On Waking Up From the “American Dream”

55
714

“These enviable youngsters appear to be the winners in the race we have made of childhood. But the reality is very different, as I have witnessed in many of my own students and heard from the hundreds of young people whom I have spoken with on campuses or who have written to me over the last few years. Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”

–William Deresiewicz,  Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League
The New Republic
July 21st, 2014

Author’s Note: I encourage you to read Mr. Deresiewicz’ piece before continuing on with mine below.

 —

Throughout my life, I’ve had access to privilege, especially in regards to my education, which included a lifetime of private schooling followed by matriculation at Harvard University. I resonate a great deal with what this author has to say, and indeed, in the deep reflection and exploration I’ve done during these years of post-Psychiatry life, I’ve come to understand that my first crisis at the age of thirteen—the crisis that would get me psychiatrized and sent into the depths of the “mental health” system for fourteen years—was, in fact, a spiritual and existential one tied very much to the issues this author puts forth. Of course, I never had the chance to make sense of it in this way at the time; to see that my profound suffering and emptiness and desperate searching was, in fact, a meaningful and incredibly important quest I was embarking upon to make sense of a world that I didn’t feel I belonged in, a world that didn’t make sense to me.

No, I never had this chance, as my pain was quickly labeled “Bipolar” and I was thrown on Depakote and Prozac in a matter of fifty minutes by a psychiatrist I’d never before met. Only now am I circling back to those deep and meaningful questions that emerged back then—questions about who I am (and am not), and about what it means to even ask that question. About what it means to be human, to be authentic, to belong, to feel worthy of being alive. About how one finds a way to fit into a world that so often doesn’t make sense, and so often is alienating, scary, traumatic, and painful.

I grew up in an environment that taught me my worth as a person was directly tied to my grades, my athletic performance, my list of extra-curricular activities, and my SAT scores. That if I wasn’t the best, I was the worst. That if I wasn’t perfect, I was a failure. It wasn’t a lesson taught to me by any particular individual or institution (and I should add that I feel no blame in my heart towards anyone specific for this), but rather one steeped into every facet of the world around me, one that seemed to pulsate in the very air my peers and I breathed. At thirteen and in all my psychiatrized years to follow, I never had the chance to step back and process what this all meant, and whether these were values I wanted to hold onto, and I continued through high school and on to Harvard in this existential limbo, simply because I saw no other way.

I would arrive in Harvard Square without a shred of self-worth beyond that which I felt from my grades, my athletic accomplishments, and the rest of my college application. And the message that I was “mentally ill”—defective, abnormal, different, broken—would only serve to deepen my sense of emptiness and self-alienation beneath my list of “achievements,” leading me to place more and more dependence on these “achievements” to make me feel OK. Of course, the more psychotropic drugs I was put on and the more psychiatric labels I acquired as time moved on, the more these “achievements” fell apart, leaving me with absolutely nothing to hold onto. It makes complete sense to me that this trajectory of the so-called “American Dream” led me to one place and one place alone: three hundred pills, a bottle of wine, and a suicide note.

I should say that I have deep gratitude and appreciation for the countless resources, opportunities, and access points I’ve been afforded throughout my life and especially in these last few years since coming off of psychiatric drugs and leaving behind psychiatric labels.  Indeed, this privilege has, I believe, played a large part in giving me the gift of psychiatric liberation.  My life today is full of meaning and purpose, of pain and joy and anguish and connection and fear and love and passion, and this is a fact I savor daily.  Today, I am fully human.  Today, I belong.

What I struggle with, however, is knowing that this same liberating privilege was also, in many ways, my enslaver in the first place. I’ll leave the reader to Mr. Deresiewicz’ article to get a better sense of what I mean, because it does more justice to this notion than I ever could.  Indeed, I hope his message reaches people far and wide, because it is of the utmost importance for our society—especially our young people, the ones who are stepping onto the field and into the classroom and onto the stage for the first times in their lives, prepped for initiation into a blinders-on life of performance and achievement and accomplishment and perfection. Prepped for pursuit of the so-called “American Dream,” whose funnel is, of course, our Educational Industrial Complex.

It took me nearly thirty years—and fourteen years of psychiatric imprisonment—to connect with the powerful message articulated by Mr. Deresiewicz, which I’ve done by deprogramming myself from this “Dream” and discovering that I was born a worthy human.  Today, I realize that the values and lessons that truly matter to me—those of truth and justice and equality and compassion and authentic connection and integrity and commitment and unconditional love—have nothing to do with grades on a paper, or the number of awards won, or the length of a list of achievements.  They have nothing to do with the name of your college—or whether you even went to college— or the number of letters you acquire behind your name.  These values are learned in life lived with feet on the ground, with the cultivation of a critical and ever-questioning mind, and through the nurturing of a human spirit in symbiosis with this oppressive and beautiful world, amongst one’s fellows, inherently worthy.

Thank you, Mr. Deresiewicz, for getting this message out there.  I stand in solidarity with you.

 

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

***

Mad in America has made some changes to the commenting process. You no longer need to login or create an account on our site to comment. The only information needed is your name, email and comment text. Comments made with an account prior to this change will remain visible on the site.

55 COMMENTS

    • Indeed, madmom, there’s a lot of work ahead of us to reach our young people, and to help them connect to the oppression they’re experiencing at the hands of the Education Industry, the “Mental Health” Industrial Complex, and society, itself. I truly believe that once they realize how oppressed they are, this will empower them to come together and create radical and revolutionary transformation both within themselves as individuals, and as a social collective. So many are deeply indoctrinated into the medical model, however, that it will take a great deal of gentle, understanding patience and clever strategy to reach them with the message that their suffering is not evidence of pathology, but of the fact that they are healthy and connected to the pulse of the world.

