On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from the co-authors of a paper published in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry which documents the mass murder of a quarter of a million people, mostly diagnosed as “schizophrenic” in Europe during the Second World War.
Later, we hear from Dr. Jeffrey Masson, who is an author and a scholar of Sanskrit and psychoanalysis. But first, we talk with professor of psychology John Read. Regular visitors to Mad in America will know of John’s work. For those that don’t know, John worked for nearly 20 years as a clinical psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, before joining the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994, where he worked until 2013. He has served as director of the clinical psychology professional graduate programmes at both Auckland and, more recently, the University of Liverpool. He currently works in the School of Psychology at the University of East London.
John has many research interests, including critical appraisals of the use of psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive therapy.
We discussed how John and Jeffrey came to write a paper which examines a grim period in psychiatric history.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here.
James Moore: We are here to discuss your paper, published in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. The paper is entitled “Biological Psychiatry and the Mass Murder of ‘Schizophrenics’: from Denial to Inspirational Alternative.” You wrote this paper with a co-author, Jeffrey Masson, who we will also hear from.
The paper documents the murder by psychiatrists of a quarter of a million patients mostly diagnosed as “schizophrenic” in Europe during the Second World War and the sterilization of hundreds of thousands more internationally, including in the USA and Scandinavia. How did this paper come to be written and how did you and Jeffrey contribute to it?
John Read: The first thing to acknowledge is that I would describe Jeffrey Masson as a Holocaust scholar. He knows far more about the Holocaust, including this particular part of it, than I do. He happened to be living in New Zealand and we became good friends.
The current article is an update of a book chapter we wrote together back in 2013. I’m reasonably well read about the history of psychiatry but I didn’t know half of what Jeff was telling me and I thought “this has to get out there somehow.” So we did a book chapter about it, but, as you know, book chapters are not particularly well read. So I wanted to try and get it out in a more accessible and up-to-date form, hence this article.
I think it’s timely, inasmuch as it is beginning to feel like the monolithic medical model promoted by the drug companies and biological psychiatry is now finally beginning to crumble. We’ve got the World Health Organization writing long reports about it, we’ve got the United Nations Special Rapporteur completely condemning the overemphasis on biology and compulsion and so forth. And just this week, an astonishing and historic paper by Joanna Moncrief, Mark Horowitz, and others, documenting that there is no evidence for a “chemical imbalance” behind depression, a theory which provided the basis on which millions of antidepressants have been prescribed for the last 20 or 30 years.
So things are changing and the task for us all is to accelerate that change. I think it’s useful to remind people of the extremes, and it is an extreme, to which a biological explanation for human distress can take us if we’re not careful. I will talk later about some of the ways in which there are parallels between what happened all those years ago and what’s happening today, including the continuing use of force and compulsion and just how strong the genetic theories are today, still dominating our thinking and our mental health services.
That’s the motivation for it. But it was also important to put in an alternative rather than to leave everybody just with doom and gloom. An alternative also run by psychiatrists. The alternative, as we’ll see, is about how people returning to Israel were treated by the Israeli psychiatric system.
Moore: Before we talk about the content of the paper, I just wondered what your thoughts were on why we need to know about the history of psychiatry. Is it relevant today?
Read: Well, it’s a cliché isn’t it, that we should learn from history and not make the same mistakes. However, I’m not for a second saying that psychiatrists are killing people today in the same way that they were. I think murder is the right word, they used the word euthanasia and getting rid of life “devoid of value” and so forth, but it was murder. I’m not saying people are doing that today, but people are still dying in the psychiatric system.
There are parallels: an unevidenced genetic ideology is still dominant and the effects of that are manifold. Apart from anything else, it creates this pessimism that there is something wrong with your genes. What is the point of trying to improve your life or do anything differently if the message is that you are flawed? Just as with the chemical imbalance theory, which fortunately now is disproved, there isn’t any evidence for a genetic basis for “schizophrenia” or for that matter depression or anything else in the psychiatric repertoire.
It’s important to link these things up and to show that there’s a long tradition that goes back hundreds of years of harming people who are different in the name of helping them or in the name of doing something good for them. Even those horrific murders were framed as helping people rid themselves of life devoid of value. It was framed as it’s good for them and society because they were a drain on society. Just as it was considered valuable for witches to be burnt because that redeems their souls and they could go to heaven.
Within attempts to help people who are different there’s always been, historically, a streak of harm and violence and undervaluing of those people’s lives which somehow then allows or justifies the harm. I think some of that is still going on today.
Moore: Turning to the paper, could tell us a little bit about the content, perhaps what you found and some of the things that surprised you when you were working on this with Jeff?
Read: I guess what surprised me was the sheer number of deaths. A quarter million people were killed in Europe by psychiatrists and their assistants in psychiatric hospitals. It started with children, I didn’t know that. There were relatively small numbers but that’s where it started, with starving and other methods to kill initially about 10,000 children. Then in 1938, they moved on to adults.
In part it was the size, but also the rationale for it that was important because eugenics was a wide movement way beyond psychiatry. Some very famous psychologists were involved in the eugenics movement, including Burt and Spearman and Cattell and other huge names. So it’s not unique to psychiatry but psychiatry had the means or the power to act on it.
And the rationale started, in some ways, in a 1920 book written by Ernst Rudin, professor of psychiatry, about life devoid of value and introducing legislation into Germany that made it possible to sterilize people. This was a precursor to the killings. And again, that was not unique to Germany. The first sterilization law was passed in Indiana and by the time of the Second World War, there were 20 states in the United States with sterilization laws. Scandinavia was also quite a leading area in terms of compulsory sterilization, often but not always for insanity and often targeted more at women than men.
Eugenics was a wide movement and sterilization was the first example of it targeted not just at so-called mentally ill people but people with any sort of deformity or disability. The linking rationale was that these people had genetic problems and so it was an attempt, as we all know what eugenics means, to purify the race. With good intent, we have to assume most of the time until we get to Nazi Germany.
So it was an attempt to get rid of these disabilities and illnesses. Alcoholism was in there as well, that was considered to be genetic and we can get rid of it and we can sterilize alcoholics and so forth. Moving on to the murders from 1938 onwards, they started at six psychiatric hospitals throughout Germany and, by the end of the war, about a quarter of a million people had been killed. Most of the people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia had been killed by the end of the war.
One of the lessons, and this is never spoken about, is that this is perhaps the largest experiment that tests whether or not schizophrenia is a genetically-based phenomenon because they killed the vast majority. So if it was a genetically-based phenomenon then in the next generation there would be very low numbers, if any. But the numbers didn’t change at all, which shows that schizophrenia, like all other mental health problems, is almost entirely psycho-socially based and nothing to do with genetics. Nobody talks about that, this genetic theory just carries on regardless.
There are many details in the paper and I don’t think it’s worth going through all of them, but the extent to which the psychiatrists were involved is important. The chairs of 10 psychiatry departments were in charge of selecting who died. So it wasn’t some sort of peripheral involvement, they were central to it. They planned it, they decided who died, and, in many cases, they carried out the killings themselves, but obviously with those numbers they had assistance.
One of the many things I didn’t know was that when it came time to start the killing of six million Jews, the instruments that had been used in the psychiatric hospitals and the psychiatrists themselves were then shipped to Treblinka and other places. One of them became a commandant of one of the Holocaust camps. So, the rationale and tools and the personnel for the Holocaust came from psychiatry.
Obviously psychiatrists today are not responsible for any of that. But they ought to talk about it now and again. They ought to acknowledge it, they ought to realize that there are risks involved in having simplistic unsubstantiated views of where human distress and differences come from and learn from that, and they haven’t.
Moore: In the paper, it says that about half of German physicians belonged to the Nazi Party, with psychiatrists being the most heavily involved, but amazingly, only a handful of psychiatrists refused to participate in the killings.
Read: If we go back to that time, we can’t really grasp the extent of the social and peer pressure and maybe even threats if they didn’t comply. But the history books tell us that only one psychiatrist was ever executed for refusing. Some did refuse and we name a very small number of people who refused to cooperate to note their bravery and it probably was a brave thing to do. It’s easy to condemn from this point in history looking back but when all your other fellow doctors are doing the same thing, the pressure to comply is huge. That’s not an excuse, it’s a possible partial explanation, I suppose.
Moore: How has psychiatry responded since? These things are obviously a matter of public record and you were able to find the details along with Jeff of what had happened. So what has psychiatry’s reaction been since those awful occurrences?
Read: For many years there was almost total denial. That’s exemplified by history books throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s saying nothing about it. We found one, The World History of Psychiatry, edited by Howells. It had a chapter on each of 30 countries and every chapter went up to 1980 or so but the history of Germany stopped in 1939—it just stopped as if nothing happened.
In the modern history books of psychiatry, there’s either no mention of it at all or, even worse, there’s mention of some of the professors involved and their research as the forefathers of psychiatric genetics (which they were) but with no mention of their involvement in these killings, which is bizarre. In Germany, of the first 12 presidents of the German Psychiatric Association after the war, three of them were centrally involved in the killings. Many of the psychiatrists just carried on working with very little censure—one of the leading architects was fined 500 marks.
One of the leading people, Franz Kallman, went over to America and wrote for two decades about the genetic basis to schizophrenia and homosexuality. He advocated that not only schizophrenics should be compulsively sterilized, but all their relatives should be too and this was readily published in scientific journals in America and around the world.
There’s just massive denial which has, to some extent, gone on to this day. You can still read psychiatric history books that either have nothing about this or cite the architects as important contributors to our understanding of schizophrenia. We have a journal called the History of Psychiatry which hardly publishes anything on this topic. It declined our paper because it doesn’t fit with the remit of the journal. It was explained to me when the paper was rejected that “biological psychiatry didn’t start until the 1980s.”
It’s fairly universal denial and possibly understandable. I don’t know what the right word is, embarrassing, shameful. None of us like to talk about shameful things in our past. I must stress that this is not about holding current psychiatrists to account, it’s not their fault. But the leaders of psychiatry should be teaching their students about how things can go wrong if you place too much emphasis on wrong theories.
Moore: The paper is both fascinating and challenging to read but perhaps the most important part is you talking about what you call an inspirational alternative. So I wondered if you could share with us what that inspirational alternative was?
