The Wessely Wizard of Oz

Part Two - The Wessely Files

Click here for Part One of The Wessely Files - Professor Catastrophe

So, why does Sir Simon Wessely, arch-psychiatrist have this power, this control? Is he hiding kryptonite in his teflon coat pocket or is it a lot of bells & whistles behind the green curtain? Here are some conjectural musings.

Fluffy Hair Syndrome?

Fluffy Hair Syndrome aka as the Boris Johnson effect. Wessely like Boris has the habit of looking scruffy, slouching, having wild unkempt hair, oversized creased clothes and looking like he's a cross between Santa Claus & a friendly, trustworthy gnome. This has the effect of disarming people & being approachable, likable. We can see from Boris this can be remarkably effective. We know Wessely is a fan of the Trumpian fake news throwback too. A handy grenade in the toolkit.

Russian Roulette Syndrome?

If you listen to Wessely he's definitely charming & a flatterer, an underestimated skill in this age where charisms are forgotten. Yet if you listen closely, you will notice repeated small digs, little jolly derisive pokes amidst the praise. It's effective as it's never quite enough to pull him up on & it's often clothed in the guise of a quip. Just banter – ha ha ha. Yet it's death by a thousand unpredictable metaphoric cuts not thousands of tonnes of toxic dust or nerve agent. It plays into playground tactics, it destabilises people as they don't want to be on the receiving end of those jibes, they want to be on side with the big cheese in the room. One of his favourites is that those who do surgery are children, playing at medicine yet it's the psychiatrists who are the adults in the room. Which is not at all a reasonable comment. Throw in some derisive 'dualist' comments & everyone is just discombobulated. Russian Roulette Syndrome?

Wessely has quite a line in 'of course' lines/assumptions delivered with certainty & derision that make you sound a bit of an unfeeling twat if you disagree. Most are based on double meaning or partial truth - of course the mind affects the body, of course we have to consider psychological factors, of course it's not in your head. 'Integrated', 'Holistic', 'Biopsychosocial' are all dual meaning words that can be twisted. Most people do not have the knowledge of medical history to untwine the critical differences. Ha Ha Dualist (sneer).

Social Butterfly Syndrome?

Yet the big kahuna is networking. Wessely might not excel at research but he does excel at connecting. This is more the field of social anthropology - but it's essentially Old Boy tactics. He has fingers in many pies (more if you count his wife Clare Gerada) the Science Media Centre, The Royal College of Psychiatry, MoD, Oxbridge, Government, Royalty, Cochrane Review, The Wessely School, Royal Society, Mental Health Taskforce, NIHR, MRC, WHO, NICE, Academy of Medical Sciences, Sense about Science & the whole cabal around Fiona Fox & the revolutionary communist party, Spiked, the list feels endless. Monbiot goes into more detail of this environment-hating 'pro-corporate libertarian right'. It's amazing he finds time for a day job. There might even be the Masons in there somewhere - maybe.

Wessely was also made a member of the JAC, the 15 strong Judicial Appointments Board in 2017. This is the body that appoints Judges, so what an earth is Wessely’s interest here? Well, as David J Black points out it also has advisory powers in allocating the heads of tribunals. So what this means is that Wessely is already in a position on power and influence if ever an Inquiry was called about the treatment of people with ME, the PACE trial and the systemic injustices that have happened. Bingo! Although the JAC might want to check their statutory duty “to select only people of good character.”

