TRANSCRIPT
Today I’m here to interview Dr. Jay Joseph on the subject of genetics and mental disorders. Jay is a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area who, since 1998, has written four books and many peer-reviewed journal articles analyzing and critiquing genetic studies of psychiatric disorders and of behavior in general. Since 2013, he has also had a popular blog at madinamerica.com. I first heard Jay present at a psychology conference in 2008, and I realized he was something special. In fact, when it comes to the things we’ll be talking about here, I don’t think there’s anyone better. Incidentally, Jay is also a psychotherapist, and his website, which lists all his publications and which I will also link to in the description box below, is jayjoseph.net. So here goes. Jay: Welcome here, and thank you for agreeing to give us your time. Dr. Joseph: Oh, great to be here and not to speak with you, Daniel. Thank you. I really appreciate and admire all the work you’ve done over the years too, so thank you for that. Daniel: So my first question is, when people say that schizophrenia is definitively a genetic disorder, which is something we so commonly hear, how might you reply? Dr. Joseph: I first want to say that, you know, in this discussion, in this interview, schizophrenia is a concept that’s controversial. And so I will use these terms, psychiatric disorder terms that are used in psychiatry, but I don’t want to necessarily endorse that these are legitimate real disorders or medical conditions. Just to be able to say that in the beginning. The evidence usually, the people cite, they read this in textbooks, they’re taught this in school, they read it in the media online, and they’re just told constantly that there’s something called schizophrenia that has an important genetic basis. Very few people read the original research, including a lot of textbook authors and even experts who get it wrong a lot of the time. But if you really look at the evidence, it’s based on twin and adoption studies, which are very problematic. Twins, these are problematic in particular, and it’s also based on false claims. The genes have been too covered; they actually have not found genes that are shown to cause psychosis or schizophrenia. You know, they’ve been looking for those for many decades, since the 1970s and before, and previously, and they have not found those. Now, I’ve noticed in news articles sometimes they’ll even list specific genes that they say can lead to schizophrenia or might cause schizophrenia, and they’ll give number or gene XL2. I thought that kind of stuff—yes, that is that true when they say that? What do they mean? Dr. Joseph: Baby, this has been going on for decades, since the 1990s. The same reports, they never hold up; they’re not reproduced. These are associations. Also, an association does not mean the gene causes a disorder; it just means it’s associated with it. There may be other things causing both, but in all these cases, they all fall apart. These claims fall apart; they’re not reproduced. They fall by the wayside. New studies come out where they claim they found new genes, and that just—the cycle repeats. But the media will take claims of researchers and put it out there for people to make people think that genes have been discovered when, in fact, they haven’t. And that’s true for all psychiatric disorders, and it’s also true for intelligence, personality, and pretty much all types of behavior. Daniel: So you’re saying that it’s not proven that there are actual genes behind any of these things? Dr. Joseph: That is correct. It is not proven. It’s actually been a colossal failure of attempting to find genes that cause psychiatric disorders. Yes, but the claims are there, and they continue to be made, and this information continues to be put out there, a lot of it by the media. So that’s what I look at very closely, and I attempt to show that these studies really do not prove anything about genetics. So let me jump in to my second question, and this comes from a comment on my YouTube channel regarding my point of view on psychosis, namely that it’s caused largely by traumas in childhood—that being my point of view. They said, quote, “I agree with some of what you say, but can you explain why there is a 50% concordance of schizophrenia in identical twins even when raised separately?” End quote. So I’m wondering, Jay, what you have to say about that and about twin studies in general, if you could give a little bit more detail. Dr. Joseph: Okay, in psychiatry, I want to be clear, I’m speaking of psychiatric disorders. There are no studies of reared-apart twins. So when somebody reads a twin study show that there’s a strong genetic basis for a psycho disorder, it’s always based on reared-together twins, not reared apart. What your commenter was probably referring to is a handful of anecdotal stories and single case studies that appeared over the past hundred years, of which there may be fifteen or twenty. These are not considered scientific evidence; they are not really even cited by genetic researchers. They’re just interesting stories, and there’s tremendous bias in those kind of reports. So these are not systematic studies of reared-apart twins. All of those systematic studies are reared-together twins where they compare identical and fraternal twins. The concordance rate—concordance means when both twins have the same disorder—so they compare reared-together identical versus reared-together fraternal twins. So basically, the idea that they’re doing is they’re trying to take twins who have the exact same genetics, who are raised together, and comparing that to twins who are dizygotic twins, twins that do not have the same genetic makeup, and saying, “Oh, that the twins who are identical are more