      In solidarity,
      Laura

      Report comment

  1. Hi Laura-I don’t know if it’s just my computer or not, but I cannot get the article to come up correctly-there have been other links from this site that manifest in the same way. My connection is good, plenty of band-width but I get the first paragraph and then what looks like bar codes stretching down the page. Most frustrating.

    Would love to explore this particular subject more. A friend said to me not long ago that the only reason I expect things to be ‘fair’ in life is because I’m a white American. And I said, ‘brought up on Disney…’

    Report comment

    • Don’t know how old you are, but if you are perhaps as old as in your forties, you will have been brought up in a school system where every child was “a winner,” every child was encouraged to develop “self-esteem” and every child became to a ludicrous extent, “special needs,” if only to gain the extra help that the label delivered. “You are special” was and is the message pounded into little heads by the school system. While the goal of developing self-esteem is admirable, what we seem to have now are people who feel that whatever they want, they should get, who don’t tolerate diversity of opinion, who feel that people who are mean or negligent to others should be reported (and often charged). Before, what is commonly called snitching on others , was frowned upon as a sign of bad character. Today it is encouraged in order to make life “fair” for someone else. Life isn’t fair as we all sooner or later come to appreciate (not like) and this message would have been learned early in life by anyone who was allowed a little bit of freedom to exist outside the norm. When I go to the store, I avoid buying Fair Trade products because I ask myself, what’s fair about Fair Trade? Is it fair that companies are making money from a label that is crowding out cheaper products that people relied on just to get by?

      Report comment

    • hi humanbeing,
      hmm, not sure why this is happening… perhaps try clearing your cache? it seems to be working OK on my computer. you could also go to The New Republic’s website directly and find the article there– it’s a great one!

      best,
      laura

      Report comment

    • “A friend said to me not long ago that the only reason I expect things to be ‘fair’ in life is because I’m a white American. And I said, ‘brought up on Disney…’”
      That’s probably true. On the other hand there is a value, maybe not in “expecting” (which is of course only going to leave you hurt and bitter) but in yearning for life to be just. I think that being able to get angry at the injustice is a driving force for positive change and accepting it is just a way of a cynic which makes sure nothing ever changes.

      Report comment

  2. Thanks for this Laura. I went to post the article, “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League” on my high school’s facebook page, “You Know You Went to Stuy If…”and what do you know, it was the very last thing posted by someone else. Under the article was one comment by a fellow alumn of my high school: “There’s some truth to that. More than a few people I have either known personally – or am familiar with – did not attend any Ivy League institution.” Ha! More than a few?…congratulations!
    I was one of a small percentage at my high school, Stuyvesant, who did not attend or even apply to any Ivy League colleges, and I have my childhood trauma to thank for that. Since my high school was basically like an Ivy League University (public, but still), I realized a lot of these things early on and chose a small liberal arts school with no tests or grades (Hampshire), but still very expensive, right up there with Harvard in cost and hence in the privilege and lack of diversity of those who attend. Even so I remember feeling very opened up by the students there, because they were more diverse than those who went to my high school in New York City. They were more creative and interesting and generally actually cared about the world, or about something other than grades. I thought being from NYC I must have known everything and seen everything of importance in the world. I thought I came from diversity because I saw all different races all around me all the time. But nearly everyone at my high school had similar types of goals: to “succeed” and “get ahead” and “win” at life. My group of friends who were a bit less competitive seemed to have more interest in making a difference in the world and doing something meaningful. We also tended to cut class more and sit outside in the Spring and we didn’t pull all nighters to study.
    But if I had not been so turned off by this culture in high school, or perhaps if I had thought I could compete with these folks, I may have stayed my pre-high school self longer, and competed to go as “high” as I could.
    Thanks for sharing this. It is a very important piece of the big picture of “mental health system” failures that includes economy, education and so many other things.

    Report comment

    • hi chaya,
      thanks for the comment, and for sharing this here. glad to hear this article is getting spread around to schools like stuyvesant. i think it’s great you were turned off by the cutthroat, overly competitive environment you saw around you there, and that you didn’t, as you said, “compete as high as you could” and instead found your own path.

      in solidarity,
      laura

      Report comment

  3. A very good and thoughtful article. I was a bit startled at first, as I too had read the New Republic piece, which is brilliant.. Isn’t what this is all about, the completely materialistic culture we have here in America, both the richest and one of the most unequal countries in the developed world? I always knew (doesn’t take great insight) that Harvard was for the children of the rich, but it never occurred to me that in a way they were being exploited too. Because if you are to be among the “elite,” you have to be programmed not to have a conscience, to ignore the human worth of the people over whom you will dominate. It is training, in a way, to become a psychopath.

    And when you become a rich psychopath, you are losing your own humanity as well.

    The Justina Pelletier case made it pretty clear that the people who run Harvard care nothing for other human beings, or the cost to others of the wealth and privilege they acquire. But it seems if you “study” at Harvard, you have to give up your own humanity as well.

    Thank you for this thoughtful article.

    Report comment

  4. I remember watching the movie American Psycho (or perhaps reading the book,) and being genuinely (or perhaps foolishly) moved when Pat Bateman said, “But I just want to fit in.” Most of these kids are just doing what everyone else is doing, terrified of falling outside their social networks, of ending up under the steamroller instead of in the driver’s seat. It’s the modern conundrum, how to get off the steamroller without ending up underneath it. Two great articles, thanks Laura.

