Cargo Cult Psychiatry

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ā€œAny sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.ā€
ā€”Arthur C. Clarke (science fiction author)

The noted physicist Richard Feynman gave the commencement address at CalTech in 1974 with a speech providing guidance on how to avoid getting fooled: Cargo Cult Science: Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself.

Feynman described the experience of people in the South Pacific who were briefly exposed to technological magic during World War II:

In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So theyā€™ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennasā€”heā€™s the controllerā€”and they wait for the airplanes to land. Theyā€™re doing everything right.Ā  The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesnā€™t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but theyā€™re missing something essential, because the planes donā€™t land.

Feynmanā€™s speech goes on to give an example of how a little science-mistake became science-gospel, and how it took another 15 years of experiments before a more accurate value for the charge of an electron was settled upon:

Why didnā€™t they discover that the new number was higher right away? Itā€™s a thing that scientists are ashamed ofā€”this historyā€”because itā€™s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikanā€™s, they thought something must be wrongā€”and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikanā€™s value they didnā€™t look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. Weā€™ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we donā€™t have that kind of a disease.

Feynman says the later investigators who came up with the correct result fooled themselves into publishing incorrect values:

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselvesā€”of having utter scientific integrityā€”is, Iā€™m sorry to say, something that we havenā€™t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope youā€™ve caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourselfā€”and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After youā€™ve not fooled yourself, itā€™s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Cargo Cult Psychiatry

In Malignant Do-Gooderism: The Tragedies of Allopathic Psychiatry, I distinguished allopathic psychiatry from holistic psychiatry. Psychiatrists who practice allopathically tend to prescribe palliative medications to treat their patientsā€™ symptoms without (much) concern for the causes behind the patientā€™s symptomatic presentation. Holistic psychiatrists try to put their patientsā€™ symptoms into context, and tend to use gentle interventions that shouldnā€™t worsen their patientā€™s condition.

I borrow from Feynmanā€™s speech:

In all of medicine there is a tendency to Cargo Cultism, where doctors try to assist their patients with interventions that canā€™t possibly help.

As medicine advanced over the course of the 20th century, one group of doctors saw other specialties advance to being somewhat helpful to their patients. They saw their colleagues rise in esteem and prestige, and they wanted the same thing to happen for their own medical specialty.

20th Century psychiatrists wrote manuals and procedures for the diagnosis of ā€˜mental disordersā€™. They order lab tests and undertake careful study of their patientsā€™ symptoms, and they diagnose the conditions listed in their manuals. They seek regulatory approval of prescriptions to treat the diagnoses. They stopped doing psycho-surgery by mid-century, but still electrocute their patientsā€™ brains when they think the patient will benefit.

They have their own special hospitals, where troubled patients are sent to be stabilized on palliative prescription drugs. The psych wards have little areas for staff to sit in. The staff wear scrubs and badges, keep medical records, and some prescribe prescriptionsā€”[s]heā€™s the doctorā€”and they wait for their patients to get better.

Theyā€™re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looks in the other medical specialties. But it doesnā€™t work. No patient recovers as a result of the allopathic drugs provided. Some patients get better anywaysā€”perhaps because theyā€™re fed, perhaps because theyā€™re kept soberā€”compounding the professionā€™s confusion.

I call these things Cargo Cult Psychiatry, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of modern scientific medical investigation and intervention, but theyā€™re missing something essential, because the patients donā€™t actually improve.

Itā€™s not that the patients donā€™t have actual problemsā€”they’re dysfunctional with depression or psychosis or compulsive behaviors or addiction or any of a number of other ā€˜behavioralā€™ labels.

The allopathic psychiatristā€™s predicament is they have a tendency to see people at the worst of their episode, and they didn’t personally witness their patient a week or two before when they were much more functional.

Holistic psychiatry is true psychiatry. Allopathic psychiatry is worse than a harmless cargo cult, because palliative prescriptions worsen the ā€˜mental deteriorationā€™ the doctors think theyā€™re preventing.