Read: I found this fascinating and I stumbled onto it completely by chance. There was a film made about what happened to a certain group of Holocaust survivors when they got back to Israel. Obviously, they were in a terrible state. Many of them were wrongly diagnosed as having schizophrenia and locked up and medicated heavily with antipsychotics for 40 or 50 years. That isn’t the alternative, what comes next is the inspirational alternative, a wonderful event which you couldn’t make up.
One of these women is about to be visited by her son but she’s terrified because she’s convinced herself in her delusional state that her son is an SS officer and she hides. It turns out that the son is Israel’s chief psychiatrist visiting his mum. And he finally understands and then starts talking to the other women and finds out there are hundreds of people whose pain, confusion, and silence—many of them hadn’t spoken for years—were explicable by their experience in the camps and in the ghettos, not by some mythical biological illness called schizophrenia.
What he did was, with fellow psychiatrists—and it’s very important to stress this was led by psychiatrists—it took them two or three years but they closed down several institutions holding hundreds of these women, mostly women because a lot of the men had died. They opened trauma-based treatment centers and tried 40-50 years later to reach these people, many of whom hadn’t spoken for decades. It was quite beautiful, they started by getting them animals that reminded them of pets that they had when they were children. It’s a very moving story and they write about how moving it was for the staff and how much they learned, as you can imagine.
There are extreme examples on either end of the spectrum but it seemed important to highlight some of them. There are other ways for psychiatrists and others in the mental health system to try to assist even the most distressed and damaged people, and it starts by understanding what they’ve been through in their lives rather than blaming a non-existent genetic factor or some sort of imagined biochemical imbalance. So we were quite moved by that, and I was lucky enough to have some interactions with those psychiatrists, one of whom has since died. I was just very moved by that and it just seemed fair and appropriate to include that in the story.
Moore: It describes in the paper that they videotaped testimonials from some of the people involved and when those people watched the testimonials back, they didn’t recognize themselves. They had isolated themselves from their experiences to such an extent that they almost thought it was a different person speaking.
Read: That’s right. Can you imagine sitting there with somebody watching that? They did it partly to archive and record but also they thought it would be therapeutic. Eventually, they did start recognizing themselves and they did do some traditional type research where they measured posttraumatic stress symptoms and they decreased gradually over time. It’s all very moving, some of it desperately sad and some of it very inspiring.
Moore: I think that comes back to what you were talking about earlier in terms of why this is so important to research, to record and to understand in terms of its impact on what we do to people today.
Read: Yes, obviously, we’re not doing anything like that. Except, in America in particular, I don’t know about other countries, they are still practicing what they call genetic counseling. You get in people of childbearing age or a couple, one of whom might have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and you explain to them the chances of their children inheriting the supposed illness that they’ve got. Presumably in the hope that some will choose not to go ahead, which I think is scurrilous, unethical, and certainly unscientific.
If there is a genetic basis to any of this, and I don’t think there’s a genetic basis to schizophrenia, I think we are born with different degrees of sensitivity to stress. I think at the end of the day when all this genetic research settles down, that’s what we will find. So this was still in that sense narrowing the gene pool and I think that’s a very dangerous thing to do.
Beyond that, what are the other parallels? Well, we still have compulsion and it’s the only branch of medicine where you can force people to either take medication or have electroshock therapy against their will. So that’s a continuity. Of course, it’s not the same as killing people. But again, in terms of narrowing the gene pool or whatever, some of the drugs, both antidepressants and antipsychotics, clearly affect sexual function. Antipsychotics, if you take them long enough will shorten your lifespan and ECT causes brain damage in some people, we don’t know exactly how many but somewhere between 10% and 50% of people.
So we are still doing things that are harmful and doing it very often with compulsion. That’s different from actively killing people or forcibly sterilizing them, but there is a link there and I firmly believe that we will never have therapeutic mental health systems until we remove the right of any of us to forcibly treat anybody else. While that threat is there, it’s very hard for people to trust the system and you can be given shock therapy or medication that shortens your lifespan and reduces your brain volume against your will.
So I know this will be offensive to some psychiatrists or other people and I’m sorry for that, but I think there will be a time in 50 years when someone will write a paper describing “they used to put electricity through people’s brains and they used to do it against their will, can you imagine? And they used to give them pills and if they didn’t take the pills, they’d hold them down and inject it into them—can you imagine?” I hope there’ll be a James interviewing a John about that in 50 years because it’s got to stop.
Moore: You said that there was little or no recognition at the time of what had happened. So, in modern times, has psychiatry officially responded to and apologized for the horrors vested on people in the name of treatment in those very dark times?
Read: The answer is, yes but only in Germany. Obviously, that’s the first and most appropriate place it should happen. In 2011, the German Association of Neurology and Psychiatry, which I referred to before as having been led on numerous occasions by the people directly responsible, had a full investigation and we end our paper with a quote from Professor Schneider, who was at that point the president of the association.
It’s a superb document, it’s very detailed and it pulls no punches. It ends with Professor Schneider saying “in the name of the German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, I ask you, the victims and relatives of the victims, for forgiveness for the pain and injustice you suffered in the name of German psychiatry and at the hands of German psychiatrists under national socialism.” And this was particularly important: “And for the silence, trivialization and denial that for far too long characterized psychiatry in post-war Germany.”
The rest of the world hasn’t got there yet in acknowledging this, and I hope our paper plays some small part in moving us towards proper acknowledgement and learning from those horrible events and accelerating the move towards an evidence-based psychosocial, humane approach to human distress that is long overdue.
Moore: In the paper it was really difficult to read mass murder described as “pioneering work.” That’s very hard to take.
Read: Yes, I guess that’s how they saw it at the time. Looking back, did they really think they were doing it for them? We will never be able to get inside the heads of those people but their writing suggests that they thought these people’s lives were so miserable, that they were better off dead. What they really thought we’ll never know.
Moore: Thank you for your time today and thank you for your work with Jeffrey on writing the paper. It’s incredibly important that we don’t lose sight of the consequences of harm in treatment and how we have to be ultra-cautious with anything to do with mental health and its impact on people’s lives.
Read: Thanks, James.
Next, we hear from Jeffrey Masson. Dr. Masson has had a fascinating career in which he studied Sanskrit and psychoanalysis and became director of the Sigmund Freud archives. A prolific author, he has written more than 30 books and has become an advocate for animal rights. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Moore: Dr. Masson, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Jeffrey Masson: A pleasure to be here, James.
Moore: We’re here to talk about a paper that you authored together with professor of psychology Dr. John Read, and this paper appears in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. The title is “Biological Psychiatry and the Mass Murderer of ‘Schizophrenics’: from Denial to Inspirational Alternative,” and we’ll come on in a minute to talk about the paper.
But first, I wanted to ask a little bit about you. You’re an author, you have at least 20 books, probably many more to your name. You’re a Sanskrit scholar, a scholar of psychotherapy, and you have an interest in the philosophy of animal rights. But I read that you said you’d written a series of books about psychiatry and you felt that nobody liked them. So, I’d like to ask about that and why you decided to move away from that area of work and then what led to your other many interests?
Masson: Well, it’s a complicated story and I won’t go into detail because it’s far from our topic. I was trained as a classical Freudian psychoanalyst in Toronto for 10 years, which means that I had my own analysis and then I had supervision, then I saw patients and finally, I was admitted as a fully trained clinical psychoanalyst.
I had doubts about it right from day one, mostly having to do with trauma. I expected that psychoanalysis was about how do we explain trauma, how do we help people who have been traumatized, what are our theories about how that works and so on. That turned out not to be the case at all. I realize now in retrospect it was all about this notion that patients don’t know what’s happened to them, only the psychiatrists does. That today, then and forever will seem to me absurd. The only person who knows is the person.
So in my opinion, the job of the analyst is to say “Well, it sounds to me like you’ve had a rough childhood or things have happened to you, can we talk about that?” But that’s not what they were doing. So they were not respecting the patient even though these were people who were either psychoanalysts already or becoming psychoanalysts. They still really identified with psychiatry, which meant they thought of people having brain disorders or genetic malfunctions, needing medication or needing ECT.
I can still remember when they sent me to a psychiatric hospital to observe the results of ECT and there was a poor Uruguayan and I happen to have lived in Uruguay and I spoke perfect Spanish. I started talking to him and he said, “Please, please tell them not to do this. I’m terrified.” I said, “I will do my best” and I went to them and I said, “You can’t do this. This guy doesn’t want it. How can you do something he doesn’t want?” They said, “He needs this for his own good.” I said, “Oh, come on, if you have a man saying don’t do this to me, don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.” And they said, “You’re only here to observe, why don’t you just shut up?”
I never went back, and I thought this is not for me. I started questioning within the first year of what was a 10-year training. I have to say it was a waste of 10 years in one sense. On the other hand, I learned what I don’t like and I got some books out of it. I’ve written about 31 books altogether but about 10 of them had to do with what’s wrong with psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology, and Jung.
I learned to hate it, I mean, that’s the truth. I’m not indifferent about psychiatry. I’m not willing to hear the other side. I’ve already heard the other side and I don’t like it. I got very radicalized in my own mind. First of all, I had quite a bit to do after I became an analyst with the anti-psychiatry movement, what they would call the patients’ rights movement. I was very impressed and I still am. It’s not as much of a force in America as it used to be. I think simply because psychiatry now has so much money and they’re so obnoxious, they just won’t listen. In all my 10 years of training, not once did we bring in a real person who had undergone any of this to hear their criticism, which made me very unhappy and very nervous. I mean, wait a minute, you’ve got these thousands, literally thousands of people who say “this harmed me,” why aren’t you willing to listen to them?
So I carry this further, I guess, than my wonderful friend—I would call him in many ways my best friend—John Read, because we were together for many years in New Zealand. The only thing we disagree about is therapy. I came away very skeptical of all therapy and I guess that made me a real outlier, even within the patients’ rights movement. I wrote a book called Against Therapy. Therapy, it seemed to me, was just too close to psychiatry, even feminist therapy, even so-called Radical Therapy like R.D. Laing. I mean, Laing remained a psychiatrist his whole life.