    Report comment

    • hi cataract,
      yes, there is SO much fear attached to the drive for perfection and high achievement, in my opinion. over these last few years, i’ve come to realize that fear has sat at the heart of nearly all my suffering, and all my so-called “Bipolar” experiences, and that because i never cultivated an inner sense of authentic self– perhaps authentic being is a better word, actually, because i don’t ascribe to the notion that i have a distinct self– i clung desperately and out of fear to all these outside things– grades, sports, the size of my body, etc.– to stay afloat.

      i wish there were more safe spaces in our world– especially at the level of local neighborhoods and communities– to explore the fear that we have as human beings of failure and success, of love and of being unloved, of fitting in and of feeling alienated, etc. nothing has been more liberating for me than to (1) name all this fear i’ve been carrying through my life, and (2) face it bravely and explore it to understand its roots. i know i’ll always have fear, as it’s a part of being human, so for me the end goal isn’t to achieve fearlessness. rather, it’s to learn how to coexist with life around me in a way that isn’t going to overwhelm my spirit, or paralyze me, or alienate me.

      in solidarity,
      laura

      Report comment

      • Hi Laura,

        Wouldn’t it be even nicer if we didn’t need ‘safe spaces’ as a refuge from the toxic values that engender perfectionism and fear? That value system seems more entrenched than ever, however, so a few safe spaces would be a great start.

        Congratulations on emerging from the maelstrom and finding authenticity. It’s a tough struggle that requires honesty and courage.

        Report comment

        • Dear Sally,
          Yes, it would certainly be even nicer to create a society in which we don’t need to create separate spaces to feel “safe” from our world! Of course, such a society would take generations upon generations upon generations to cultivate, as we’d have to slowly chip away at all the fear-based greed, oppression, violence, trauma, etc. that is so deeply embedded in our social fabric today (and that has been, well, it seems forever!) and we’d have to dismantle the various Industrial Complexes that keep us imprisoned literally and existentially (Psych-Pharma-“Mental Health”, Food/Agra, Military, Educational, Prison, etc.). It would also, IMO, take a complete re-envisioning of our economic system, but that’s a topic for another time!

          IMO, as long as human distress/suffering/fear/anxiety/altered states can be exploited for profit gain and can be taken hostage by Psychiatry (who, as we know, has absolutely complete free reign to imprison and to dehumanize and to violate and to silence human beings with no accountability from anyone), and as long as we as a society continue to surrender ourselves to the “Mental Health” Industry to “take care of us”, we will continue to fear ourselves and stay just as alienated from ourselves as ever, and thus, separate “safe spaces” will be needed.

          As we transition out of a reliance on the MHI and into a still intolerant world, these “safe spaces” will be vital, but hopefully, over time, the values and philosophies of these “safe spaces” (humility, open ears/hearts/minds, love, acceptance, patience, non-judgment, critical thinking, etc.) will seep out into society more generally, hopefully reaching our young people.

          I am realistic about what I might see unfold in my lifetime– in other words, while I believe in total social revolution and the abolition of the “Mental Health” Industry, I acknowledge I won’t see that before I die. What excites me, however, is exploring, with others, ways that we can both draw people out of the MHI, and help keep people from ever having to enter it in the first place. This, to me, needs to be done through the cultivation and nurturing of a collective consciousness of our grave oppression at the hands of Psychiatry/Psychology/Big Pharma (and, of course, broader social forms of oppression that I won’t get into here for the sake of time!)– nothing was more liberating for me than to realize (a) how gravely oppressed I’d been my whole life both by society and by Psychiatry, (b) that I’d never been the “problem”, that I wasn’t broken, and that it was the world I lived in that was causing me distress, not “faulty biology”, and (c) that with this knowledge, I now had reclaimed the power to completely transform the way I thought about myself, the world, and my relationship to the world– especially around letting go of the idea that I was a segregated, separate, individual “self”, for I now believe that I exist only in symbiosis with life around me. I want to help spread these kinds of awakenings to young people (and adults!) everywhere– imagine if enough of us awakened to our shared oppression… Revolution would be on the horizon, I’ve no doubt.

          Thank you for your kind words, Sally. I’m really grateful for your comment!

          Best,
          Laura

          Report comment

      • I was ensnared in the psychiatric system at the age of 28. At this stage of my life I already had a fairly good sense of my place in the world, but the experience. Was earth shattering, nonetheless-25 years Later I am weening off the last vestiges of klonapin and zypreza. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to have been encarcerated and labeled during my formative years. Kudos to you for getting through it.
        From reading your article I sense that the author of the article about the Ivy League schoolds really struck a chord with you. I went to the elite public school in my state of West Virginia. Transferring from the wrong side of town did I think eventually help me to gain some perspective, eventually. Initially I fell in with the cool crowd. At this all white high school there was a high level of cliquish ness, and back baiting, with the school being divided by “creekers” and “hillers.” Since the white middle class kids where I went to junior high were tracked, the educational culture at the high school was not hugely challenging, though I was no longer at the head of my math class. (1979). Being from the wrong side of town I think did in the end give me the right perspective. So when it came time to apply to college I had no real desire for the Ivy League (grades maybe sufficient test scores not spectacular) nor did I seem to know, like others, that George Town, Duke, and The University of Virginia were something to strive for.
        My own son is entering his senior year. I plan on giving him your article to read. He did all his schooling on the wrong side of town, and has better test scores, extra-curricular, and high end test scores unlike me. He got a letter from Harvard and phone calls from several universities. Maybe the lesson here is that the public schools have served us well until now, and maybe we should continue this tradition into college.