[SIDEBAR: Thyroid medication for hypothyroidism is NOT ā€˜palliativeā€™, as these are bio-identical medications that correct a deficiency. L-methylfolate for a poor methylator (#MTHFR) is similarly NOT palliative, as helps correct the malnourishment experienced by people who cannot turn the food fortification folic acid into Vitamin B-9. Vitamin B-12 corrects vitamin B-12 deficiency. Etc.]

In other vestiges of cargo cult medicine, like statins for elevated cholesterol, people are able to protect themselves by questioning and deciding for themselves whether they believe their doctor actually knows what theyā€™re doing.

Cargo Cult Psychiatry uses the courts to force people, who are otherwise assumed to have the right to refuse treatment, to submit to the cargo cultistsā€™ pseudoscientific approach to ‘mental healthā€™.

Update on My Efforts at SCOTUS

My previous essay also shared my efforts at the Supreme Court of the United States [SCOTUS] to try to protect my friend from allopathic psychiatryā€™s standard of care. I think my videos prove she was fine before she ran out of alcohol, and that she was misdiagnosed by her involuntary doctors in September 2015. Other videos, evidence and witnesses prove that fraud was perpetrated on the United States District Court in January 2018.

But what good are videos, if no judge will consider them?

The justices denied petition #21-6444 without comment on February 22, 2022. On March 15, 2022, I filed a petition for rehearing. This provided updates from after the original petition was docketed on November 16, 2021. I also pointed out that the United Statesā€™ judicial system has make-work properties, and gave practical examples of how society is harmed by the criminal justice systemā€™s use of the Soviet techniques of punitive medicine.

I told the justices how Soviet Psycho-Prisons used haloperidol to re-educate dissidents, and shared how my friend was apparently injected with haloperidol in January 2022 just like a Soviet dissident. I gave two more examples from Arizona that support my contention that the United States Court should not condone modern medicineā€™s use of #MedicalTorture.

The justices denied this petition too. Maybe my problem is that itā€™s too inconvenient to point out that doctors use the courts to make work for themselves.

My current SCOTUS petition, #21-1493 (readable in full here), focuses on whether the United States District Court may declare me vexatious without considering the videos which prove I was entirely truthful in my filings.

In the make-believe world of the District Courtā€™s rulings, Iā€™m trying to judicially-harass a person who no longer cares for my acquaintance. In the real world, I have irrefutable evidence that supports my allegations that my friendā€™s legal mail was intercepted by one of the respondents to the original federal petition, and that the supposed ā€˜motion to dismissā€™ was actually written by the respondent herself.

ā€œFraud on the Courtā€ is when one of the parties to a court case undermines the integrity of the judicial system. Classic examples are of bribing the judge or court staff to interfere with the fairness of a judicial proceeding. In my case, one of respondents to my habeas petition impersonated the party to the habeas petition by sending a fake letter to the District Court. The District Court was supposed to have held an evidentiary hearing on whether this letter was actually sent by my friend. I think the district court just doesn’t want to rule that allopathic psychiatry is a cargo cult.

I had a little bit of money appear, so this is a paid petition: $300 for the SCOTUS docketing fee, $2,011 for the printing companyā€™s creation of 50 booklets of the required specifications for a paid petition. (SCOTUS rules for paid petitions require booklets of a size and paper weight that is NOT found at a typical office supply store. My previous petitions were ā€œin forma pauperisā€, and were printed on 8 Ā½” x 11ā€ paper.)

All I want is for the Supreme Court to order an evidentiary hearing.