On the one hand, I think it’s perfectly legitimate for anybody who suffered from depression—though I’d rather call it sadness or serious sadness. People who have serious sadness have every right to seek whatever help they can get. So if they want to go to see a therapist, I’m not going to tell them not to, but I would tell them to be careful because many therapists are going to say, “Well, this is just a brain disease” and they are going to put you on medication and things will get worse.
Or now behavioral therapy is going to tell them, “You’re just looking at the world in the wrong way. If only you looked at it the way I look at it, you wouldn’t be depressed.” They don’t know what they’re talking about and they have no right to say that to anybody. So, I guess somebody like John Read, who is a humane and decent human being, if he were your therapist, he would not do any harm. I am sure of that.
I’m sure there are others but how do you identify them? You go and see somebody because they’re listed in a phone book or a friend tells you, they don’t say much and slowly you learn that they’re into Brexit or they’re into some sort of denial of child abuse. God knows what their problems are and it only means it can be very hard for them to understand you. So, I wouldn’t trust just anybody.
Now, where does that leave people who need help? I don’t know. I’m not claiming that I have a solution. I’m just saying that what we’re offered is not great and it’s not reliable and it’s not entirely human, it’s not like a friend talking.
Moore: You obviously have a connection with John Read but how was it that the two of you came to decide to write this paper on some of the historic horrors perpetrated on the so-called mentally ill in the Second World War years?
Masson: I first became interested in the Holocaust as a teenager. I’m Jewish and it was one of the few topics that fascinated me, I just couldn’t read enough. I remember seeing the famous French film The Sorrow and the Pity and then I read Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which I hated.
I was married to a woman who was a survivor of the Holocaust, she was born in 1937 in Warsaw, she was Jewish and she was in the Warsaw Ghetto. So of course, we talked a lot about trauma and what it does to you. She and I together went to visit Anna Freud long before I had anything to do with the Freud archive, that was just the beginning my analytic training and she reluctantly agreed to see me and my wife.
I know that Anna Freud had been hauled in by the Gestapo in 1938 and it was one of the reasons that Freud agreed to leave Vienna. Nobody knows what happened to her that afternoon but it must have been ghastly. My wife at the time also had ghastly experiences, of course, with Germans, and I thought the two would bond but they did not.
We quite openly said, “We’re here because of my wife’s past and my interest in the Holocaust and our question to you is, why is it that psychoanalysts have not paid more attention to the Second World War and to the trauma that people went through?” I can’t remember reading anything profound about that at that time, this is 1974 or so and there was nothing. I expected her to say “Yes, that’s terrible. I agree with you” but she did not. She said, “Well, that’s reality and analysts are interested in fantasy.” I said, “Well, you know, nobody went through the Holocaust with fantasies, they went through it in reality.” She just tossed it aside, and that bothered me. I thought, oh, maybe I’m in the wrong profession.
I did believe for a long time that the purpose of analysis was to uncover buried memories and to make those memories tolerable, to bring them to consciousness to think about them and then to think about what could result. Now, if that were all the therapists did, I would have no problem with it. But of course, they don’t.
My wife at the time was in analysis with a man whose name to me sounded very German, she assumed he was Jewish. It turned out he was of German ancestry. In fact, he had something to do with the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth). He was not at all sympathetic to what she was telling him and she just had no clue. When I became a candidate, I, of course, began to know him and I told her and she quit. But for me was kind of the model of how any patient or any client, whatever you want to call them, anybody who’s in some sort of therapy or analysis or psychiatric treatment just has no clue who they’re dealing with.
So it’s very dangerous, in my opinion, and I think people do get hurt. Of course, some people say “I was helped”, and who am I to say they weren’t? But I do know many people have been harmed by psychiatry. I think there are a lot of people who’ve been harmed by analysis and there are many people harmed by therapy. That is my interest, those who are harmed.
Moore: Your paper is a challenging read. It’s fascinating as a historical document, but it’s challenging in terms of knowing that humans can do that to each other. I wondered what you felt as you were doing the research and writing it?
Masson: That’s a good question, James. I felt very bad. John and I were originally going to write a book on psychiatry in the Holocaust and I did a lot of research, which meant spending time in Germany, spending time in concentration camps, archives, and libraries. There are probably 100,000 books written now about the Holocaust, it’s a huge field. Psychiatry and the Holocaust much less but there’s a lot written, especially in German.
As I read it, I just got very depressed, it was such awful stuff. As you say, how can humans do this to other humans, it often made me cry. Then I married a German woman, much younger than myself. She hadn’t been through any of this and she was very sympathetic but I could see that it was having a bad impact on her. I’d come home having read these horrible stories about children. She didn’t want to hear about children being starved to death or killed. As a German, it was very hard for her to hear that.
I thought, if I write this book and spend the next four to five years researching this and come home every day with horror stories, it’s going to affect my marriage and her mental health and my mental health. So in the end, I feel that I’ve said the main things that needed to be said in that paper and I also feel that John was able to take out something positive from it where I could not.
When I was in Israel, I met several Jewish psychiatrists and I assumed they would be on my side but they were not. This was in the 1980s, and they had been trained in Germany, and remained German psychiatrists, so they had no critique. I did not find that they had any greater sympathy or any greater understanding of trauma than anyone else. So that was very disappointing to me.
But things are starting to change, as John found out. The story he tells in the paper, which is his story, about the woman who was a Holocaust survivor, whose son was chief of psychiatry and finally realized that all her problems stemmed from not talking about what had happened to her. I believe that for every major so-called mental illness, I think that people who are deeply depressed have things they either can’t remember or can’t talk about or do not have somebody sympathetic enough to listen.
Any child who has been beaten or abused is a survivor and very similar to Holocaust survivors. So, that her son was able to shift his whole thinking and then to shift the hospital into recognizing her problems, that is a real achievement. I agree with John, it does give you hope. I would want to follow up and see how many other hospitals in Israel are doing that. Can a whole culture change itself? Well, maybe, but that was not my focus. My focus was on what happened and that’s not a pretty topic.
Moore: It was so difficult to read not only that these things happened, but also how many psychiatrists in Germany were members of the Nazi Party and then how few doctors or psychiatrists spoke out about the horrors. I think it said in the paper that one was executed but very few spoke out at all about these horrors, did they?
Masson: No, or faced any consequences. There is a book that’s received a lot of good press by Robert Jay Lifton, called The Nazi Doctors and I just abhor that book, I cannot bear to read it. I did read it carefully but it’s so wrong.
I can tell you one quick anecdote that will illustrate what’s wrong with that kind of book. He’s a psychiatrist, Robert Lifton, he’s still around and he did some very good work on Hiroshima. But he has this, I think, quite idiotic explanation for why German psychiatrists did what they did. He calls it “doubling.” So, they would have a double personality, they’d go in and kill patients and then they’d come home and they’d be great fathers. I don’t believe that, I really don’t believe it.
To illustrate this, he talks about a Jewish psychiatrist in Auschwitz, who became friends with a doctor in Auschwitz because they both wanted to experiment with ECT on patients. And Robert Lifton said, “this is wonderful, it just shows you that we can cross the barrier.” This is so wrong on so many levels that they would bond over torturing patients.
So as you can see, it was a hard article for me to write but because I was doing it with John Read, who is the picture of absolute integrity, kindness, empathy, and super smart, I was glad to do it. And I know German, he doesn’t, so I was able to bring some things to it that he couldn’t. He has a more cheerful view of humanity than I do and was able to find the bright side of the change that’s happening. So, I’m proud of that article and I’m so glad that it’s out there in the public domain and that it seems to be getting attention.
Moore: It’s incredibly important to recount these past horrors, but I wondered if you felt that this history has a bearing on how we treat people diagnosed as mentally ill in modern times?
Masson: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been away from the field of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and psychology for so long that whenever I do talk to professionals, they say, “Well, you know, was very bad in your days, but it’s changed.” I don’t think it has. I read everything that John Read writes and I can see from his writings that things have not changed at all. ECT is still being used in America and drugs are more popular than ever. I don’t have the expertise to pronounce on it but I don’t like psychiatric drugs at all. I think they do a huge amount of harm.
By and large, I don’t think psychiatry has changed very much. What surprises me, and I guess it surprises John, too, is how many psychiatrists around the world are interested in the history of psychiatry in The Third Reich. And not only in The Third Reich, as John pointed out, but America was also doing horrible things and even in Sweden.
I was very pleased to see that head of the German psychiatric society, Schneider, apologized. I don’t know if he was speaking for himself or the whole society but I thought that was wonderful. Right now I’m talking to you from Berlin and it is very definitely a different place than it was many years ago. It is nice to see that in some respects people are moving in the right direction. I think the very fact that people feel so strongly about Ukraine is a good sign. I remember that it was considered a miracle that Angela Merkel allowed 1 million Syrian refugees to come into Germany. But it turns out that it was a very good thing for everybody, it helped the economy.
Poland has allowed in 3.5 million Ukrainians, and that’s extraordinary and wonderful and does give you hope. I don’t see a big movement to get psychiatrists in there to deal with them, it’s a human problem and to some extent, psychiatry, in my opinion, is not entirely human. I know, that’s a big statement and any psychiatrist listening to this is going to stop listening at this point. I guess you can go into psychiatry because you want to help, I understand that. But I think once you see what they’re doing, you have to quit. I do get mail from time to time, from therapists, analysts, and psychiatrists who have thought about it deeply, read my books, read other things and decided “this is not for me.” So it does happen, but it’s rare.
Moore: You said there hasn’t been that much change in terms of a humane response to distress. So, I wondered if you had any thoughts about why that change hasn’t happened. What’s preventing psychiatry from being more humane do you think?
Masson: That’s a very good question and I have thought about this a lot. I’m 81 years old, so, having written 31 books, I think that’s enough, but I would like one last book and it would be called What’s Wrong With Our Species? I’ve written a lot of books about animal emotions because that fascinates me. No animal has ever done anything remotely resembling what humans do to one another, they just don’t do it. That gives me a clue that something has gone wrong with us. I think that any psychiatrist who is willing to listen to the movement of patients who’ve been harmed and really take it in, would have to ask himself or herself, what have we done wrong? Very few have done this.
