Well good luck getting insurance to pay for that "diagnosis". Hard enough when submitting claims for conditions that are in the diagnostic manuals. It's also

Well good luck getting insurance to pay for that "diagnosis". Hard enough when submitting claims for conditions that are in the diagnostic manuals. It's also risky from a regulatory standpoint. I know one doctor who was pursuing "occult" phenomena that a couple of his patients told him about. Someone complained and he was in trouble with his licensing board for a time for his "unprofessional conduct". However there is a deeper issue implicit in the subject, regardless of its actual scientific merit. It provokes a question about what makes it necessary to try explaining things that have no explanation. That's a common and universal human trait. With very few exceptions, humans insist on "explaining" things no matter what, ordinarily people won't tolerate indeterminacy. It's a rare person who accepts "I don't know". But of course not knowing is reality, look at anything close enough and it looks fuzzy. Examined at sufficient level of detail, everything is ambiguous. When patients present with unusual (to the interviewer) ideas, perceptions or feelings, quite likely it will defy classification geared toward frequent, typical events. In that instance the response to "what is going on with me?" should be "I don't know" when one doesn't know. Resorting to "explanatory" mythologies, including psychoanalytic theory, or occultism, only obscures reality. Far better to skip "explaining" given the impossibility of avoiding unavoidable uncertainty. We can and should say what we observe of phenomena and their related similarities and differences. That set of observations is the valuable basis of what we know and can act on. There are limits to knowledge, particularly that asking "why?" does not terminate. It takes courage to face that the only answer we'll ever get is that there is no answer.