If youā€™d like to help with my petition at the SCOTUS, you can write the Chief Justice of the United States, or the Associate Justice in charge of the circuit of the state you live in:

[Your name]
[Your address]

Chief Justice of the United States / Associate Justice [LAST NAME]
Supreme Court of the United States
1 First St. NE
Washington, DC 20543

Dear Chief Justice of the United States / Associate Justice [LAST NAME]

I am writing in support of James Knochelā€™s efforts to remove the Soviet techniques of torture from American Medicine. I hope you will act favorably on his petition, #21-1493. While this petition is about whether the mental health industry may perpetrate fraud on the United States Court, I believe the simple evidentiary hearing he asks for is the quickest way to start the ball rolling on removing ineffective psychiatric drugs from the treatment arsenal deployed against people whose right to refuse harmful medical treatments is suspended.

I myself have experienced / witnessed the incompetence of modern allopathic psychiatry. [DETAILS HERE]

I agree with Mr. Knochel that forced psychiatry is a modern example of cargo cult science. Something ought to be done about allopathic doctors who donā€™t know what theyā€™re doing.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

You can also write your congressional representatives to let them know that you encourage them to exercise their oversight authority of the Supreme Court, for the Courtā€™s having rubber-stamped #MedicalTorture of U.S. Citizens with their denial of #21-6444.

Pressing on the Twitter Levers

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is supposed to respond to my petition by June 27, 2022. Twitter has a bit more reach than most other sites. If you retweet my tweet to AG Brnovich, it might help him realize that he needs to do something about Arizonaā€™s implementation of Soviet-style medicine.

Were you tortured by #CargoCultPsychiatry? Share your experience with the hashtag #MedicalTorture.

If youā€™re making a new account, follow @Mad_In_America and some other accounts too, so youā€™re not just liking/retweeting my little tweet. Also let @SCOTUSblog and @AHoweBlogger that youā€™d like coverage of our efforts to remove #MedicalTorture from modern medicineā€™s treatment arsenal.

Conclusion

To borrow from Feynman again:

Weā€™ve learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Natureā€™s phenomena will agree or theyā€™ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a [medical specialty] if you havenā€™t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And itā€™s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult [Medicine].

Medicine is hard because every patient is unique. While our modern doctors might aspire to be scientific, no patient is exactly like any other.

All of Medicine has its Cargo Cult moments. From time immemorial, physicians have used the techniques theyā€™re trained in, and seem to only abandon what doesnā€™t work when they figure out something else to do instead. A question to help Medicine move itself forward is ā€œhow can Medicine gracefully retire harmful treatments?ā€

Allopathic psychiatry is the only medical specialty that has organized resistance. This is deserved because their commonly-used treatments have no basis in physiology.

The agony caused by the FDA-approved ā€œanti-psychoticā€ drug haloperidol was also used by the Soviets to help their dissidents self-correct their behavior. Western psychiatrists called this ā€˜tortureā€™, but still use Haldol on their own patients. Why is this?

We are all harmed by Cargo Cult Psychiatry, and weā€™ll all be better off when punitive medicine is retired from use.

***

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

20 COMMENTS

  1. Although I appreciate the analogy in the context of psychiatry, the cargo cult myth is very ironic seeing as it rejects tribal spirituality as if “they were just fooling themselves” by carrying out what was traditional spirit worship mixed up with more modern idioms of planes and runways. This is interesting as psychiatry’s entire obsession with the brain over everything is the ultimate expression of modern culture’s rejection of spirit in deference to materialism; that we are all just “lumbering robots” as Dawkins said as quoted by Rupert Sheldrake when he cites his “vivid phrase”. Psychiatry is the ultimate brain cell technocracy gone completely bonkers. Thankfully the world is kicking it out – https://liberation-map.michaelzfreeman.org/

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    • Interesting. I remember having to read one of Dawkin’s books in college. It was so bad that I almost didn’t pass that course. I remember when I read the words, they were just words. I couldn’t form them in understandable sentences. It wasonly when I drifted off to sleep that I learned something. And that was there must be better and more intersting books to read and learn from… Thank you.

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      • LOL. Well that’s Dawkins right there for you. Only words and intellect. No emotions. No spirit. No soul. He would put all the cargo cult stuff down to mere “superstition” while worshipping at the alter of mind/ego and materialism that promises to give mankind salvation. Real salvation is spirit/soul/higher self.