So I think what’s stopping it is partly greed. Psychiatrists do make a lot of money and when they prescribe drugs they do even better because you can do that in a few minutes. I’ve met psychiatrists who told me, “I just give them a new prescription, it takes me two or three minutes and I can see 20 patients in one hour.” At $200 a pop, that’s a lot of money. When you’re making half a million or a million dollars a year from what you do, it’s very hard to convince someone that this isn’t the right thing to do or to find another profession.
What I found difficult is that you can’t even convince them to read about something. The most profound book I ever read against psychiatry is called Too Much Anger, Too Many Tears by Janet Gotkin. At 17, she was put in a psychiatric hospital in New York, and given 120 shock treatments without any kind of anesthesia or painkillers. That she came out of it able to write this book is to me a miracle. She’s now almost 80 and I correspond with her regularly and she just wants nothing to do with psychiatry anymore after having written that book, but her book is profound.
I once gave it to a psychiatrist who I thought of as a friend. I said, “Please read this” and she gave it back to me and said, “It’s not worth it, there’s nothing new in it.” I just lost my temper; we never talked again. So, they’re not willing to take in criticism of their field and that bothers me a lot. In other medical fields, I can’t imagine that if you told the surgeon “Look, what you’re doing is now been superseded by a better method, do you want to learn about it?” They’d say, “Sure.” But something about psychiatry makes the people who practice it tend towards arrogance, to think “I know how the mind works.” No, you don’t, nobody knows how the mind works.
Moore: I’m very interested to know what it was that interested you in the philosophy of how we treat animals. You said that animals don’t treat each other the way that we humans treat each other as a species. But, of course, we treat animals very badly and so I wondered if you thought there were parallels between how we treat each other, the mass slaughter of animals and how we take advantage of the creatures of this planet?
Masson: Oh, absolutely, you just put it in a nutshell. There have been a number of Holocaust survivors who have compared the Holocaust experience to the way we treat animals today, and people get crazed about this. They hate to see that. But the truth is, it is similar. I’ve often asked myself, how could these people have done that to innocent children? How do you take a little five-year-old or six-year-old and send them to a gas chamber? How is it possible? You know, you drive yourself crazy, as Primo Levi stated, you just can’t think about it. If you think about it too long you go partly insane. It’s just unbearable. And yet, we do very similar things to animals.
I was reading something yesterday, a very interesting book that the author sent me. It’s by a psychoanalyst who was the victim of incest. He writes about it very honestly and he writes against his profession of psychoanalysis. He talks about how he was very badly sexually abused as a very young boy and he heard screaming, which was his own screaming. He said, “only later in life that I heard the same scream, it came from a pig who was being slaughtered.” I thought, wow, I know, not from direct experience but I’ve read that many times that when pigs are slaughtered, they sound like children being hurt, they scream and it’s just like a human.
I thought, how do people do this? How does somebody cut the throat of a pig and listen to this? Of course, we do it 6 billion times a year to animals. That too is changing. I went for a long bike ride with my son through Berlin last night and we came to one street where there were five vegan restaurants on one street. It must be the only place in the world.
I do believe that if you look at what happens to animals, they get taken in these trains, they are staring out and as soon as they reach the destination, their throats are cut, and all this for what? To ruin the planet to make ourselves physically sick. So I’m a vegan and I’ve been vegan for 18 years now. For me, it definitely was having to do with my understanding of the Holocaust and that I saw the parallels there and I thought “I just don’t want anything to do with this.”
Moore: You’ve written so many books, is there one that you’d recommend that people could read that’s a good general introduction to you and your ideas?
Masson: I think my best book, apart from The Assault on Truth, is called Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil. Because there I address this question that you asked me about—animals not being vicious in the way that humans are. I go into great detail about this, even sharks and killer whales and crocodiles. They don’t do what we do, they don’t hunt for pleasure the way humans do. So, I wanted to understand that, and it will be the beginning of the book What’s Wrong With Our Species—which I’m not able to write because they don’t have an answer yet.
There is something wrong, but I haven’t found it. As you can see, it hasn’t gotten me down. I’m a very happy person and I’m very lucky, being married to this extraordinary woman. I am writing for her children a book called The World According to Lila. That’s her name, Leila, and she is the most unusual person I’ve ever met, in the best sense of the word.
Moore: Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been fascinating to hear about what led to your work with John to write this paper. I recommend that listeners read it. It is a challenging read, but it’s so important to understand what happened at that particular time, how psychiatry did or didn’t react to it and how people then went on to find a way out of the trauma that they’d experienced while they were involved in some horrific things.
Thank you so much for your work and for spending some time with me to just touch on a tiny part of your fascinating life.
Masson: Thank you, James. I can’t remember having somebody ask such interesting questions as you did.
Great interview! I learned a lot and it made me think more deeply about all of these issues. I loved Masson’s devastating critique of Freud in “Assault on the Truth.”
Can we assume from all of his terrifying exposure of psychiatry, that Masson believes that psychiatry and the medical model should be abolished?
Richard
Report comment
Masson was for the abolishment of psychiatry before the DSM III even came out. He’s way ahead of us!
Report comment
Good to know! Thank you Steve!
Report comment
I am glad of everyone’s cheer Grace but I reserve the human right to call my illness schizophrenia if I want to. And if anyone tells me not to then I feel they are victimizing me by superimposing their prefered descriptor or pronoun or diagnosis or anti diagnosis over me. This is what the exterminators of any regime will do, they begin with the prefered language you yourself are most comfortable using. Jew. Gypsy. Gay. Mad. All these years later and I am chastised at times in my social sphere for using MY words for ME. I will never give up regarding myself as schizophrenic.
And I will not have anyone policing my private interior opinions of myself and of anyone I have to make a first impression of. I have a right to have any impression or opinion I like. If I ever openly and outwardly and irritatingly directly impose it on others that then becomes an issue of sorts. But people are like children in having to quickly assume who they meet are and whether they have anything in common or not. It is normal to be inquisitive. It is not normal to be an inquisitor.
If what we believe does not directly impinge on another in a serious one to one way then there is no harm in having ANY opinion you like.
The alternative is a world full of thought police. And then the backlash thought police against the thought police. Both are nae natural.
No animal is the thought police of another animal.
All animals are entirely free to think and feel and opinion hold in whatever way they choose to. All animals ACCEPT DIFFERENCE.
Report comment
What individuals decide is up to them. What doctors and particularly psychiatrists decide is of legitimate public intetest. You can’t lock people up, force drugs and ECT on them, diagnose them with illnesses that may prevent them from getting employment and stop there physical illnesses being investigated and treated, psychiatrists can.
Report comment
I don’t mean to be rude, but I have an minor edit of clarification to John Hoggett’s comment.
“diagnose them with illnesses that may prevent them from getting employment and stop THEIR physical illnesses from being investigated and treated”.
I am making this note of clarification because I think that John Hoggett made a VERY IMPORTANT point here that should be discussed openly.
When a person is locked up in an inpatient psychiatric ward, it’s as if he or she has been CONVICTED for a crime without ever breaking any law. The patient in an inpatient psychiatric ward is treated like a CRIMINAL.
In attempting to forcibly suppress the “patient’s” (I don’t think this is really a LEGITIMATE form of Medicine!) psychiatric symptoms, all PHYSICAL conditions are DISREGARDED. Of course, the word, “disregard” is VERY PREVALENT when pertaining to Mental Patients.
So, one doesn’t have to be any sort of Holistic Practitioner or guru to realize that injuries and other physical health problems are LIKELY to impact the “patient’s” (“inmate’s” might really be more correct) mental health.
To use the common vernacular, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that injuries and other physical ailments IMPACT Mental Health.”
However, because psychiatric “patients” (inmates) are being PUNISHED by Society, they are denied any sort of care for their injuries and other physical health problems.
Specifically, when I was hospitalized in Denver Health Behavioral Health in the Spring of 2020, I had a LUMBAR STRAIN. The Staff there knew it, and a therapist had a session with me with a Resistance Band to help me stretch my muscles.
Right after this session with the Resistance Band, I was gangtackled by the staff and forcibly injected with Haldol.
Now, the Denver Health Behavioral Health Staff could be asked, “Was Daniel ATTACKING anyone with that Resistance Band? Was he doing anything INAPPROPRIATE with that Resistance Band at all other than what it’s supposed to be used for?”
Admitted, it’s quite likely that the Staff at Denver Health Behavioral Health REALLY DIDN’T CARE about my painful Lumbar Strain, and they were just SIZING ME UP in preparation for a gangtackle and forced drugging.
However, a Resistance Band is a HEALING TOOL. At Home for me now, my exercise equipment for Healing could be said to be SACRED. I told my friend, Mike Mackey, the other day that “Gangtackling and forced drugging a person after a Session with a Resistance Band is like Raping someone on a Yoga Mat.”
So, without uttering my usual profanities when recalling these events, you can see that this sort of behavior by the STAFF at Denver Health Behavioral Health is EXTREMELY DISTURBING.
Does the staff in an Inpatient Psychiatric Ward have the RIGHT to ASSAULT a patient who is refusing to take medication EVEN IF he or she has an INJURY?
I’d be eager to see what anyone has to say.
I
Report comment
I think your right Denver Dan, John Hogget does make some important points.
“Do the staff in an Inpatient Psychiatric Ward have the RIGHT to ASSAULT a patient who is refusing to take medication EVEN IF he or she has an INJURY?”
There were a number of deaths at one of our ‘facilities’ about 10 years back. Patients who were being ‘gangtackled’ were also having their necks snapped. These “unintentional negative outcomes” were stopped it seems with some staff training sessions in how to do restraints.
There was an association between our Police and a ‘physical training company’ around that particular time, which the Police Dept had difficulty stopping their members from attending for ‘personal training’.
I have witnessed one nurse who liked to practice his Mixed Martial Arts training on patients, at one point trying to threaten me for going to the hospital to obtain documentation via FOI. He did like to fight some of the bigger, fitter patients, but would probably last about 15 minutes in Helmand province methinks.
There isn’t a lot the State can do about these ‘rogue’ elements who may wish to practice the techniques that they are learning from these ‘private personal trainers’ which may involve methods of snapping necks once the ‘patient’ is in a vulnerable position. That is, with ‘mental health professionals’ holding them face down, and open to a bit of thumb pressure in the right place.