        Report comment

        • Dear chrisreed,
          Thanks so much for your comment. Wonderful to hear that you’re at the last stages of weening yourself off of Klonopin and Zyprexa! How are you feeling? Can I ask, how long have you been tapering for? Twenty-five years… Wow, a long time on so-called meds. I am sending you solidarity as you move along the journey of liberation from Psychiatry 🙂

          I am appreciative of you sharing some of your and your son’s story here! Thank you, and good luck to your son as he moves into his final year of high school! If I was to give one piece of advice to a high school senior, it would be this: listen to your gut and your heart as you make your decision about college. (I never did! Nor did I feel a connection to my gut or my heart by the time I was a senior…)

          In solidarity,
          Laura

          Report comment

          • Zyprexa is difficult to taper off. I have tried three times in the past. I have been switched from a number of medications by psychiatrists over the years, including Mellerill, Depakoate,and Abilify, I tapered off lithium two and a half years ago against medical directive (kidney damage) and Lamical six months ago. From reading other posts zypreza and klonopin are difficult to come off of. But of course many say the same about Lamictal. Any way I am happy about weight loss and maintaining my sleeping pattern. Actually the psychiatrists wanted me off Zypreza, so why did they give it to me in the first place?
            On another note, I have been reading MIA for a couple of years, but I have just started blogging. I was in a counseling program at the local graduate school, but I dropped out three years ago. The medical model casts it’s shadow over other helping professions. Any way, I feel more at home on MIA. I also posted on Bonnie’s two articles. I feel confident about my own individual journey to divorce myself from the psych system, and at the same time I hope to become more politically committed for collective action.

            Report comment

      • I was ensnared in the psychiatric system at the age of 28. At this stage of my life I already had a fairly good sense of my place in the world, but the experience was earth shattering, nonetheless-25 years Later I am weening off the last vestiges of klonapin and zypreza. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to have been encarcerated and labeled during my formative years. Kudos to you for getting through it.
        From reading your article I sense that the author of the article about the Ivy League schoolds really struck a chord with you. I went to the elite public school in my state of West Virginia. Transferring from the wrong side of town did I think eventually help me to gain some perspective, eventually. Initially I fell in with the cool crowd. At this all white high school there was a high level of cliquishness, and back baiting, with the school being divided into “creekers” and “hillers.” Since the white middle class kids where I went to junior high were tracked, the educational culture at the high school was not hugely challenging, though I was no longer at the head of my math class. (1979). Being from the wrong side of town I think did in the end give me the right perspective. So when it came time to apply to college I had no real desire for the Ivy League (grades maybe sufficient test scores not spectacular) nor did I seem to know, like others, that George Town, Duke, and The University of Virginia were something to strive for.
        My own son is entering his senior year. I plan on giving him your article to read. He did all his schooling on the wrong side of town, and has better test scores, extra-curricular, and high end test scores unlike me. He got a letter from Harvard and phone calls from several universities. Maybe the lesson here is that the public schools have served us well until now, and maybe we should continue this tradition into college.

        Report comment

      • I was ensnared in the psychiatric system at the age of 28. At this stage of my life I already had a fairly good sense of my place in the world, but the experience was earth shattering, nonetheless-25 years Later I am weening off the last vestiges of klonapin and zypreza. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to have been encarcerated and labeled during my formative years. Kudos to you for getting through it.
        From reading your article I sense that the author of the article about the Ivy League schoolds really struck a chord with you. I went to the elite public school in my state of West Virginia. Transferring from the wrong side of town did I think eventually help me to gain some perspective, eventually. Initially I fell in with the cool crowd. At this all white high school there was a high level of cliquishness, and back baiting, with the school being divided into “creekers” and “hillers.” Since the white middle class kids where I went to junior high were tracked, the educational culture at the high school was not hugely challenging, though I was no longer at the head of my math class. (1979). Being from the wrong side of town I think did in the end give me the right perspective. So when it came time to apply to college I had no real desire for the Ivy League (grades maybe sufficient test scores not spectacular) nor did I seem to know, like others, that George Town, Duke, and The University of Virginia were something to strive for.
        My own son is entering his senior year. I plan on giving him your article to read. He did all his schooling on the wrong side of town, and has better test scores, extra-curricular, and high end test scores unlike me. He got a letter from Harvard and phone calls from several universities. Maybe the lesson here is that the public schools have served us well until now, and maybe we should continue this tradition into college. I thought that I originally wrote accidentally got lost. This is my second posting ever. So what I wrote and what I thought I lost is basically what I rewrote. So hopefully either one will get posted-though I think this rewrite is a little better.

        Report comment

  5. , I’ve come to understand that my first crisis at the age of thirteen…was, in fact, a spiritual and existential one …”

    Yes. Did you ever read or hear of the old pop psych book by Eric Berne called “Games People Play”? Anyway, the “games” referred to in the title were social/ego games. And the 1st rule of all the “games” was to never perceive or acknowledge that the game is a game.

    So without getting too shrinky, it looks like you were starting to perceive life, reality and identity beyond the parameters of the game, or the box, and those around you were trying to stuff your consciousness back in, with psychiatry assisting the process.

    It’s good to be self-aware about whatever forms of privilege we benefit from, be it class, racial, sexual, etc.; but the point of that recognition should be to use it to help the world rectify and transcend those power issues, not to guilt trip ourselves about it or allow others to. (I’m not saying you’re doing either of these.) Some of history’s greatest revolutionaries have come from places of great privilege. It’s more a question of what one does with that privilege. And there’s certainly no question that you are taking advantage of the resources to which you have access in a most selfless, admirable and productive way. So, thank you!