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    • Recovery is the answer to the problems of psychiatry and psychotherapy and all the etc. such as the drugs, etc. Recovery is that which will free us from psychiatry, etc. and help us to see the light of the SPIRIT which is TRUTH. And when we see that light or if we are just working towards seeing that light, we will have recovered our TRUE SELF and that is the one and only real and true recovery that we need, because for so many, psychiatry has attempted to steal it. Light, Spirit, Truth, Recovery, Healing, Forgiveness—That’s what we need to do to free us from Psychiatry and recover our TRUE SELVES. I, must confess,that I do not look forward to your disagreement. Thank you

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  2. Hi James,

    You make some excellent points and observations in your article, and I find the comparison of psychiatry to a ā€œcargo cultā€ especially apt. Psychiatry has embraced the accoutrements and language of medicine, without necessarily doing anything medical per se. Despite decades of research ā€” and billions of dollars received in federal grants ā€” the mechanisms underpinning ā€œmental illnessā€ have yet to be uncovered. The mere fact that a psychotropic compound has the capacity to affect affect, cognition, or behaviour in no way whatsoever implies that whatā€™s being modified is inherently pathological or indicative of an underlying ā€œbrain diseaseā€.

    Regarding documents that you filed in the federal and appellate court ā€” and the writ of certiorari request filed in the Supreme Court, suits filed in the courts must adhere to a specific form and make arguments in a specific manner and style. ā€œCauses of actionā€ arising from the facts pertaining to the claims must be clearly construed. I strongly advise you to study analogous cases filed in the same circuit. Iā€™m assuming that you have access to PACER ā€” itā€™s a great resource for familiarizing yourself with various suits, understanding the basis for defendantsā€™ motions to dismiss, and understanding the judgesā€™ rulings. Being a pro se litigant is quite difficult, and a thorough understanding of pertinent case law is critical. Hope that this helps ā€” and good luck.

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    • “Being a pro se litigant is quite difficult”

      Especially when Police have a new meaning to the term “Brazillian”.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heAOtMpVEog

      The standard response from the Minister to such conduct here would be ‘there are some concerning aspects of this referral’, and then evidence would be “edited” and witnesses and their families threatened.

      I was just thinking that if the Community Nurse who ‘verballed’ me up on statutory declarations was to write this one up, the mental patient who broke into a car and then attempted to assault police by kicking at them needs to be referred for an assessment by a psychiatrist. Unfortunately in this instance there has been an unintended negative outcome.

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      • Mind you in Australia lawyers can act as paid police informants (see Nicola Gobbo as one example), and the ability to forge and then utter with fraudulent documents in our courts means that one can place zero trust in anything that comes out of the system.

        Once I identified the fraudulent documents that had been supplied to my ‘legal representative’ (they weren’t really that given they were actually providing assistance to the people who tortured and kidnapped me but … they put on a good act, and have found an excellent means of extracting ‘confessions’ via the exploitation of the trust placed in them. Not unlike ‘mental health professionals’, without the beatings and forced drugging’s), and approached the member of parliament and asked which set the State was going to provide to the Federal Courts….. i’m sure questions were asked about why police hadn’t been effective in retrieving the proof of the human rights abuses, and well, they then exercise their right to deny you access to the courts ….. so much for the sign that says Dieu et mon Droit hung on the walls in the Courts huh? Should read “Der Fuhrer Hat Immer Recht” ….. and maybe these people “editing” for the State can see that this is done?

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    • But we already know the underlying mechanisms of “mental illness”. John Weir Perry, Loren Mosher, Carl Gustav Jung, Stanislav Grof and many others. In fact coercive psychiatry specifically ignored any of the actual science, maybe this was your point, because they are not in the business of medicine but political control of dissidents, bigotry, corruption, covering up for abusers, etc, etc.