It is known that none of them would testify given the precedent set when 14 police watched a young man kicked to death in the cells, though refused to testify on the grounds of self incrimination. The same precedent is set for other areas of ‘containment’, with nurses also aware of their right of refusal to bear witness to the crimes of others (see joint enterprise laws)
So the deaths and serious assaults aren’t even investigated really, knowing that those who watched it occur, will refuse to testify….. ergo you have no case to answer. A good reason for ensuring that there are no ‘credible’ witnesses to these assaults. Would anything have been done about George Floyd without the video of him being murdered? I’m surprised police didn’t have the ‘evidence retrieval unit’, and ‘witness family threats unit’ go into action as they would have done here.
I assume your aware of the ways they are set up by staff, and why your ‘confidentiality’ is being ‘protected’ by not allowing cameras on the facility? That is, do it when all the other ‘patients’ are present to watch the ‘take down’, so for example one I witnessed done at the breakfast kitchen window while the only others present were staff and patients’. The good old terrorist methods of kill one to scare a thousand. Sun Tzu was right, it works a treat.
Report comment
I appreciate your supportive comments, boans. What we’re talking about does not any relation to any LEGITIMATE form of Healthcare.
Rather we’re describing a “Mental Health System” that is actually AT WAR with psychiatric patients.
Of course, at some point, given what we understand about human nature, a patient who survives one of these assaults and is released from an inpatient psychiatric ward is going to figure out a way to RETALIATE against these “Mental Health Workers” by committing some sort of act of terrorism against a hospital where these abuses have taken place. I imagine that an incident like this has already occured, but it might not have been described in this way.
Therefore, when we protest the EXISTENCE of this sort of abusive “Mental Health System”, we are, ultimately, protecting the lives of the ABUSERS as well as those of the patients that have been abused.
Some of these Social Networks like Tumblr ban “sexually explicit content”, but there are all sorts of Domestic Terrorists and Gun Lovers using these Social Networks and these sorts of people, whether we admit it or not, can provide lonely, alienated people, with the Sense of Belonging they seek.
So, I would reiterate the assertion that, when we protest the abuses that occur in inpatient psychiatric wards, we are also PROTECTING THE ABUSERS because it wouldn’t take much imagination on my part to see a Torture Chamber like “Denver Health Behavioral Health” go up in smoke as a result of a Truck Bomb or for innocent bystanders in the lobby of Denver Health to be massacred by an enraged maniac who had been traumatized and felt sexually abused by the staff in the inpatient psychiatric unit there.
Report comment
I can see what your saying Denver Dan.
I wrote a comment regarding the way that these abusers actively seek out the institutional protections afforded them in much the same way that the child rapists sought out the protections afforded by the Churches for 40 years.
I was speaking with a lawyer at golf yesterday, and he was explaining how the Head of one Church who had actively participated in the concealment of the offending, and who was in the role as Head of the Church for 10 months, now receives more than $800,000 (indexed) a year for the rest of his life. While many of the victims who may not have been victimised but for his negligence and cover ups, got how much in a one off payment? Oh that’s right, it wasn’t much use putting the money on many of the graves. The “Ellis Defense” ensuring they basically got nothing.
Personally I think retaliating in kind is wrong.
I have told a story before about a Samurai who came home from war to find his family had been slaughtered, his home burned to the ground and everything destroyed. He tracked down the man responsible and fought him, beat him to the ground, and was about to cut his head off when the man spat in his face. The samurai put away his sword and walked away.
The people who watched the events asked him, “After all that this man has done to you, why did you not kill him?”
The Samurai responded “Because I was angry”.
They will turn on themselves, and ‘we’ need to be in a place where we are protecting our own from their abuses. There are historical examples, the flight of the Muslims to Medina being mine. Leave them in their own corruption, and live according to a set of rules where each member of the community can place a level of trust in the other….. as opposed to this enabling of human rights abuses and criminality by the current State system.
Acts of fraud, slander and hypocrisy are classed as serious offenses in Islam, in my State they are seen as a ‘business model’ provided money by the State, and called ‘mental health services’. Why on earth anyone would walk in to there offices willingly leaves me gobsmacked….. though once you realise what ‘coercive’ methods are available, you begin to understand how the ‘showers’ are getting filled, and the art collections in the homes of those benefiting are getting bigger. The extraction of labour power these days done minus the work camps. The trough of State money unending when it comes to having the people the State is at war with ‘treated’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Julia_Tobin
Report comment
Of course, boans, acts of terrorism in retaliation for Abuse are never justified, but the Mental Health System does their best to create terroristic mentalities. In this Society, if one pleads for help, one is likely to be ignored, but, if one makes violent threats, people are sure to pay attention.
I agree with you that the Abuses of the Mental Health System parallel the sexual abuses conducted in certain warped religious organizations. The Psychiatrists is perceived as being like a Priest, and is beyond reprimand. The Police refuse to investigate their crimes. So, Inpatient Psychiatric Wards are great places for Sex Offenders to work. I told my Kaiser Permanente Physician, Kendall Stone, that, as a result of the Civil Right Movement, African-Americans can now work in a variety of professions. They don’t just have to be Porters on trains any more. However, Sex Offenders are still discriminated against. Therefore, Denver Health, being an “equal opportunity employer” ought to have a sign right outside their Hospital saying,
“Sex Offenders wanted for Positions at Denver Health.”
Then, Sex Offenders know that, though they are generally excluded by Society, they are welcomed to work in the “Mental Health Industry”.
Of course, my Physician, Kendall Stone, had absolutely nothing to say. She’s part of the problem too.
At the urging of Kaiser Permanente, I called her during the COVID-19 Pandemic, though she was sick with COVID at the time. I had recently stopped taking Depakote because I was unable to fight off a Respiratory Virus successfully with my immunity compromised by taking Depakote. Dr. Stone, though she had COVID-19 at the time told me that I needed to get back on some sort of psychotropic drug? Maybe, she wanted me to develop COVID-19 like she had? Maybe, she was envious of me because I hadn’t caught it even though I was a Mental Patient and she was a Doctor? Maybe, she wanted me to get on a Psychotropic Med so I would catch COVID, develop a Longterm COVID Syndrome and Kaiser Permanente would make more money trying to prevent my death?
In any case, after this toxic recommendation, I didn’t chat with her any more.
I’ll probably get a Flu Shot soon, but I don’t think I want to be put on psychotropic drugs so I’ll get sick, and my doctor won’t feel inferior to me as a patient.
That doesn’t really make any sense, does it, boans?
Report comment
I think taking stuff that makes you sick is proof you need to be given stuff that makes you sick, If the choice is yours Dan, choose. In my instance, my choice to not take intoxicants didn’t suit the purposes of certain individuals, so they thought they were justified in putting it into my drink to have me consume the poison I would otherwise refuse.
Our ex Prime Minister had something to say about such people when there was someone putting needles into food in supermarkets. Though it seems once again, these comments did not apply to anyone who had the cover of ‘mental health professional’ as protection.
The comments about the high levels of sexual assaults being reported by ‘patient’s made by our Minister for mental Health that “you can’t listen to them, they’re mental patients” really struck home for me. I know there was a staff member (why does that make me smile) whose willful exposure to the female patients was well known about, even among other staff but……… nothing ever done about it because “you can’t listen to them………
I suppose enabling his abuses makes it easier to conceal other more serious human rights abuses because those captured within the system realise that resistance is useless. Show them how brutal you are as they get off the trains being the orders that are given, it will make your task easier
And I agree with you Dan, I think that the ‘mental health system’ radicalises people, quite rapidly. Though like police they ensure they are ‘on site’ when they do to put down any possible response as quickly as possible. This should change significantly with Community Treatment Orders. Radicalised, but not contained? Expect MORE rampages, with more calls for more powers to restrain within the home. I don’t even like to imagine what a community of that sort will look like. I guess we are about to find out.
In fact, it makes an interesting hypothesis……. is it the case that mental health services, like Islamic State, are radicalising individuals and the results of this radicalisation are contributing to the rise in rampages and mass shootings? Because in many societies where the ‘radicals’ have instilled their beliefs through acts of force and violence, we see a response of acts of violence from the non compliant against their own communities……. see for example Afghanistan and the attacks on Mosques during Taliban rule.
Report comment
boans, If someone in any position of power would see us making analogies between PSYCHIATRY and TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, these people would say, “Those guys, boans and Dan, are really CRAZY to think that Psychiatry is like Boko Haram. Psychiatric is based on Science. It has NOTHING to do with Religion at all!”
However, if one looks at the EXPERIENCES of psychiatric patients and the EXPERIENCES of people who have been recruited by Terrorist Organizations, whether they’re “Islamist” or whatever the hell they’re ideology is, one will see one STRIKING PARALLEL.
Both Psychiatry and Terrorism are CONTEMPTUOUS OF HUMAN VULNERABILITY. If you feel VULNERABLE, they’ll BOTH break you down and tear you apart until you CONFORM to their ideology!
So, these Terrorist Organizations and Psychiatry both HARDEN people. “Compassion” is AGAINST their teachings.
Here in the United States, President Donald Trump obviously had a “personality cult”. People admired him for his BRUTALITY like a Mafia Don. Well, what are the leaders of these Terrorist Organizations like. They are BRUTAL, and some people think that’s GREAT. The willingness to hurt other people is, supposedly, part of being a strong man!
Now, today, I felt a bit vulnerable. Maybe, a bit “manic” in the language of psychiatry. So, what did I do. Well, I took a field trip to the local Vietnamese Buddhist Temple. The Nun wrote down two brief prayers in Vietnamese, one for Buddha and one for Kuan Yin. I went down under a tree, recited a few of these prayers and crashed out. I brought a bag of fresh apples, but the Nun had to be convinced to take them. “You no spend MONEY!”she admonished. Well, the last time I was there was the very day that I stopped taking Depakote, and I was pretty disturbed that day, and what did the Nun do? She loaded up my African Basket with Granny Smith Apples and said, “You go home now. It’s getting late.” No judgement…no evaluation…just generosity and concern.
So, I always know that the Nhu Lai Vietnamese Temple here in Denver is a SAFE PLACE if I feel disturbed.