likely to have these disorders.” And then, therefore, they extrapolate to saying, “Therefore, it is a genetic problem.” Dr. Joseph: Yes, and they are more likely to have those disorders and to behave similarly for almost everything. The question is, it’s all based on an assumption that identical twins and fraternal twins grow up experiencing the same environments. So it’s called the equal environment assumption (EEA). So it’s all based on the equal environment assumption that environmental factors do not make identical twins behave similarly. However, all the evidence shows that identical twins are treated more like—they go to school together; they’re like two halves of the same whole. There are identity confusion and attachment. So there are environmental factors that can explain why identical twins are more similar in behavior than fraternal twins. So, but this is a main area that I’ve looked at—it’s the equal environmental assumption and the validity of this assumption. And I think I’ve, you know, shown that this assumption is completely false, which means that we cannot—that these comparisons do not prove anything about genetics. They can be completely explained by environmental factors that identical twins experience growing up. Thank you. Daniel: So my third question: what about personality disorders? Let’s say antisocial personality is sort of like sociopaths or psychopaths. Can I quote something? Dr. Joseph: Yes, someone recently commented on my YouTube channel that psychopaths are quote “born evil because they have a faulty brain structure,” end quote, and that quote “their corrupted brain structure is passed on genetically,” end quote. And somebody else wrote that sociopaths were quote “born with a different brain structure and it is a genetic trait that you cannot change; it has been empirically shown,” end quote. So I wonder, what is the evidence on this? Dr. Joseph: Well, there is no evidence because it’s based on, again, and this is a very old idea, by the way—crime and genetics. This is one of the oldest areas of genetic research going back a long, long time. Very ugly history of crime and criminal genetics, social biology during the Nazi period and eugenics. This is a very big issue that crimped, you know, there are born criminals, and we have, you know, societies supposedly have to do something about that. But it’s all today, in the modern era, it’s based on twin and adoption studies. So again, it all comes back really mainly to twin studies. This is why people make these claims. Adoption studies have their own set of problems, but at basis, it’s twin studies. So, and then there are also, you know, studies that study the brains of so-called sociopaths. You know, that’s also a very interesting issue of what is a sociopath. It’s very subjective, but let’s just assume that they think that they know what that is. Whatever the brain functioning of the so-called sociopath, brains functioned differently based on environment, abuse, whatever.
And functioning might look differently on a scan. It doesn’t mean that it’s caused by a brain sort. It means that that’s how the brain got through experience. And they would say that it’s genetic because they claim the twin studies show that it’s genetic. But actually, twin studies do not show that. So there’s no evidence that people are born criminals, born bad, or born so-called sociopaths. All of this, it’s just, it’s a myth. It’s totally false. When in reality, it’s social conditions, environment, social conditions, inequality, racism, all of these things. These are the things that lead to criminal behavior. Whatever there’s great social inequality, there will be crime.
So I have a next question, a theoretical question. Could you consider the possibility that genetic causes might be real for some of these disorders, but that they’re just not proven yet?
Yeah, absolutely. Anything’s possible. So I just, what I’m saying is that the evidence is not there. There is no evidence that there’s any genetic basis for these disorders, conditions. So I’m open to possible future discoveries, but up to this point, there is no evidence.
I also want to point out that even if there is evidence, it doesn’t mean that that’s the correct approach. I mean, let’s say there’s such a thing as schizophrenia. Let’s say that there’s a genetic predisposition. I’m not saying there is, but let’s say some future discovery were to show that. That doesn’t mean we have to think of it as a genetic brain disorder. We still might want to create social environmental conditions where the dispossessed position would not, you know, lead to psychosis. So it wouldn’t even change the approach. It can still be very environmental even if there’s a genetic aspect to various behaviors. I’m just saying that up to this point, the evidence is all based on false assumption and an extremely biased research.
I didn’t even mention the Danish adoption studies. That’s in my most recent book on schizophrenia and genetics. I go and do in great detail what the problems are, the Danish schizophrenia adoption studies, which are cited in every textbook as showing definitively that schizophrenia has a genetic basis, when actually they don’t. It’s some of the worst, most scandalous, candidly biased research that’s ever come down, which has never looked at by psychiatry very carefully. And a lot of textbooks that report this don’t even really read the original studies. They miss report tremendous about what these studies actually showed. So this is how myths are perpetuated because very few people read the original studies. Textbooks report they showed this. They don’t go into any critical analysis, and myths just keep getting passed through the generations. And the Danish adoption studies of schizophrenia are probably the greatest example.