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  3. “I have irrefutable evidence that supports my allegations that my friendā€™s legal mail was intercepted by one of the respondents to the original federal petition, and that the supposed ā€˜motion to dismissā€™ was actually written by the respondent herself.”

    That sounds interesting. The burden is a high one, beyond a reasonable doubt, given the consequences of such an allegation.

    I had a brief discussion with someone last week about the profits from sales of weapons to Ukraine (guns and drugs, always good investments. Big Pharma should turn a pretty penny from the ‘trauma’ suffered as a result of the ‘quest for freedom’). He raised the issue of the surveillance in the old Soviet era, suggesting that our society wouldn’t put up with such conduct on the part of our ‘elected’ representatives. I found it amusing that we had nearly 10 cameras in various locations watching our conversation, all of our telephone conversations being recorded, police have been enabled to use the covid tracing data (from the phone apps and mandatory sign ins) for their own purposes, and …… well, lets have a chat about the ‘unintended negative outcomes’ being done in the Emergency Dept for ‘political purposes’ when police would prefer to not accept documented proof of offending, and instead have the victim ‘snowed’

    The concealment with the type of fraud you are alleging above? I have a letter [along with many others] forged and uttered by the Principle of the Law Centre, purporting to be from the Chief Psychiatrist but …….. not going to look, and then they won’t see. I mean, the Police thought they had got the evidence back after a doctor was rudely interrupted in the Emergency Dept whilst ‘hot shotting’ his way out of the problem for a friend. I was supposed to look like a nutjob, making claims without any proof…………..and then when I turned up with the proof…….. another ‘referral’ for ‘treatment’.

    I appreciate that your in America, and not Australia.

    My eyes opened when I read Frantz Fanons comments about Algeria. And recognised the methods being employed by the Mental Health Law Centre to conceal human rights abuses. You can tell us what you’ve got, …….. and they then inform the hospital who have police retrieve the offending documents, and gaslight you to suicide.

    In Algeria, military doctors and psychiatrists have found a wide field for experiment in police quarters. For if in cases of neurosis pentothal sweeps away the barriers which bar the way to bringing to light an interior conflict, it ought equally in the case of Algerian patriots to serve to break down the political barrier and to make confession easier for the prisoner without having recourse to electricity; medical tradition lays down that suffering should be avoided. This is the medical form that ‘subversive war’ takes. [1]

    The scenario is as follows. First, ‘I am a doctor, I am not a policeman. I am here to help you’. In this way, after a few days the confidence of the prisoner is won. *

    * We can cite the same way the case of psychiatrists who were prime movers in ‘Presence francaise’ who when they were told off to give an expert opinion on a prisoner had the habit of very first of proclaiming their great friendship with the defending lawyer, and of assuring the prisoner that the two of them (barrister and the psychiatrist) would get him out of there. All of the prisoners who had the benefit of expert opinions were guillotined. These psychiatrist boasted in front of us of their elegant method of overcoming ‘resistance'”

    And who were these ‘”prisoners” Fanon was speaking about? I know in my State if one were to walk into a Police station with proof of criminal matters which were ‘flagged’ by ‘officials’ as not being in the public interest, you’d be referred for treatment via the ‘chemical guillotine’.

    I just find it fascinating that this type of thing is occurring in the U.S of A. Australia i understand, given the ‘treatment’ of the aboriginal population by police (and I note mental health getting a foot in the door with the ‘new treatments’) which continues to this very day, there are many who do have the stomach for it. As inequality has grown exponentially, the expansion of human rights abuses disguised as mental health treatment was an obvious way to conceal.

    If you can’t kill a few whistleblowers who may be an embarrassment to the “unrepresentative swill” in our Parliament. I mean consider what it takes to have someone arbitrarily detained and tortured in my State. A Community Nurse calls police and requests ‘assistance with his/her “outpatient” and ……… your required to be ‘assessed’ by one of those ‘friendly doctors’ in one of the ‘centers’

    Here’s a video of how you will be prepared for interrogation.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ9UQKBUrsg

    How dare you refuse to speak to a mental health professional? Combine this with the authorisation of ‘spikings’ with date rape drugs and you’ve got a great method of “overcoming resistance”.