    (It’s getting late, I hope the italics work correctly…)

    Report comment

    • hi oldhead!
      thanks for the comment. haven’t heard of eric berne… will certainly check him out. and indeed, your insight wasn’t too shrinky– i completely agree with you that the environment i was in did not allow for my awakening consciousness to continue moving through the discoveries it needed to move through. again, i don’t think this was an intentional silencing/shutting down on the part of anyone, but it was simply in the space between me and the world around me, and in looking back, i think it’s safe to say that i was likely FAR from the only young person having these shutdown awakenings in my community… (in fact, many people from my childhood over these last few years have reached out to me through my blog to affirm this fact– imagine if we’d all known how far from alone we each were in those times of painful, repressed adolescence!)

      and yes, i appreciate your comment about privilege. needed to hear that, my friend. thank you!

      running a bit late… need to head to the MindFreedom conference… so i’ve gotta make this brief!

      in solidarity,
      laura

      Report comment

      • With everything you already have on your plate I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about Eric Berne, I just checked at Wikipedia to make sure I knew something of what I was talking about — it says he developed “transactional analysis”; it’s basically a psychoanalytically-based series of abstractions about social behavior. I remembered his comment about not acknowledging the game while reading your piece, which is why I mentioned it. Though maybe the anthropological side of you might find it interesting, dunno, it was a well-known “mainstream” book at the time…

        i don’t think this was an intentional silencing/shutting down on the part of anyone

        Amazing, huh? You’re right — the commands and signals we receive are implicit in the fabric of our lifestyle, and are only occasionally spelled out directly or in words. This cultural-political matrix is dynamic enough to have programmed its dictates into our unconscious thoughts and assumptions. So it doesn’t happen at the level of individuals, though the commands are filtered down to us through friends, relatives, and teachers with the most beneficial intentions (and commercials, TV and media with the most malevolent ones).

        That’s really a trip about your friends growing up contacting you to ‘fess up that you were picking up on things they were also going through at the time. How’s it feel to be a prophet? Ezra Pound said that “the artist is the antenna of the race.”
        And yeah, what if…! 🙂

        Great to hear from you, of course.

        Report comment

  6. “My life today is full of meaning and purpose, of pain and joy and anguish and connection and fear and love and passion, and this is a fact I savor daily. Today, I am fully human. Today, I belong.”

    Laura, I am always encouraged by your blogging! Always. You are one of my most top/favorite bloggers, here, at MIA for sure.

    I really mean that…

    And, maybe it is because you are one of my favorites, I’ll ask you to please, excuse me, as offer just a wee bit of criticism. I tend to want perfection from every writer who I feel is capable of achieving the heights of greatness with his or her writing (and I do view you as such a writer), so now I must offer this one point, somewhat critical of what seems, to me, a confusing phrase that you utilize, on occasion:

    It is ~~> “the gift of psychiatric liberation.”

    Imho, that’s a confusing expression.

    To illustrate my point: Just think for a moment, how, in the 1970’s, one could have been hailing the gift of women’s liberation.

    Consider how those two words — women’s + liberation — come together, to celebrate women.

    Hence, “the gift of psychiatric liberation” can seem, at first glance, to celebrate all things ‘psychiatric’ — indeed, seems to suggest, that whatever is psychiatric must be liberating.

    Meanwhile, surely, what you mean to refer to, is the gift of being liberated from psychiatry (or, one could reasonably say, “the gift of having been liberated from psychiatry’s grip” or “…from psychiatry’s strangle hold”).

    Sorry if it seems that I’m nitpicking here, but I’ve seen you use that same phrase (“psychiatric liberation” previously), and though it bothered me, I said nothing. Now, I’m just speaking up offering my sense of it… 🙂

    Of course, you needn’t agree! And, in any case, I remain your faithful fan…

    Respectfully,

    Jonah

    Report comment

    • hi jonah,
      i SO appreciate this feedback– thank you. i do agree that the phrasing of my words is, perhaps, not the clearest. indeed, the “gift” that i’m speaking about is, really, a second chance at life and at being, and it feels like a gift to me because there are so, so, so many people who went down a similar path as i did and never came back. but perhaps “gift” really isn’t the right word at all, because it’s not as if someone/something “gave” me this liberation– it’s been a combination of my access to resources, my own will, my own human spirit, and, of course, the support of loving friends and family around me. i guess it’s just that i feel so overwhelmed with gratitude and deep appreciation for this new chance at life that it often feels like it was something given to me, not something i’ve worked really hard for!

      going forward, i will be much more mindful in how i speak about psychiatric liberation, because your point is really a good one. i am very grateful that you raised it, jonah. i wish i could write more here but i’m trying to get to the MindFreedom conference in CT and i’m running horribly late!

      in solidarity,
      laura

      Report comment

  7. It was with great interest that I read both articles. In the not so distant past there was a movement to “rethink schools.” This movement was firmly rooted in liberation theory. After it got going it became obvious that we couldn’t just pull learners out of the education system and expect them to carry on. They first had to have a “withdrawal” from the system. Depending on how long they participated in the system, the more difficult the withdrawal. So we started an organization called “unschooling.” All three of my children are unschoolers–never took the SAT, no grades, narrative evaluations, studied science by working with a scientist, etc. My youngest has never taken a standardized test. And all three went to college (a progressive one with no tests and narrative evaluations). It was the way off of the steamroller.

    There is something disturbing about this. There is a great similarity between the liberation from the educational system and liberation from the psychiatric system (We had our battles with the courts and legislation too). Unschooling never took off and never became the dominant system. The “Rethinking Schools” zine folded. It might be helpful to explore why the unschooling movement failed to become the dominant system.

    Report comment

    • I have been an education reformer my whole life, and we did several years of “unschooling” with all of our kids, as well as helping develop an alternative charter school with a child-based, democratic philosophy. I don’t think it will ever “catch on,” because that kind of philosophy is too threatening to the elite, who really need smart and well-trained but confused drones to run their social machinery for them.

      My wife’s brother went to Harvard, as did his father and grandfather and who knows how far back. He didn’t really have a choice about it – his “privilege” as a white male depended on his kowtowing to the party line. He is working on his third marriage and has developed abusive characteristics and struggled at times with substance abuse. His sister (my wife), by contrast, went to Oberlin (where we met) and got a real liberal arts education, and we have traveled a very different road.