It's well known that there's a lot of backroom chat that isn't in the mainstream in the BPS school in general. The external interference to NICE during the ME/CFS guidelines is a prime example. There was a move to discourage those new to advocacy in Long Covid to not have anything to do with ME/CFS as they were ‘troublemakers’ and funding would not be accessible. Sometimes unfortunately this worked. This is why it is vital that those in advocacy to ‘know their history’ and not allow themselves to be manipulated. This is classic divide and rule tactics. The Tangled Story of ME/CFS is always a good start for a comprehensive understanding. There are bits of friendly 'advice', dangling carrots & hidden sticks, the lunches at the Royal Society, the cocktails at the Royal College. When you cry harassment and abuse to your network and friends it’s incredibly hard to question or even ask for proof. This is how the myth of the troublesome ME community was built, not through inquiry or evidence but Wessely using his buddies & the media. There are the Secret Files at Kew which form the UKs official policy development of ME - they are not for the feint-hearted. So, humanities greatest tool, it's social networks is also its biggest weakness. Speaking out against the establishment, authority, for that is what Wessely is, terrifies most people. When asked to comment or criticise Wessely most clam up like oysters, dreading the effects on their career this will have. Yet this is science not treason - the evidence should take priority. No one likes isolation, it's sticking with the group regardless of the injustice or untruth - belonging rules. Psychology did some good experiments on that - thanks Milgram & neurotypical evolution.

Big Cheese Syndrome?

Big Cheese Syndrome. The conferring of specialness. The bestowal of eminence. Puffed up Pidgeon Syndrome. Is it here that lies the nexus of influence, the well of ascension? We know that Wessely has a barrage of titles, honours & connections; Knighted in 2012, the world’s first Psychiatry Regius Professorship in 2017 (regius means relating to a King or Royal), professed medical royalty by Lady Wessely, President of the Royal College of Medicine, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatry, Executive Dean of the IoPPN, Media Hound & Media Personality of the year etc etc etc. Is it that he is just too big to fail like the banks? Are too many people in authority scared that they have shown disastrous judgement? It does seem that the web of connections Wessely has wound himself in prevents him from falling. The logical fallacy of argumentum ab auctoritate, or argument from authority rips through ruined lives. Yet the scientific method is established through experiment & evidence not authority or connection, but science exists in a social model and paradigms, egos, entrenched false views are hard to shift.

So why all the medals, baubles & titles like a military alpha hummingbird? It's certainly not from his research - we've seen most of it is highly dubious. Is it a deep-rooted insecurity about the nature & reputation of psychiatry? It's a historically difficult and controversial field and often seen as the way sociology is compared to physics. Not really a science, not really able to hold to high quality objective evidence. Is all this flag waving a way to play with the big boys? The danger is that the more power one has the more the empathy tanks empty. This seems to be an issue with Wessely, he doesn't like patients or their involvement in research, he doesn't respond to valid criticism or the suffering his theories perpetuate, he can't apologise or admit fault. This all leads to a stellar career in failing upwards at the expense of those he's duty bound to help. Medicine isn't about self-aggrandisement & dopamine hits - or is it?

Bully Boy Syndrome

It’s not only the hair Wessely has in common with Boris. There is also a willingness to go to any lengths necessary to protect his self-interest and of course the entitlement. In the UK we have the Bullingdon Club, an Oxford University posh boys club where trashing restaurants and burning money in front of homeless people is fine. Many establishment figures were members including Johnson & Cameron and is indicative of the behaviour that Oxbridge, white, men think they can get away with. This is relevant for Wessely as he is not averse to stick, bully boy tactics if carrots don’t work. There is no doubt that he is feared & we have to ask why, what actions behind the scenes justify this?

An example of this happened in spring 1994. An article in CFIDS Chronicle was about to be published that contained some quotes of Wessely about his own views on ME/CFS. Now some of these quotes are not flattering to the public portrayal of the noble scientist trying to help people but validate the minimising, psychosocial, bollocks paradigm. Out came the stick, Wessely threatened the UK distributer with an injunction if they didn’t deface every copy by removing the article. They agreed – so much for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Ding ding – round two. On the 18^th January Wessely wrote to the Countess of Mar, who has been a staunch ally to people with ME about how the

 “ad hominen attacks” upon him “may have the unforseen outcome of re-inforcing unhelpful stereotypes of sufferers held by some in high office.”