    Sounds crazy? It is, as long as the Courts and others refuse to look, and those that have can “unlook”. Our Attorney General even getting the opportunity to ‘represent’ his evidence to the High Court.

    Anyway, I’d like to hear more about your claim to have “irrefutable evidence”

    [1] Consider that Continuity of Government makes the citizens an enemy of the State. Similarly we find that having receipts for $700 ‘massages’ at Soapland, paid for with a corporate credit card by our Politicians is ‘not in the public interest’ and will see you referred for treatment lol

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  4. https://youtu.be/lyu7v7nWzfo

    Can’t resist it.

    The indigenous cultures of planet E all have different funerary rites. A fair number of such tribes could not bear to let their deceased tribal equal go without cremating the beloved and imbibing their physical body as a gritty floury grey milk ceremoniously passed around to the group. Why?

    Because to earthy humans living in harmony with nature and not divorced from the bodily beingness of nature the body’s atoms are as essential as the soul. They are bride and groom. The idea that the body does not matter would seem laughable to these people. In their shamanic ecstacies that euphoria is not found by absenting the body but by transporting body and soul through the astral vista on a joyride. The deceased is made drinkable, or if in a hurry and feeling famished, tribal finger food is acceptable. But even the brain, that mush that western culture is in a rush to dismiss as part of the lumbering ungainly body, is by the tribe, glugged with solemn affection because they feel that the soul is merged with the body. And so drinking the corpus collosum and pineal gland and amygdala IS drinking the spirit. In other words consciousness NEEDS BIOLOGY.

    A goldfish in a bowl is consciousness locked in the brain’s cranium. The goldfish could break out of the bowl and swim into the limitless ocean. Merging with Oneness consciousness. But whilst the individual self is inhabiting the physical atoms of the individual body it is supported by being in that body in a unique way where the consciousness or goldfish influences that specific body or bowl and that bowl influences the goldfish.

    Each marriage is a unique partnering. Each combo of goldfish (soul) and bowl (body) is unique as a partnering relationship. It cannot occur in a vast ocean of dilute consciousness. What the tribal people drink is essence of uniqueness. They hope to sup on the very soul of the grieved for individual by supping on the atoms of the body, drawing in the spirit to their own body like plunking another goldfish in their own bowl.

    Modern man loathes the body. Moderns have been indoctrinated to find feelings disgusting. They have been torn out of the primal forest and schooled to regard emotionality as wicked and base and belonging to the illogical uncontrollable sensory rudimentary body. The body that must be sneered at and punished. This is why a million rhinos and elephants have been obliterated off the map, because their bumbling stumbling cavorting bodies remind modern humans of their own embarrassing embodied marriage. The marriage between sensuous feelings and the mind.

    But a mind with no soul is a machine. So modern humans wrestle to retain soulfulness. Soulfullness is like feeling but tidied up and made more Brittish.

    Indoctrination offers faux clarity. Scholarly
    quasi-bible lessons are implimented and on tourbeliefs about the cleanness of the spirit is reinforced at the point of a safari rifle, that the exalted human soul, or chiffony drift of beatific feelings, have nothing to do with the oafish creatureliness and puff and manure of the animal body. The elephant must be made extinct because the modern human cannot bear its own sweaty pissing stinking birthing atoms. The baby elephants screaming for their bullet riddled mammas draw not one tear from the tear keeping bodies of the modern “soulful” human.

    If the brain, which is atoms, is good enough for the primitive tribal peoples to cherish as important to consciousness then it maybe ought to be good enough for modern humans to love it and love the body as much as the soul that is earthed within it.

    What is happening is a confusion in antipsychiatry about psychiatry’s overly prizing of the body and the brain as being places that can muddy the goldfish of consciousness.