In contrast, when I went to visit my ex when I felt disturbed, she called the cops to take me to the Nuthouse where I was completely clobbered.
So, though I might have been SEXUALLY intimate with my ex-wife she did not have the LOVINGKINDNESS or “Metta” like the Buddhist Nun.
I might say to myself, “Daniel, you should have known that!”
However, Buddhists would tell me that “Attachment is the cause of suffering.”
I was quite committed to treatment as a psychiatric patient. Like my ex-wife, I was reluctant to let go of psychiatric treatment too!
If we put our ENERGY into Something, we become attached to it, even if it’s really HARMFUL to us.
So, the “withdrawal” is not just from the psychotropic drug but also from a system we’ve been committed to.
I say to myself, “Daniel, you mean to tell me that all those programs you participated in were MEANINGLESS BULLSHIT simply designed for exploitation and profit?”
Maybe so.
Report comment
Hi again Dan,
“Those guys, Boans and Dan, are really CRAZY to think that Psychiatry is like Boko Haram. Psychiatric is based on Science. It has NOTHING to do with Religion at all!”
Opinions aren’t facts. So let them think you and I are crazy.
I would draw your attention to the parallels made by Adamm Curtis in his Power of Nightmares (the Rise of the Politics of Fear)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U&t=147s
The comparison between the Islamist ideology of Sayeed Qutb and the economic theories of Milton Friedman are striking. The use of the ‘School of the Americas’ in Chile making Boko Haram look like a Punch and Judy show. This then running through to the neo conservatives and what has been called al Qaeda (which was a fabrication to bring charges against Usama bin Laden in abstentia for the 1998 bombing in Nairobi. The use of RICO laws wasn’t possible without an organisation.).
It never existed, and yet despite this fact there are still people to this day who think there is an organisation called al Qaeda.
Islamic State on the other hand does exist, and there is a very good movie called “Timbuktu” which gives an idea of how it works. And it works very much like psychiatry, with people who are straying from the ‘path’ (sunnah) being coerced to behave in a specific manner. There are no hard and fast rules per se, just a varying interpretation of the Quran and Hadiths. Not unlike ‘psychiatric diagnosis’, where the ‘ill’ person is never really sure of what it is that is wrong with them.
There is a scene where a ‘liberal’ Imam confronts some of the Jihadis walking through the Mosque who have forced women to wear gloves to cover themselves. The Imam points out that they are enforcing these rules with severe punishments but it says in Quran that one should give explanation as to WHY one should be doing such things. The Islamic State fighters simply justify their behaviour with the claim they are on Jihad. This means they can now walk through the Mosque wearing boots and carrying weapons. The rules don’t apply to them.
In much the same way as the Form filled out by the Community Nurse could be applied to anyone on the planet, though the claim is that there are legal protections from arbitrary detentions, but he is on a Jihad against ‘mental illness’ and therefore his war on the ‘enemy’ allows him to operate outside the law. Those who support him in this simply utter with the fraud he produces, and deny access to effective legal representation.
There is a significant difference though. The Islamists are bound by the Quran, which can not be changed. So acts of fraud if demonstrated create a dilemma for the senior Islamists, and there may be serious consequences for them for acts of fraud and uttering, slander, and hypocrisy. Unlike the ‘psychiatric quran’ which allows the “editing” of legal narratives to fabricate outcomes preferred by those in power (fraud), which makes use of slander as a ‘diagnostic system’, and a total disregard for the truth in the face of absolute proof that criminal offences have occurred (hypocrisy).
Not that the Islamists haven’t found what they believe to be ‘loopholes’, it’s just that the Quran is not a moving set of goal posts, and is the Primary source of truth.
I was really pleased to hear that you have a safe place, and are being influenced by the power of prayers. This place is temporary.
I had someone tell me today about a cartoon they are working on. It is two panels, one with President Biden and Mohammed bin Salman fist bumping, and the other panel is at the Gates of Heaven with Julian Assange fist bumping Jamal Kashoggi.
Take care Dan. Try and watch the above documentary if you have time (and consider the similarities between jahiliyyah and anosognosia. The lack of insight the justification for force in both instances), there are THREE of us that are mad it would seem, it’s just that Adamm Curtis is so much better at communicating than me.
I can’t even make a complaint about being tortured and be heard, despite having the documented proof. Mind you I don’t think i’d be much more effective with the Taliban, who after all would possibly not bother having me delivered to an E.D. for an ‘unintended negative outcome’, and I doubt very much that they would be rudely interrupted if they did. They don’t seem to be big on documenting things, so the idea of a need for “editing” of legal narrative ….. you get the picture. Same people, different faces.
Report comment
boans, Mr. Steve McCrea, seems confused about what we’re trying to say.
Islamism is not Islam any more than Scientism is Science. Groups like Boko Haram who try to Impose Islam at gunpoint are not Muslims any more than Psychiatrists, who gangtackle patients to force them to take their psychotropic medications are Scientists. Psychiatrists might be Scientistic, but they aren’t necessarily Scientific! I hope this clarifies things about. I, myself, accept the Teachings of the Quran, but I don’t accept Islam.
If a stripper wants to be a stripper, let him or her do his or her striptease act. However, if he or she decides that he or she would like to become a Muslim, he or she should be allowed to become a Muslim and included in the Ummah. No Muslims should condemn this person because he or she WAS a Stripper. That’s not Islam. Islam is SUBMISSION to Allah. It’s not about CONTROLLING OTHER PEOPLE. It’s about CONTROLLING ONESELF.
I have a bit of Insomnia, and I happen to be listening to the Persian Classic, “Night Silence Desert” by Kayhan Kalhor and Muhammad Reza Shajarian right now. This recording was USED by PBS after the 9/11 incident for their Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him).
So, PBS tries to EDUCATE people about Islam but they do not endorse Islamism.
I also mentioned that, though former President Donald Trump wants the United States to become a Christian Theocracy, he, himself, does not PRACTICE Christianity or live according the Christian Values.
Israel calls itself “The Jewish State”, but, yet, they, obviously ASSASSINATED Al-Jazeera Journalist, Shireen Abu-Akleh, in cold blood, and the United States, under the leadership of President Joe Biden, is helping Israel, the so-called “Jewish State” COVER UP the Assassination and block a serious investigation rather than standing for accountability and Human Rights. So, I feel, in solidarity with Al-Jazeera, that, the United States, by UNCRITICALLY accepting Zionism is actually ENDORSING TERRORISM under the leadership of Democratic President, Joe Biden.
So, I hope this clarifies how I feel about these issues, boans. 21 years after the 9/11 incident, the vast majority of Americans don’t understand what happened at all, and we continue to make the same mistakes in our foreign policy
Salaam Aleikum
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kQsqW4d1DoI9ACpf1MyX1ol_0w3BNw794
Report comment
References
Surah al Mutaffifin (Those who deal in Fraud)
Surah al Humazah (the Slanderers)
Surah al Munafiqun (the Hypocrites)
Various ayat (verses) relating to the concealment of truth with falsehoods etc)
Whilst I can find Sections of our Criminal Code that deal with fraud and other various offences such as putting date rape drugs into peoples food or drink, these laws are of no concern when the documents which prove the offences can be “edited” by the State to protect criminals and keep them in positions where their offending may be of benefit to those within the State systems. Once “edited” more senior public servants then simply utter with the known fraud, and deny access to legal representation.
So for example, whilst Australia has ratified the Convention against the use of Torture (and the Optional Protocols), the hypocrisy is that they are “editing” legal narratives and denying access to legal representation and intimidating and threatening witnesses DESPITE the Articles of the Convention strictly prohibiting such refoulment of victims. “They will take their oaths as a cover” 63:2, “They have made their ˹false˺ oaths as a shield, hindering ˹others˺ from the cause of Allah” 58:16
In regards slander, the documents which were “edited” included some personal information I had provided in the strictest of confidence to a Social Worker, and other misleading documents which was highly likely to create a false belief in the reader. All released without my consent, though I have no doubt that other forged documents have also created the belief that I was an “Outpatient” when this is demonstrably false. And all done with the sole intent of doing severe damage to my character…. but no access to legal representation, a benefit to the State and their criminal colleagues.
I can not begin to imagine any Imam being enabled in such acts when the Quran strictly prohibits such vile, punishable, conduct.
Not a very good reference for the people at the Ariel Castro Memorial Hospital is it? Frauds, slanderers and hypocrites……. luckily people can be snatched from their beds after being ‘spiked’, because I doubt many of their ‘clients’ are willing participants in their abuses.
Though I also note they tried to lock me OUT of the hospital when I turned up in my prayer garments (rather than my ‘pyjamas’ and delivered by Police stupefied without my knowledge)…… their paranoid delusions regarding Muslims possibly a result of the “gratuitous Islamophobia” being spouted by our Premier? Two Christian boys post on Facebook they are going to behead his family and they are acting like “Fundamentalist Muslims”?
I also note the value placed on protecting his family, whilst my family are subjected to overt threats and intimidation to conceal human rights abuses and public sector misconduct (though I concede that there is a difference between threats of “fucking destroying” and beheadings. Both however threats, and those issued by the State more likely to be carried out I would suggest. Especially given the proof is there for all to see in regards my “fucking destruction” and that of my family. Without fear or favor huh?)
Report comment
I find it fascinating the way that these ‘mental health professionals’ fabricate and manufacture a ‘good faith defense’ for much of their vile conduct.
So for example, the Community Nurse in my situation is fully aware that I was NOT and “Outpatient”, though he had no valid referral source, so matters were arranged to create the appearance that he had obtained a police referral under the MH Act. I would suggest that knowing someone does not have a status of “Outpatient” but then lying to police regarding that fact makes the ‘good faith defense’ unavailable.
In fact, I think that the FOI Officer was fully aware of that fact when she found a need to deny my lawful access to the documents showing that this defense was not available to the Community Nurse, and then further when they had a need to “edit” the legal narrative to conceal the relevant facts.
And the prescription for my “Regular Mediations”? I think that it would have been quite simple for the Senior Medical Officer to establish what were my “Regular Medications” had I actually been an “Outpatient”. I think my medical records would have shown him that I was being prescribed these date rape drugs? Though I wasn’t actually an “Outpatient” and had he asked me about my medication regime he would have been provided with facts he preferred not to have. Is this someone attempting to defraud others who examined his fraudulent prescription for the drugs which had been administered without my knowledge in the commission of other offenses? If so, there is no ‘good faith defense’ available to him either.