Hmm. So this would bring me right into my next question, and it’s about a comment that someone else left on my YouTube channel. Quote: “My mother, my brother, myself, a first male cousin, and a first female cousin have schizophrenia or bipolar illness. How can genetics not be involved?”
And so if it’s not genetics, what might it be then? There’s running in the family, you know, deviant rearing patterns, abuse, or passed down by families, treatments, or passed down by families, physical environments, toxins in the environment. Families share these to a much greater extent than randomly selected people. So the good part about this is that I don’t have to argue with genetic researchers on this topic because most of them will concede that running in the family does not prove anything about genetics. So I don’t really have to argue with them about that. Running in the family could be caused by genetics; it could be caused by environment. So that’s what I would say. That’s a very common misconception that if something runs in the family, it must be genetic. You know, all kinds of behaviors run in the family: language, religion, political beliefs. All of these things run in the family, not because of genetics. Genetic researchers, most of them will concede that running in the family doesn’t prove anything about genetics. But what they do claim is that twin studies do. And that’s one of the biggest arguments I have with them is about twin studies and not family studies since they can see the point that family studies don’t prove anything about genetics.
Are there any psychological or brain problems that you believe or know are genetic?
Well, that’s an interesting point because if something is a brain problem, it is not considered a psychiatric disorder. It is a brain disorder that is treated and studied by the field of neurology. It is a medical condition. So tumors, various other brain disorders are not part of psychiatry. What psychiatry studies and talks about are conditions that they claim are brain disorders, but where there’s not really any proof. This is something Thomas Szasz used to talk about a lot, that if something really were proven to be a brain disorder, it would not be a psychiatric disorder; it would be a neurological disorder. So Huntington’s disease is obviously genetic, but that’s not a psychiatric disorder. It’s a neurological disorder.
Let me ask you this: why do you think so many people are so quick to say that psychological problems are genetic?
Because this is what they read everywhere. This is what they’re told. This is what the media tells them. So the media, they read this everywhere, and you know, the voices of critics are silenced or dismissed or marginalized. So you really only get one side of the story. When they, every textbook I ever read, it’s like twin studies show this, twin studies show that. Very rarely do they give much, you know, weight to what the critics are saying. So people are told and taught in school and told in the media that these are true facts, and this is what people believe because they’ve been told repeatedly throughout their lives.
So this is a question that just popped into my mind. That if, let’s say, people gave more credence, let’s say psychiatry in the mental health field gave more credence and respect to what you were saying, how do you think treatment for these mental problems would be different?
Treatment would be, there would be a lot more emphasis on prevention. And there would be a lot more prevention, and drug treatments would be greatly reduced. There’s another reason why that, you know, the drug industry has a very great interest in promoting these ideas. It’s like you have two disorders of brain diseases caused by genetics because then, you know, you need to use their very expensive drugs to treat them. So there would be a great emphasis on drugs and other kinds of treatments, and it would be much more kind of like Lauren Mosher and other people tried to do, kind of psychosocial treatments without drugs and much more polluted intervention, you know, alleviate conditions in society that lead to psychological dysfunction. But so the thing is that psychiatry doesn’t look at any of these things. They’ve had over 20 task forces in American psychiatry; they have never had one to look at really whether twin studies prove anything about genetics.
So I have a final question, and this is a random thought that I’ve wondered for a while, and actually this may be a good chance to ask. So you’re a psychotherapist also?
Yeah.
Do your clients know the work that you do criticizing the psychiatry and the field of genetics?
Some of them do because, you know, it’s on my website. I don’t bring it up unless they do, but I’ve discussed it with some of them, and some of them are aware of it, yes. And it, you know, sometimes it comes up, and I will tell them that, you know, despite everything that you, if they bring the question up, you know, despite everything that you’ve read, there’s really no evidence that what you’re coming in for is a genetic basis.
Also, you know, as a psychotherapist, and you’re also a therapist out there who are listening to this, you know, we see the condition, you know, we see the effect of negative environments every day on the points that we work with. You know, the abuse, dysfunctional families, oppression in society, sexism, all of these things, racism. We see this all the time, and we see, you know, the impact that this has on people. And so most, you know, psychotherapists are very much environmentalists. Most of them have bought into the genetic predisposition claim because this is what they read, and you know, they’re told with this there too. But psychotherapists know, you know, the effects of negative environments, and we see this every day in our practice.
To thank you very much for being interviewed. I think it was fantastic.
My pleasure. It’s been really great to talk with you, Daniel. I really appreciate it.
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