    In the haste to get away from psychiatry some in antipsychistry are binning the body and brain and piously saying that psychiatry tried to abuse the soul via meddling in the bowl in which it floats.

    But meddling is NOT THE SAME THING AS THE BOWL.

    Bad psychiatry of the past is not the same thing as the BIOLOGY or ATOMS or MOLECULES of LOVELY BODILY MATTER that CONSCIOUSNESS SITS WITHIN. And YES the BODY can go quirky. MATTER can be fucked up by other MATTER, as a million elephants found to their dismay. And because MATTER CAN be biffed or bruised SO can the atoms that embodied consciousness clings to.

    Hallucinations are threaded into consciousness. Drop an LSD tab into the bowl of the bodily brain and consciousness sees odd things. Other things being given to the bowl affect consciousness. The idea that no atoms or mollecules of matter “matter” is starting to develop into a puritanical hatred of the body as biology. As if scurilous psychiatry have wizardly given the pristine souls of modern humans the unsightly gunge of anatomical reality. The outcry of….

    “We are more than just our brain”

    has become….

    “We are evangelically saved, nightmarish floaty souls detached from any earthy feelings”.

    If you cannot access your feelings, and all feelings are wedded to the sensory body, then you cannot feel calm. If you cannot feel calm and only experience numb non feeling perfection, then you will not have enough calm to create a feeling of caring. If you cannot create a feeling of caring then you cannot FEEL AUTHENTIC COMPASSION.

    But go ahead….continue to do what past psychiatry were doing in disrepecting the brain. Chuck it out as if past psychiatrists invented its mollecules and put the whole blob of it in there.

    I believe present psychiatrists have agonizingly learned from their past mistakes that the botched brain is a shattered glass bowl within which no goldfish can pleasantly go round in circles.
    But this does NOT mean that other things do not also affect MATTER in chaotic hallucination causing disastrous ways.

    In getting rid of the ugly body the soul looks handsome but in binning the brain there is a tendency to bin the individual unique experiences and FEELINGS of any person who has a hurt brain or quirky brain or ill brain.

    Having an ill brain is NOT THE SAME THING AS catastrophic dreadful treatment of it.

    Having a fever is not the SAME THING as trepanning.

    When ancestors realized they had bungled up the brain by treating it with flint they soon apologized and stopped doing that treatment proticol. The bearskin clad elders did not say that brains are not part of conscious ensoulment. The elders did not say the body is a ruse manufactured by science to delay the soul’s progress up and out of it. The neanderthals did not poo poo the brain as if a distant cousin.

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    • Would you like me to translate that for you? It is convoluted.

      I think it is saying

      1. antipsychiatry has found “the soul” as if its an orphan in the same house that its sibling “the brain” is in. Psychiatry, the nemesis father, has been sullying the brain and calling it harsh names like schizophrenic. But everyone can at least rescue “the soul” and take that poor sibling away to a sanctuary and treat it nice.

      2. But by leaving the poor brain with the father demon doctor the brain is not loved. Instead it is regarded as an accomplice to mendacious arch villain psychiatry, as if the brain is a inert enabler of psychiatry’s philandering pill pushing.

      3. Anyone with a brain who feels that their brain is giving them jip, in doing movies of hallucinatory epics all night and all day, is either now told that they must not buy that they have a brain, or is told they must not speak to the brain, or must not give hugs to the brain, because the brain is a liar. They are told the brain is in cahoots with psychiatry. And if the world is to be got rid of daddy psychiatry then why dialogue with the duplicitous brain who keeps needing that daddy care? The good kid, the soul, never needed the sibling brain. Brains do not enter the kingdom of heaven unless raptured by a new daddy church. So just leave the brain in the lunatic asylum and let the soul escape like a gossamer nightdress disappearing down the exterior of an ivy trellis or a drainpipe. We don’t need the mess, the amyglada and hippocampus and tight perm of convolutions. Just like the anorexic does not need body fat. We can disown the brain as if it is disloyal and disobedient.