So, we can see threats about making very sick people lives worse is not beyond him. He also accused the Countess of Mar of harassing him in 2012 after a report was published in the Independent that was critical of his work– she wrote a brilliant open letter. In it she describes how Wessely invited her to lunch incessantly and presented her with a bottle of water whilst he bought his own lunch as a dig.

The list continues. In 2003 The Scotsman was threatened with being sued by Wessely after they published an article by Dr Margaret Cook, ex-wife of the UK politician Robin Cook. They capitulated and removed the article from the archive and sacked Dr Cook who had a regular column in the paper. At the time The Scotsman was owned by the Barclay Brothers and Sir Frederick Barclay had ME/CFS. Luckily the article can be viewed online now but not in the press archives. The article is a brave and to the point about the very real shit reality Wessely’s actions has created for ME/CFS patients. One line is worth quoting on his character.

“You can tell from every sentence of his letter that he is used to dictating principles and having everyone in his orbit humbly accept his gospel.” Margaret Cook

What we can see is that Wessely likes to remove the ‘offending’ article and then leave in print a letter to the editor deploring his ‘mistreatment’. This was done about the CFIDS article and Cook’s article. That might have worked pre-internet but it’s easy to see the manipulation of the official record now. These letters are full of rhetoric and bias to convince the reader of his ‘plight’. These biases can be reduced to the bias blind spot, better-than-average effect, self-serving bias etc. In essence Wessely is trying to convince the world he is ‘good’, he makes correct assessments of the world, and he is a reasonable reference, yet we can see the fundamental cognitive bias and manipulation in this.

The sociologist Angela Kennedy, who researched science, medicine, disability and health, had a daughter affected by ME/CFS. She turned her hand to critiquing the serious institutional issues that meant that her daughter did not receive care. Yet in 2007 she was falsely accused of “personally harassing” Simon Wessely by a Wikimedia administrator. Wessely had contacted him personally too.

It’s interesting to note that all these complaints are against women trying to advocate for some of the sickest and most vulnerable in our society. They have no treatment, care, and have the lowest quality of life and function in chronic illness. Margaret Williams has been a phenomenal advocate for people with ME/CFS (please check out her website) and has been housebound with ME/CFS for decades. Yet in 2004, in correspondence Wessely accused her of stalking him.

“I can’t recall when I last went to an ME/CFS meeting to be honest, but no doubt, Margaret Williams‟ will be able to remind me. Its a funny feeling still being stalked like this, and I can’t say it’s a pleasant one for either myself or my family.”

I think we can conclude that Wessely is a DARVO Diva – crying wolf about valid and accurate criticism of his faulty research. Much easier to deny, attack, reverse victim offender than say sorry and admit mistakes have been made. Yet does he really think this is going to stick?! We have people who can barely get out their door, how are they going to traverse the x-ray machines and panic buttons that Wessely apparently has set up? Are we going to knock on his door to demand to lie down for a week because the journey wrecked our mitochondria? Wessely isn’t James Bond although maybe next he will have guided lasers and a Q-ed up version of his malicious pen to protect him?

Simon Says Syndrome?

Why the preternatural silence? When ME is mentioned several thousand tumbleweeds drift across the desert. This is the ‘Greatest Medical Scandal’ of the 20^th century and it’s a humdinger of a story. So why the media blackout? This isn’t a politbureau.

There are several threads to this, we can see above that if a journalist writes critically about ME/CFS in a way that counters the false behavioural model the editor & journalist is likely going to get a private and an open letter from a big wig psychiatrist (Sharpe does this too). There might well be the threat of legal action. Another skein is that there was a coordinated PR move to demonise ME/CFS patients as aggressors & untrustworthy with the ‘scientists’ being harassed. Yes ME is placed with those concerned about the environment and Trans rights by the SMC as harassers and extremists. FFS we just want a treatment that works we aren’t Nazis, sorry Godwin, but Fiona Fox (SMC Director) started it by comparing ME patient to Nazis. Yet it’s not just Wessely, the group of psychiatrists known as the Wessely school is very well networked.