      My youngest is about to head off to Evergreen State in Olympia this fall – a “progressive [school] with no tests and narrative evaluations” – not a particularly selective school, but one that really promotes interdisciplinary thinking and creative application of knowledge to the real world. I’d never consider Harvard as an option for him, and neither would he.

      Great blog, as always, Laura!

      —- Steve

      Report comment

      • Hey just to chime in. First…excellent post. How we define success is often far too narrow.

        Also…Steve…just to say I went to Evergreen and had an amazing experience. It is truly a very unique place of learning. I designed much of my academic path and studied a combination of things that I doubt I would have studied elsewhere (field botany, genetics, herbalism, ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, biochemistry). I hope your youngest enjoys it as much as I did.

        Report comment

      • Hi Steve,
        Thanks for the comment! I’m curious– how is that alternative charter school that you helped start going today? It sounds pretty cool :). I have a great deal to learn in the world of “alternative education”, if that’s an appropriate phrase to use. If you have any resources that you think I might be interested in, I’d love to hear about them!

        What an interesting juxtaposition between your brother-in-law and your wife. I know many, many people from my hometown, my high school (a New England boarding school), and Harvard who ended up struggling– just as I did– with self-destruction. It’s taken me a really long time to find peace with myself and to let go of the powerful relationship I had throughout my life with turning all the pain I felt inwards on myself. Years of cutting and burning myself (which served multiple purposes for me, from giving me the pleasure of sensation when I was totally numbed out, to acting as a form of punishment, to serving as a channel for all the turmoil I felt inside of me), of horribly enslaving “eating disorders” (finding freedom from that prison has been, perhaps, the most difficult of all the existential prisons I’ve worked to liberate myself from), of drinking myself into oblivion with alcohol… all of this, I see now, came into my life as a way to regulate my deep, deep, deep feelings of eternal inadequacy in the midst of the totally obsessive and overwhelming drive I felt for high achievement and perfection. I don’t want to minimize the role that being psychiatrized played in all of this, as well– in fact, it’s hard to say whether I would have become as fixated on high achievement as I did had I not been labeled “Bipolar” as a child, for I had to work that much harder to appear “put together” and “successful” on the surface knowing that I was harboring the secret of my brokenness and abnormality and eternal difference, thanks to the message I internalized from Psychiatry. But I digress!

        I think Evergreen State sounds fantastic, and I hope your youngest child has a blast there this fall! I am so inspired by this thread about unschooling and as I said, I’m eager to learn more from you guys!

        In solidarity,
        Laura

        Report comment

        • Trillium Charter School is alive and well, 12 years later. It’s a public school so costs no additional money, as long as you live in the Portland Public School District. I just disconnected from their e-mail list, as Kevin’s graduated and we’ve been gradually moving on, but the community is strong and I think will be functioning 12 or 20 years into the future. The thing I love about it is the shift of emphasis away from trying to achieve approval from the authorities through good grades toward achieving self-worth through accomplishing one’s own goals. Additionally, the power dynamic is so different, with the all-school meetings and the ability to request student-assisted mediation with even a teacher who you feel has treated you unfairly or disrespectfully. He has little to no tolerance for arbitrary injustice, because he hasn’t had to put up with it, and he is therefore still in touch with his outrage when outrageous things happen.

          I really think school is where most of us learn to accept oppression as an unavoidable part of the system. It’s great training to be a passive consumer. Education reform should be a part of reforming the mental health system, because it really does drive some of us around the bend!

          — Steve

          P.S. I only applied to Oberlin, but thought about applying to Harvard as my “back-up school.” I fantasized about sending them a rejection letter: “Thanks for your interest in my attending Harvard University. There were many well qualified schools. I have selected one whose offerings more closely match my personal and academic needs…”

          Report comment

    • Dear RISN,
      Thank you so much for making me aware of this movement to “rethink schools”! I’d never before heard of this, and I will certainly be looking into this history. How unfortunate that it never took off… Do you know if there are still ways to obtain the zine you mention? I bet you’re right, that we can learn from the failures of the unschooling movement… It does sound like quite a parallel to the psychiatric liberation cause, especially in so far as I imagine it is all about empowering families and communities to pull themselves away from dependence on these deeply embedded institutions of social control. IMO, it’s going to take a lot of creative and critical thinking to build grassroots community infrastructures that can sustain young people and adults in times of distress/so-called “psychosis”/etc. so that we can slowly chip away at our collective reliance on the “Mental Health” Industrial Complex (I’ve begun saying MHIC instead of the Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex because I think it goes much deeper than simply Psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical Industry!) I imagine that’s what you guys were doing when you were a part of this “unschooling” movement?

      One thing you might be interested in… Have you heard of “hackschooling”? I don’t know much about it but saw a TED talk a while back from quite a remarkable kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY.

      I would love to have the opportunity to exchange experiences with your children… As someone who spent countless– and I mean COUNTLESS– hours consumed with thoughts about grades and scores (and spending COUNTLESS hours working hard to get very particular grades and scores!), I am very interested in hearing about a different way to have gone through adolescence and young adulthood, educationally speaking :).

      Thanks again, RISN!
      In solidarity,
      Laura

      Report comment

      • Laura: Rethinking Schools is an online journal started by a group of public school teachers in Milwaukee. They also appear to have a strong contingent in Portland Oregon. As a teacher of “at-risk” youth I find their journal invaluable in helping me to understand our testing obsessed teaching culture in an historical perspective. The journal Radical Teacher also addresses the problems in our education system from a higher education perspective.

        Report comment

        • Opps! I meant to write “Growing Without Schooling” not “Rethinking Schools.” GWS is also available on line. Alternative Education Resource Organization is another source for democratic education. Thanks for catching this chrisreed!

