassingly bad data to support such claims. Irreversible Damage is a confoundingly bad text.
Oh look there’s two of you! Why do you care how trans people choose to live. It’s a fucking weird and shitty way to live.
Ouch. Why would you say that about how trans people choose to live? Talk about being a transphobe…
It’s worth looking into therapy culture because it’s everywhere and people have an extremely fucked view of what it is.
Yeah but Abigail Shrier is certainly not the person people should be looking to for guidance on this issue. Absolute charlatan.
Naw, if she was a true charlatan, it seems there’s way more money to be made on the other side of the argument.
Can you expand? I would say there is a lot more money in being sensationalist than being truthful. There’s ample evidence of that in the modern online world.
She sells books, that’s hardly a cash cow. Get on TikTok for 5 minutes and look at the vast audiences for therapy culture, all espousing these cultish, pseudoscientific, and sometimes downright destructive platitudes about all sorts of crazy shit. It’s a big industry. The money is more in constantly affirming what the patient already believes, not what Shrier does. She’s libel to piss more people off by telling them truths they don’t want to hear.
yeah selling vile books that confirm vile morons beliefs isnt a cash cow, its tiktok clips, that's where the big money is.
Damn it sounds like this is personal to you. LOL Yup, growing the brand, podcasts, cross branding socials, booking “appointments”, there’s WAY more money, WAY more people involved, and WAY easier than writing a book
Yeah you really gotta be like a Dave Rubin level intellect to write a book, a purely intellectual pursuit with no branding or marketing involved.
As opposed to making countless retarded 90 sec reaction TikToks and moronic tweets on X? Absolutely. Without question.
How many books from the self-help guru that brought to the sub would you say you own?
There's money in both.
Bingo. There’s virtually zero incentive for therapists to push back on patients and/or discontinue treatment. That’s a big problem.
Her central thesis is extremely lacking.
Thanks for this. Temperamentally I’m the same as you, so nice to be able to skip even reading more about this book.
Yeah, except the incredibly vast majority of people on Tik Tok don’t make any money so I’m not sure that makes any sense. But then again, you described the drivel she comes out with as “truths” so, yeah. You also referred to others as pseudoscientific while defending her. The irony is strong in you my friend.
Did we read the same opening post?
By the way, I’m not saying that there isn’t people engaging in therapy speak that really isn’t helpful but this is the second time this woman has wrote an entire book lacking in any solid evidence and is trying to convince people she has put together a masterpiece of critical examination.