“Our influence on policy‐makers has largely been indirect, through scientists’ work on advisory committees, in leading editorials, in personal correspondence with Ministers, Chairs or Chief Executives (such as the Healthcare Commission or NICE), Chief Medical Officers and Chief Scientific Advisors, or through public dissemination when the media picks up on...issues”. Dr Tony Johnson Deputy Director MRC’s Biostatistical Unit, Quinquennial Review of 2006, (p.409 Magical Medicine, Hooper)

Medical journals are flooded with their model and almighty hell unleashes if an editor or researcher puts forwards a counter view. Fuck, forget science this was a culture war before the term existed. We can see this creating a culture of silence & taboo and a powerful counter narrative to the person barely unable to move, in bed, at home with no effective treatment or care.

Yet one of the powerful wefts is that Wessely states on his CV he is a founder member and trustee of the Science Media Centre, a real grandee. The SMC was set up in the Blair years which now dominates the medias access to ‘independent’ scientific opinion. There are other issues about the SMC outside the scope of this blog, Monbiot covers this pro-corporate libertarian right well in ‘Invasion of the Entryists’. The key piece of information is;

“Editors of broadsheet newspapers have confirmed that editorial policy will permit them only to publish items about ME/CFS that come from the SMC.” (p.73 Magical Medicine, Hooper)

Slam dunk, checkmate, Operation Media Blackout.

Yet things are changing, the Wessely school isn’t as prominent, the cracks are showing, the green curtain is fraying. There is an excellent series on ME and Long Covid in The Times by Sean O’Neill, yet it took his daughter, Maeve Boothby O’Neill to die from medical neglect and ME/CFS for this to happen and those are too high stakes. He also covers Sajid Javid’s progress in attempting to change the paradigm for ME due to his niece’s struggle with the illness and the lack of care for her. My own story was covered in an article by O’Neill.

To highlight this paradigm shift I would encourage anyone to read the ‘Rethinking ME’ Report by the APPG on ME on what needs to be done and why we are in this cold hell.

“Although there is now a well-documented history of ME, progress in treatment has been hampered by a number of factors, including the outdated opinions of some influential psychiatrists and other healthcare professionals.” Carol Monaghan MP

The Wizard

So, you’ve been Wesselyed, the wizard has done his best to throw everything your way, the dazzle, the glamour, the wining and dining, the fancy titles, the friendship & association. You believe what he says about people with ME/CFS. I would say that’s an understandable human reaction. Yet can I ask you to reflect for a moment and please take a moment to assess whether this reflects reality? Let’s transpose the situation say a fancy psychiatrist, a real big shot says that a whole patient group is untrustworthy in their testimony (seriously when is this ever a thing). Diabetics for instance, a psychiatrist (not an endocrinologist, warning, warning fundamental attribution error) tells you they are aggressive, activist, troublemaking, delusional and dangerous because they don’t believe sugar, the psychiatrist’s treatment, can help them. Because this is what has happened, you really want to make someone with ME/CFS worse and I mean really ill, long term, give them exercise, part of the holy grail of GET and CBT (and this means the watered down GET of let’s do a bit of exercise at a time). I would ask you to speak to someone (if they can) with ME/CFS, they likely have a story to break your heart. It’s likely to be an account of medical neglect that you don’t think is possible (another reason we don’t believed – that can’t be true?!?) I would say it’s ok to change your mind.

It’s worth remembering that up to about 80% of people with ME/CFS are women – you are being asked to discount the personal testimony of a primarily female group. This is the battle cry of hysteria, of the female experience of medicine for thousands of years, You really want to be a part of that? This is the Silas Weir Mitchell of our day, on whom Virginia Woolf wrote a savage satire in ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and Charlotte Gilman Perkin’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is terrifying. Yet it took the great female novelists of the day to counter the eminence historically.