          Report comment

          • I currently work as a substitute in the public school system and at Job Corps. I also work part time at a run away shelter and foster home. I don’t know much about the de-schooling, but I don’t think that alternatives to our current education are necessarily at cross purposes from those who seek to strengthen our public school system. I don’t know the early history of charters, but I have heard it said that charter movement was originally a reform movement, before it was captured by the privatizing forces of the charter movement which are compounding the ills of public education through its test driven curriculum-See Bush’s No Child Left Behind And Obama’s Race to the Top.
            I believe that the teachers union in Chicago has put their best foot forward, but my union has not been at all helpful at Job Corps-US Dept. Of Labor, a job training program for at-risk youth and part of the war on poverty. Here again being on the political left, I think that there is an important part for government and social welfare programs, but I can not glimpse the over all benefit of the program, since there is a disconnect between workers and management. Sleeping in class is required to be treated as a medical problem. I am concerned that some students are bouncing back and forth on ADHD medication and other psychiatric medications. I flat out asked both management and the union about their policy on psychotropics. I could not get a straight answer from either one. Foster youth also use these drugs at three to four times the rate of other youth. I don’t have to explain this to MIA readers, but the public at large needs to confront this contradiction affecting the most vulnerable in our society. Particularly, the public should be asking why one group is experiencing such a high rate of “a biological” disease. Bruce Levine blogs here and has a few choice words for this state of affairs. Moreover, drug testing of our at-risk keeps them directly in the cross hairs of the drug war and the mass incarceration disgrace of our society. I don’t want to go any further afield, but mass incarceration and psychiatry are, I believe intertwined as well-a subject for a further posting.

            Report comment

      • Hi, Laura,
        Our children are in the International version of The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education. We were in Venezuela. Our son returned to the US for a BFA when he was 17. He was captured by the psychiatric system. You have a good chance of meeting him in the Mad Pride Movement.

        Report comment

  8. Yes, Steve, it is threatening to the elite and so why don’t we challenge and withdraw children from their system? There was a definite backlash from teacher unions. Deschooling was the legal arm of the movement and was able to join liberals with fundamentalists to get freedoms for families. Charter schools were the alternative (with teachers and parents given the freedom to create the educational environment). However, there are many charter schools today that look no different than the public system, except with no union, and are run by professional charter school administrative corporations. Why?

    I see the attempts to start Soteria Houses as similar to the unschool/democracy school movement. Only 2% of the USA participate in unschooling. A similar situation is in Sweden where anyone who wants to start a cooperative can find others to join except for educational cooperatives. Too much work!

    Are the alternatives to the psychiatric system too much work for the American public?

    Report comment

    • I think so. It is much too easy to go along with media representations of “mentally ill” as being brain-damaged and probably dangerous, chemically “different” than “you and me,” rather than acknowledging that a sick society is at the core of much of what passes for “mental illness.” I can certainly assert with confidence that the school system exacerbated whatever anxiety and self-hatred I had already absorbed from my “scapegoat” status in my family, and my mental health would have been dramatically improved by having even one person say, “You know, you’re right. This place really sucks for kids. Let’s try and find something you like better.” Hence, I became an education reformer, and have tried to be that one person for other kids stuck in the current oppressive paradigm. It is always reassuring to hear that others are doing the same, but I think it’s always going to be an uphill battle, and most people choose the path of least resistance.

      In the end, we’ll probably get alternatives only when the psychiatric system gets sued and ends up spewing out enough money to make it no longer worth the effort to con people. As my old history teacher used to say, “Man is basically greedy.” Or maybe “man is basically lazy” is a better description, but it ends up being the same result. People follow the path that gives them the most payoff for the least amount of labor, unless they have a very well-developed conscience.

      — Steve

      Report comment

      • I’d actually offer that “man is essentially meaning-making.”

        I think that people, once having found something they find meaningful, and experienced the rush of emotion and illusion of certainty that that seems to offer, will cling to that feeling and that illusion against all else. They will fight for that feeling and those ideas to the death. They will vote for parties whose policies actually work against them in the real world, because the feeling of meaning is so core to us that we will go – as history shows – without food or water or even life rather than give it up.

        This, I think, is what we are working with – or against – in changing the paradigm of “care” as currently offered, and why we must be mindful of being able to offer a meaning and purpose to replace it. Not speciously or vainly, but really; offering ideas that people can actually feel are “good.”

        When I have worked with people that psychiatrists had deemed “hopeless” or “chronic” or whatever variation of that that was on offer at the time, and managed to massage the situation into one in which the person was held more holistically or “environmentally,” I would often see that same psychiatrist who had been adamant that the person was ill shift wordlessly into being happy or even gleefully into seeing the person getting better. The idea that the person was ill – or even that they had been ill – slipped silently away, and we all enjoyed the satisfaction of being present at a person’s coming-to-be within themselves.

        We did not then review how wrong the psychiatrist had been. In those situations it wasn’t necessary or even well-advised. I was sad and even angry that we couldn’t then reflect on whether the person having been diagnosed with a “lifelong” illness with “no cure” should be seen in retrospect, as a mistake or even a potential crime against humanity; it wasn’t appropriate to turn a person’s life into a political football, and the psychiatrist’s willingness to relinquish control or authority didn’t need to be augmented by anyone calling them bad names.

        But the instinct and desire to turn those occasions into change on a social level has, for me, found some fulfillment in working on MiA.com.

        Report comment

    • Hi Maria,
      Thanks for the question! It’s a big one… And one I get asked often. It’s always strange trying to answer this question both because I can only speculate, and also because I’m actually grateful that my life went the way that it did (if I could go back and “do it differently”, I wouldn’t!) But I’ll offer a few ideas.