      4. This notion of the brain as accomplice to psychiatry’s bad past treatment IS ITSELF A BAD TREATMENT of the beautiful wistful enigmatic brain. Psychiatry is a recent profession. The sibling brain goes all the way back to basking sunlit primordial sentient stromatolites.

      6. A veterinarian would not allow an animal to go home with only its soul. Man is an animal who keeps forgetting he is one. Animals have a brain and a lovely brain it is, the whale brain, the budgerigar brain, the lion brain, the jellyfish b

      Anyway all of the brains can go odd due to many varied factors. A quirky brain of an animal is not a liar cosying up to psychiatry. A monkey can gnaw its tail without reading a book by psychiatry that this can occur. The quirks, the gnawing are not an invention of psychiatry. There was never a time when quirks were not bamboozling the human herd. The brain is vulnerable, as any sibling is, to any pathogen or fever or pollutant or chemical imbalance. Psychiatry in the past did make that worse. But thankfully it is aware of its past. Yes change is slow.

      The brain IS the soul. The soul IS the brain. Like siblings they come from the same womb. If one of them has been badly treated do not just up an LEAVE IT there, as if it has caused the problem by not learning it is not a problem. For *some* individuals their own brain genuinely IS a problem to them by giving them chemical imbalances. Why should these people not love their brain as much as their soul? When abuse has occurred in a house do you separate the siblings? Or do you mend the unholy division that bad treatment put between them?

      I am sorry if I sound criticising of those who seem to relegate the wonderful brain to a status of second class citizen.

      All humans are EQUAL.

      And all bodily organs are EQUAL.

      And all bodily ineffable auras are EQUAL.

      In the Victorian era the piously soulful snubbed lusty gents by villifying the prostitutes.

      It is not the fault of the brain that it was once prostituted to psychiatry. We must love the beautiful hurt brain and bring it to the bosom of the soul.

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  5. Just to add that I did a com that awaits moderating so I mean “translate it” as a self joke at my expense, not at you, James. Your article is fine. Although I cannot abide the lambasting of psychiatry anymore. It has gone too far. The notion “Lex Talionis” has fallen into the mire in the world. Proportional justice is the only justice worthy of the name justice. A surgeon harms patients every second of the day. He often has no idea what he is doing and botched surgeries go on hourly. I think the harrying of psychiatrists is demeaning the intention of antipsychiatry. The other day my angels said that I was barking up the wrong tree in my comments. I finally found out what they meant by this. They mean that it is going too hash towards psychiatry. I am not sure though because my schizophenia makes me miss the point. But anyways…

    My mentioning that the soul is the brain and the brain is the soul is perhaps strange. I believe I mean that the soul or consciousness blossoms in the brain but the soul is everlasting and goes on to exist eternally after the brain stops working. But the brain becomes eternal also, in disintegrating from molecules and atoms into fine energy particles and waves…waves identical to the soul or consciousness. So since BOTH the soul and brain are waves ultimately…they are the same thing. It is just that they morph into different expressions of the same thing, as leaves bloom on the tree.

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  6. The modern obsession with science by the masses is no different than a Cargo Cult.

    It’s not just psychology, it’s pervasive in pretty much all of science. Filled in by a bunch of actors who fail to understand how it all really works. Hell, turn on the news and listen to the “experts”.

    Usually I liken it to truly devout religious followers and “fake christians”. Aka, those who study their Bible vs those that show up on Sunday to socialize. Worse still, it seems society today actually prefers and promotes the best actors.

    With sympathy, they can’t tell the difference.

    (For the record, I’m as devout Atheist as the Pope is Chatholic. 20+ years of scientific study, patents, and discoveries. I feel obligated to state this as there is also a tremendous amount of anti-religious bigotry going around and me daring to have respect for religion and to analogize with it upsets the delicate sensibilites of said bigots.)

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