Relevance for Long Covid

So why is all of this still relevant and dangerous for people with Long Covid? Because again we are in an environmentally unsafe situation and quick false assumptions are being made by Wessely's BPS circle:

• Lady Wessely, Clare Gerada, has some very dodgy ideas about face masks, saying they make Covid risk worse. Wessely clearly doesn't understanding the science of facemasks. He quickly delved back into health anxiety & catastrophising whilst using his Chelsea FC scarf as a mask. Even though he's the Director of the PHE NIHR Health Protection Unit for Emergency Response & Preparedness, active during COVID19. (Where is he using his platform for effective mitigations?)

• His influence through the RSM Covid series

• Fellow Wessely school proponents pushing a psychosocial agenda. Sharpe claims Long Covid is mass hysteria. Crawley & Chalder with a lockdown, abnormal behavioural approach in the only paediatric study in the UK, CLoCK.

• Wessely's initial attempt to call Long Covid 'post-infective fatigue syndrome' lumping it with all the issues that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has - ie it's not just fatigue and another syndrome.

• His stance on trying to set the research agenda with psychosocial elements, ie Lockdown or 'restrictive public health control methods' with a paper in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. With you guessed it CBT as a therapy as its part of the reCOVer trial.

• A poor paper on schools & attendance without mentioning methods to ensure child safety i.e. ventilation and with the emphasis on reassurance & psychological factors

One of the most concerning aspects when the pandemic was at its most intense in 2020 with people dying in their thousands was the mask & lockdown hesitancy led by Gerada and Wessely – a real Batman and Robin quest. Wessely did a RSM Covid series chat with Trish Greenhalgh and every question was a contrary one that led to a descending spiral of doubt. The ‘Precautionary Principle’ didn’t seem to be a factor. Yet it was the classic Wessely slight of hand, no outward anti-mask stance but a death by a thousand cuts of doubt.  A quick search of Gerada’s twitter page about masks shows the same vague yet muddying the water psychosocial tropes people with ME/CFS have had to deal with; people over-identifying with masks; masks lead to more fear; not enough evidence with a harmful factor in the equation (is it really ethical to run an RCT with a deadly pathogen? Surely engineering is enough); weaponizing the minority exempt as a reason to not have masks (other options are doable), they don’t work & the slippery slope to authoritarianism. O and of course if you disagree, you’re a troll. It’s not like this was the first airborne SARS pandemic, SE Asia had already had their head around KN95 respiratory masks whilst the west whirled around like a boat with one oar and no rudder pushing the false droplet flu hypothesis.

Millions are in the process of being socially & financially left & abandoned because there is a strong land grab for Long Covid from those who pushed their dodgy dealing BPS, Wessely School theories in ME/CFS (remember the playbook?) We can already see this in UK research for Long Covid. The culture is poisoned, the strands of influence not cut or redeemed.

So, this is why Simon Wessely being granted another top tier of influence in NHS England and Long Covid being deprioritised is another devastating blow. Instead of an effort to deal with airborne pathogens through ventilation & clean air policies & a strong investigative scientific research push we see mush.

The grey area of medicine with which Wessely is fascinated with is maybe grey because all it is is smoke n mirrors. Just hopefully not toxic smoke. But none of this means that we need another life ruined, a Planckian resolution, a grovelling apology, just getting out of the kitchen would be a step forward - a nice retirement in Provence without internet?

Wessely and co are adamant critics of dualism and it certainly might be for their benefit that they are right. If Maat comes swinging her feather of truth in the afterlife or as some report that you see your life through other people’s eyes in how you’ve affected them when the curtain goes down - I certainly wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

"Whatsoever house I may enter, my visit shall be for the convenience and advantage of the patient; and I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood...whatever may be the rank of those who it may be my duty to cure, whether mistress or servant, bond or free." Classical Hippocathic Oath

Coming Soon Part 3 of the Wessely Files

‘Simon Say CFS, Simon Says PIFS – Wessely and ME/CFS’