      For starters, had I had a safe space to talk about what I was going through with peers and without adults, perhaps that might have helped, though honestly, I don’t know if it would have, because the culture around us was so secretive and private that I can’t imagine that space ever having existed… What I never realized was how natural and “healthy” my issues were… That I wasn’t the only one who was feeling totally messed up inside– that one is *meant* to be totally disoriented and anxious and afraid and sad when one is hitting puberty. That message might have really helped me, though again, I can’t say for sure, as I might have said, “F– you!” upon hearing it, for I was so full of anger back then.

      Additionally, NOT being labeled and drugged would have helped– really, I can’t speak strongly enough about the destructive impact that being labeled “Bipolar” had on me as a fourteen-year old. Of course, my parents were doing what they thought was best– as parents do today– so I hold no blame for them. I just wish parents were able to access the message that it’s not “bad parenting” to avoid turning to the “Mental Health” Industry when your child is struggling– of course, as long as there aren’t alternative places to go to, they’ll continue going to the MHI, even if they realize it’s not helpful, so this is a critical issue to tackle.

      Best,
      Laura

      Report comment

      • What I think would have helped the most and I am talking from experience here is to have a community. And by community I mean any people who you can consider your friends, not necessarily close but those witch whom you feel free to talk, exchange ideas, work etc. What is being promoted now in schools and universities is not making friends it’s “networking”. It feels like a term thought up by a psychopath who observed people working together and achieving their goals and showing his total misunderstanding of how these successes came about. Today’s society rewards alienation and competition which only works for a small majority of people and is destructive to the society at large.

        Report comment

  9. Laura thank you once again for such a beautiful and eloquent article. I truly feel like you have a powerful gift for writing and I continue to be touched on a regular basis by your articles, videos and activities for justice.

    Many years ago, when I told a family friend that I was in undergraduate school studying philosophy, she scoffed and asked, “what are you going to do with that?” I replied, “Oh I dunno, be happy I guess?” I don’t know when in history the pursuit of knowledge for its own joy and inspiration got perverted into the pursuit of accomplishment, titles, status, and the like.

    I fully agree with you that status, credentialing or degrees should not confer some sort of special privilege or status for anyone. And a system that uses such things in order to suppress voices or views or reinforce a rigid hierarchy is a system that needs to be toppled. I am sad that our system has turned the pursuit of knowledge into a rat race that has little to do with intellectual curiosity, passion and a searching for meaningful answers to the deepest questions of our lived experience – but instead is about competition and status, checking of credentialing checkboxes so you can then wave your letters around at others and claim authority without actually possessing a rational thought.

    I feel so incredibly fortunate and privileged that I was mostly able to avoid that and got to learn for the joy of learning – in part, through the existential meaning making of studying philosophy and the social justice and human experience learning from studying in social work. And in part as part of a deeply passionate personal process of seeking to clarify my values and my understanding of the world in which I live and move and have my being. Lucky. Very lucky.

    Report comment

    • Hi friend,
      Thanks for this message :). Haha, yes, that response you got from your friend when you told her you were studying philosophy is all too common. I studied social/medical/psychiatric anthropology in college, mostly because by the time I had to pick a concentration I was already psychiatrized and so completely consumed by trying to make sense of “my mental illness” that I gravitated towards a field of study that promised such an exploration; I definitely got similar responses to you when I mentioned what I studied because it wasn’t a funnel to finance, law, etc. I remember not really caring because I assumed I wouldn’t make it out of my thirties alive anyways, so why should I have even been thinking about a “professional career” at all!

      What a wonderful thing that your path through the education system mostly avoided the rat race, and that your connection to social justice, meaning, and authentic values was cultivated throughout your schooling!

      In solidarity,
      Laura

      Report comment

  10. Another excellent post! Thank you for articulately identifying a social environment that is harmful for the mental health of our youth.

    I worry that the increasing push for achievement in our culture is also creating problems for younger children. I believe that the dramatic increase in autism spectrum among our children is a direct result of increasing pressure for young children to excel at learning instead of excel at being a child.

    Thanks again, Steve

    Report comment

  11. I hope one day the “mentally ill will realize the system that is keeping them down, perpetuating and reinforcing illness and stigma. What we really need is strength. We need to realize that trauma is the source of our differences. Our dissociation from ourself and our suppressed memories keep us afraid. Society keeps us afraid and ashamed of our trauma, of our anxiety. This fear of being different can escalate symptoms of mental illness. “Mental illness”

    It is designed to oppress us, take away out power, our voice. There is a cure. It is realizing there are suppressed memories. We have hidden these memories to protect ourselves, but once we realize how past traumas have influenced “symptoms” we can become whole.
    My mission is to find the cure to the Illness that does not exist.

    -Tru Harlow

    http://Www.curementalillness.wordpress.com

    Report comment

  12. Great post. I think that the Western society at large has a big problem and this problem is the neo-liberalism and the set of core values that come with it which are deeply dehumanising. It goes through every aspect of life: education, family, health, work. It leaves behind swaths of ever unsatisfied and frustrated “winners” and even more physically and mentally drained and exhausted “losers” whose lives are supposed to be only meaningful in terms of climbing or at least just handing on the ladder.
    Psychiatric abuse is only one painful symptom of the whole Selfish Society Disorder.

    Report comment

  13. Love your work here Laura!

    BTW: How does one submit an article for Op Ed consideration? I’ve contacted MIA 3 times with this question and have, thus far, been ignored. I’ve also posted this question on two different forums to no avail. I’m feeling about as powerless as I did-in this process of trying to get a simple answer to this question-as I did when drugged and institutionalized as an adolescent! Kind of ironic given the nature of who I’m reaching out to: MIA!

    Thank you for considering my question

    Report comment

    • Hi there, I’m sorry you felt ignored! I just saw your question in the forums and replied to it there. Not sure what happened with your attempts to contact folks, but I know we all get a lot of email and occasionally something might slip through the cracks.

      Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY