Psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and anthropology: how a psychiatrist becomes a sophist (commentary to Joseph Zislin, md, part 1)

“How and why psychoanalysts become storytellers” is a two-part article by Joseph Zislin, MD published by the “Neurology Bulletin” in 2020. In this paper Dr. Zislin studies several quasi-psychoanalytical essays on famous fairy-tales, published by physicians and psychologists online. Surprisingly, it is from his own philological discussion of their texts which Dr. Zislin draws conclusions about therapeutic abilities of the authors, as well as about the relevance of psychoanalysis to clinical practice and social studies alike. The present text is a commentary to Dr. Zislin’s “How and why psychoanalysts become storytellers”. It studies the ways of gathering and presenting data exercised in the original paper, as well as the strategies of argumentation Dr. Zislin chooses. Although one cannot tell for sure whether the data presented were distorted on purpose or not, choosing the strategy of argumentation is always a more or less conscious decision. Some analytic tools of rhetoric allow one to demonstrate that Dr. Zislin uses argumentation unacceptable in academic writing — that of deceptive reasoning, logical fallacies and “sophisms”. The present commentary is to highlight a problematic issue: should a practicing physician adhere to rules and norms of other disciplines, once he goes beyond the strict academic field of clinical medicine?