And the torture? Was this done in ‘good faith’? In the pursuit of a ‘good’ which was only obvious to those who felt a need to torture?
It’s amazing how easily people with a motive to conceal criminal offending and human rights abuses can accept this ‘good faith defense’ when it isn’t actually available. With a little bit of “editing” it becomes available though, in the manner of compounding offences that is……… fraud to conceal acts of fraud, to conceal acts of fraud.
I am assuming that the FOI Officer and the Operations Manager are fully aware of the damage they are doing to people with their compounding of offences, given the confidence in the threat to myself and my family made by the Operations Manager to “fucking destroy”. They have done this before, and have personally witnessed the damage they are doing with their acts of fraud with intent (aka minus any ‘good faith defense’)
But “you can’t prove it Boans”…. and when I can, they send out police to retrieve the documents and rectify that situation, which results in the Law Centre then jumping in on the act…… “you can’t prove it Boans” well, actually I have some bad news there too, though fortunately Police are providing material assistance and ensuring that they don’t take the proof to find “insufficient evidence” and doing arbitrary detentions under the Mental Health Act rather than perform their duty….. though I’m sure that their fraud was in ‘good faith’ also? Oh that’s right, the person they did the ‘referral’ to, now claims “It never happened” as a direct result of threats to his family.
Demonstrate the intent to defraud, and there is NO GOOD FAITH DEFENSE. But keep in mind that these people have the ability to “edit” documents that relate to any ‘little woopsie’ they have with your health, and which they can force on your as a result of their fraud in making you their “Outpatient” in good faith to enable the commission of the offences relating to your ‘outcoming’.
It is clear to me now how the hospital administrators have attempted to fabricate a good faith defense with their own acts of fraud, using the fraudulent legal narrative fabricated by the Community Nurse and the Senior Medial Officer as their weapon. Police refusing to act based on a known fraudulent statement made to them regarding my status, and providing an opportunity for the criminals to sort their little problem out in the E.D.
There are some pretty good defense lawyers around, but few who would be able to mount a defense based on the facts in this matter…. hence the need for “editing”, and denial of access to effective legal representation which has been given the full sanction of the State to conceal what was an arbitrary detention and acts of torture by both mental heath services AND police (though were police aware of the ‘spiking’ with date rape drugs? The Community Nurse could answer that question easily, and demonstrate his ‘good faith’ in the process? Criminal negligence now a must in perverting the course of justice)
Though do keep in mind that if what I am saying regarding the original matters is correct, then the State would need to examine my claims regarding the events at the E.D. and ……. they really don’t want people knowing they are enabling such methods to resolve problematic legal narratives which become difficult to “edit” out of existence.
I must say I admire the absolutely filthy methods employed by the FOI Officer and the Operations Manager in laying their fraud at the feet of others. Not only did they conceal the criminal conduct of the Community Nurse and Senior Medical Officer, but they managed to create the appearance that their own fraud was the responsibility of the Clinical Director of the hospital. That fraud then handed on to the Law Centre who provided as much assistance as they could without documenting their criminal negligence, and forging of a letter from the Chief Psychiatrist.
And there are questions being asked as to why these ‘mental health professionals’ are failing our community? Given these facts, I think you should be referred for an examination by a psychiatrist for even asking the question.
And I guess we could take a vote on whether being ‘spiked’ and having Police cause an “acute stress reaction” is torture or not. Hands up those who say it isn’t……… and then be very careful about what you eat or drink in future, because the test is when it is done to you, THEN you can say that it isn’t torture.
This concealment of human rights abuses as being in the best interest of the individual is clearly ridiculous. In fact I don’t even think such ‘treatment’ of individuals is in the best interests of the community either. These people are particularly dangerous, though it is highly unlikely they will ever be held to account because they are also a valued resource for the State. people who can torture and arbitrarily detain and then ‘outcome’ anyone who complains? And the State can deny any involvement via acts of fraud and the “editing” of legal narrative and deny access to legal representations? They’d be happy with such a system in North Korea AND it seems in Australia too. The Minister holding on to the falsehood that this was all lawful. Only if you maintain the uttering with the fraud.
Report comment
“I, myself, accept the Teachings of the Quran, but I don’t accept Islam.”
“Islam is SUBMISSION to Allah. It’s not about CONTROLLING OTHER PEOPLE. It’s about CONTROLLING ONESELF.”
You will then understand the ways in which they will try and draw individuals back to ‘their’ religion? I chose not to take drugs or drink alcohol, or eat meat from the swine…. so they put it into my food of drink without my knowledge. That failing, then perhaps torture will work?
My own spiritual journey was never even discussed with the clinic psychologist, and I am unsure that even my wife was aware of what I was going through. I looked at the pictures of those people being ‘coerced’ at Abu Ghraib and found myself bringing years of self development together….. only to have it deliberately “fucking destroyed” for speaking the truth. Once again i refer back to the Book, they hate the truth.
I don’t envy them their Day. Though the States maintenance of falsehoods means I remain imprisoned, unlike Bilal who was purchased and released from his torture by his ‘Master’.
Beautiful music, it reminds me very much of the West African kora music.
Wa alaykum Salaam Dan.
Report comment
This public discussion we’re having is getting quite complex, boans.
I hope that all that were saying about theology, psychology and the “Mental Health System” is not being misinterpreted.
It’s not good for me to sit in front of my computer and comment and evaluate all this stuff too much because I have a Lumbar problem resulting from decades of taking Depakote.
However, you can feel free to email me at [email protected].
This email address is actually refers to wanting the War in Syria to quiet down.
Wa Alaikum Salaam, boans.
Be well, and feel free to drop me a line.
In addition, emails are a more flexible medium than this public dialogue because I like to create visual poetry.
Dan
Report comment
Thank you for this article.
You’re publishing this at the very time that California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing through his Care Courts legislation, special courts to subject the unhoused to involuntary psychiatric procedures and internment, and to subject them to conservatorship if they do not cooperate with a “treatment plan”.
Umberg SB-1338 is set for a Suspense Hearing tomorrow, Thursday Aug 11th, and this may be the last realistic time it could be voted down.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings#
This focus on mental health and coercion is being led by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who himself designated his 13yo daughter as scapegoat and put her into the psychiatric system and into an out of state institution.
So today at the age of 27, she believes that she has a mental illness, bipolar. And the system needs bipolar because with the way schizophrenia has been conceived, it is hard to imagine it in an adolescent.
And the system also needs autism, because with the way bipolar and schizophrenia are conceived, it is hard to imagine them in a pre-adolescent child.
And Care Courts is also being championed by State Senator and co-author Susan Eggman, whose family also designated someone as scapegoat and put her into the psychiatric system until she died while unhoused.
Steinberg has centered his entire political career on mental health and he has set up a mental health institute, headed by Thomas Insel.
Insel always explains that he is Gavin Newsom’s mental health advisor.
Insel seems to want everyone to be regulated by medication. And he has medications which produce the euphoria of sex, and he promotes LSD in the name of mental health. He also has a startup company, Mindstrong, which will have people using their cell phones to, while medicated, check in with their therapist for auditing.
As the Republican Party will move people to come to the polls by talking about crime, immigration, and abortion, the Democratic Party has learned to talk about mental health to achieve the same ends. And no one seems to know how to answer this yet, because the pitch is as that they are helping the helpless. At so at state level now, California has come very close to being a one party state.
So as advanced industrial and information technology has decimated the demand for labor, we have designated a large slice of the population as suitable for internment and drugging, turning poverty and homelessness into mental illness. And we have designated another slice as the caretakers, mental health and social workers. And as these vote, the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party and its mental health doctrine goes unchallenged.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/04/saving-lives-cementing-stigma-review-just-like-you/#comment-200024
Report comment
fascinating and important information – is there a link to the paper?
Report comment
Hi Topher. Yes there is, John Read has kindly given access to a pre-print version which can be downloaded here: https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/8qx77
Report comment
Not sure if this has had a mention on MiA but
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300503822/notorious-lake-alice-psychiatrist-dr-selwyn-leeks-dies
Dr Selwyn Leeks has died. It seems that the claim that animals don’t do what humans do to each other is not necessarily correct. Take a look at what this animal did to people. Moving from New Zealand to Australia and being allowed to continue with his “pioneering work”.
And things are certainly heading on the wrong direction.
The new and improved Mental Health Act protects shock docs form being sued for damage done to children (who can now ‘consent’ to the ‘treatments’ at 14). The State mantra being that the Mental Health Act has “added protections”, though who is actually being protected is never mentioned.
The attempt to have forced sterilisation of children without parental consent only just failed to pass the upper House (“we’ll be back”). This was to be used against chilrdren who have Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and which seems to directly correlate with the aboriginal population.
When a doctor went to police and ‘confessed’ to ending the life of a patient, they refused to accept the confession, and actually ensured they ‘dug up’ the wrong body so they could claim their was “insufficient evidence”. The newly elected government then passed Euthanasia Laws which they told us 87% of the population wanted, though I never seemed to meet any of these 87% (Solomon Asch?).
And was this not the same problem faced by the National Socialist’s when Josef Hartinger exposed the killing of two Jewish men at Dachau? The killings put on hold until they got the laws they needed to separate out the ‘joint enterprise’, and Hartingers report hidden away in a safe.
And consider that the human rights protections enshrined in our laws are being overcome by the State “editing” legal narratives in documentation before they can be examined by a persons legal representatives, thus ensuring there is NEVER a case where the State could be held to account for acts of torture, kidnappings or killing. They simply “edit” it out of existence. Asking the Attorney General if this is lawful results in a referral to mental health services for ‘treatments’. And when all roads lead to Auschwitz, well…… glad you guys seem to be aware of the history. In fact, I wonder sometimes given the attempt to have it made unlawful to make comparisons to our Euthanasia Law and what was done in Germany, if we haven’t elected representatives’ who think that this time they will get it right.
The ‘genetic counselling’ you speak of quite a ‘buzz’ field where I live. Particularly in Private Clinics where a refusal to empty your wallet can mean being ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs and waking to police with weapons ready to drag you off to a locked ward for a ‘chemical kosh’ and some electricity. No referral necessary (see the “edited” documents which can make anything possible).
I’d like to read your paper, but finding myself in the middle of the beginnings of what you describe as ‘history’, I’m afraid I don’t need the horror. Looking at current events., it seems our ‘politicians’ are using Himmler’s diary as a ‘play book’.
Report comment
After I was hospitalized in the Denver Health Inpatient Psychiatric Ward in the Spring of 2020, I told Dr. Kenneth MacIntyre of MHCD, who I had been assigned to without my consent or approval, that I felt ASHAMED of what I experienced at Denver Health.
He responded, “There’s no need to be ashamed of having a psychiatric diagnosis.”
He didn’t understand.
I felt ashamed of the ABUSE that I experienced at Denver Health.
This is exactly what Holocaust Survivors said after they had survived the Nazi Concentration Camps.
They felt ashamed of the ABUSE they experienced.
Report comment
Sadly, much of psychiatry’s diagnosis are like on-line weather forecasts; in that, you try to find out the forecast for your zip code and discover that the weather forecast is for someplace on the other side of the country. Then, you have to reset the weather forecast by finally entering your zipcode. This can, also, happen when you look up one of the many tv channels available either on cable or satellite. What I am trying to say is that psychiatry, is it is, in in step with the world as it is today; which is out of step. Psychiatry’s success actually lies in its ability to market itself. That is what makes it so difficult to defeat. If one wishes to defeat or abolish psychiatry, one must be able to basically outsmart them (not they are geniuses) and think not only out of the box, as they say, but out of the universe. Traditional legal or political stratagies will not work. Fighting them and wishing to prosecute them will only make them stronger, because it is fighting them at their level. Think of this: Psychiatry like the witch in Hansel and Gretel who lured the little children with crumbs and then threw into the boiling pot of water for her dinner. Perhaps, if we didn’t actually fight them, but offer alternative and better ways to help suffering people, we may succeed. People do and will suffer. The way to defeat psychiatry is to offer a viable way to help them realize there really is a way out and then they will not need the pacifying drugs and therapies psychiatry offers. Thank you.
Report comment
The “alternative and better ways” aren’t covered by Insurance Corporations. Being assigned a Psychiatric Diagnosis is an ECONOMIC TRAP. Through Forced Drugging, the Mental Health System makes patients DEPENDENT on Psychotropic Drugs. Then, when one tries to get off the drugs because they’re ruining one’s health, the Mental Health System won’t help the patient any more.
As long as Insurance Companies and Medicare will much of the cost of Psychotropic Drugs, but they won’t cover any other strategies to help people solve their problems, I agree with you. Psychiatry will remain powerful even if the Science behind the prescription of psychotropic drugs for various conditions is LACKING.
Psychiatry is an Economic Engine for big Pharma, and Big Pharma wants to keep America doped. They don’t care if we’re productive or constructive or if we just kill each other. Making Money is the only thing that has any meaning for them.
Report comment
Mental health = Ku klux klan.
Our nature is primarily pathological.Ilnesses or health belongs to medical empiricism. Without the idea of pathology (psyche) medical empiricism is only a form of material psychopathy with claims to medicine. Monism should reflect on the idea of the psyche. If not – health becomes one true god. And this is a cruel god without soul. Jesus, useless scientism can’t even tell what psyche is. And they are using medical empiricism. According to what? If they do not know nothing about the nature of the psyche. They are f. insane. This is not even a medicine field. This is the religion of scientism, a sect. A brainless Golem.
—————————————————————————–
James Hillman “Re-visioning psychlogy”
Report comment
Ku Klux Klan with a Liberal Veneer. When the Biden Administration speaks of “expanding mental health services”, they’re talking about expanding the number of people on psychotropic drugs. In order to withdraw from Depakote, I had to enlist the help of a Naturopath, who I pay out of pocket. If the Affordable Care Act was ruled unconstitutional, and I didn’t have to pay for health insurance, I’d have more money for holistic care. If Medicare doesn’t benefit me, does this mean that I’m a Right Winger….a Trumphead?
Of course not.
I’m just sick of all the Abuse and Deceit.
Because Dr. Joanna Moncrief’s conclusions about the ineffectiveness of Antidepressants were featured on the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News, the Liberals will try to brand anyone who questions Psychiatry as a Right Winger.
Meanwhile, more and more people are living on the streets, many of whom are addicted to opiates and opioid. Chronic pain, from what I’ve experienced, is an inevitable consequence of years of being on psychotropic drugs.
Psychotropic Drugs are really “gateway drugs” to opiates or opioids, but Psychiatry will never take any responsibility for all those people dying on the Streets.
They’ll simply label you as a “Right Winger” if you assert that the drugs they prescribe don’t actually work.
Report comment
It is also about problems with supply chains. People won’t be able to get their drugs because of the artificial crisis and Great reset. There is a movie “2030 unmasked” on Bit Chute- 1:34:31, there is a real schedule of events until 2030, there.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MbxHfhVExfKg/
Report comment
Man plans, God laughs.
I agree with a lot of what your suggesting JamesHillmandownwiththereligionofscientism. An ‘artificial’ housing crisis is being caused in my place right now. Properties acquired some time back by a select few, and then calls for “skilled migration” resulting in the immigration of skilled workers such as Uber drivers and Shopping Trolley Collectors has resulted in a deficit of housing. Upward pressure and calls for landlords to be able to put rents up on a monthly basis and evict anyone who is ‘behind’.
Hey, I’d do it if I had the resources. It’s just sour grapes on my part that I’m not one of the select few.
Thing is though, at some point one of them is going to make the ‘let them eat cake’ comment and ……… “if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight”.
And isn’t the paranoia of the people who are stripping the world of resources becoming obvious? State funded police departments being used by Private Clinics for torture and kidnappings of citizens? Yeah, okay threats from Police to peoples families means “it never happened” but ….. I saw it with my own eyes, along with the cowardly psychologist and social worker. But they are prepared to see what they are told to see.
History tells us of many occasions where people have thought they were in total control and then…….. where the Hell did those Huns come from? I wonder sometimes if these people pray that there is no God, because the consequences for them if there is are not looking good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoPopQ7V0
Report comment
.
Report comment
Thank You John Read and Jeffrey Masson,
Biological Psychiatry is still murdering “Schizophrenics”.
I nearly died several times at Galway, on the below drugs:-
THE IMPACT OF FLUPHENAZINE DECANOATE DISCONTINUATION –A RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY
From National University Ireland Galway 2021
Suicide Associated with Akathisia and Depot Fluphenazine Treatment 1983
SHEAR, M. KATHERINE MD; FRANCES, ALLEN MD; WEIDDN, PETER MD
Psychiatric Times June 18 2014
“…Patients with schizophrenia were each given 20 mg of fluphenazine, the difference between the highest and lowest blood level of the drug was 40-fold…”
When I relocated to the UK (in 1986), I asked Doctors at Galway if they would send an ADR Warning concerning Fluphenazine to the UK, and they assured me they would. But they didn’t, they misrepresented me instead.
Report comment
I would presume that if Doctor Harold Shipman (Wikipedia) had unsucessfully set up a situation whereby another one of his patients might lose their life – he would still be prosecuted. But this doesn’t seem to happen in Mental Health even though the unexpected death rate can be quite high.
Report comment
I used to have a coffee mug which said “Harold and Fred, they make women Dead” Referring to Fred West of course.
I think that in many ways Shipman was a victim of a system that didn’t protect him when he needed it most. he was unrepentant to the very end, knowing that all he needed to do to be found not guilty was to never confess.
The three elements for prosecution? Means (okay access to morphine), Opportunity (yep, they were his ‘patients’ and trusted him, but what about the motive? The ONLY way to prove that is if he confesses, and maybe he was just a really bad doctor.
So, as most know, keep your mouth shut, never go to the ‘confessional’, and you can never be held accountable ….. or so it seems.
There are of course other means of dealing with such people, and doctors particularly psychiatrists, tend to be pretty good at playing with such people the same way that a cat plays with a ‘trapped’ mouse.
“But this doesn’t seem to happen in Mental Health even though the unexpected death rate can be quite high.”
In my State they don’t keep such data, the Euthanasia Act specifically makes sure such data is not kept.
There was one situation where a number of snapped necks during ‘restraints’ were reported, and I assume someone got their wrist slapped for trying out their MMA ‘techniques’ on the ‘patients’, but were having difficulty procuring and keeping staff. So a bit of “editing” and a ‘verbal’ would ensure no one was responsible.
And even if you did slip through the net and could actually prove the crimes, there is literally no one who cares about the cover ups the government does. Police finding out “who else has the documents”, and stealing your laptop to fond out who you have been communicating with …. because the concealment and the harm done as a result of the negligence mean they can’t possibly make any admissions. They’ve already jumped into bed with the criminals, and the photos of that are kind of embarrassing. So the idea of justice? Nah, never going to happen in a system that is perverted beyond recognition.
“Australians Value a Rule of Law” Was that Rodney Rude who said that? Because it is a joke, given the State is concealing human rights abuses and denying access to legal representation under the guise of doing ‘investigations’. The Corruption watchdog is actually used to obstruct justice when it comes to certain people
Report comment
“….I think that in many ways Shipman was a victim of a system that didn’t protect him when he needed it most. ..”
What about Nurse Beverly Allitt (Wikipedia)
“…English serial child killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six.[1]..”
“…attempting to murder three other children..”
In My Case:- I Do Have The Evidence
But there have been so many people in Ireland killed on this drug (Fluphenazine) – the authorities “don’t want to get involved”.
Report comment
Nurse Beverly Allitt
Yes, I remember hearing about this case from the media.
And the ‘don’t want to get involved’ was the response from police when I turned up with the documented proof of the original offences.
Thing is that with knowledge of those original offenses, it was easy to see that the people involved might have had some concerns about Police actually doing their job (given the many years of prison for the offenses possible to prove with these documents on their own), unaware that police don’t have a copy of the Criminal Code and that the Chief Psychiatrist has rewritten the law to remove protections for the community from acts of torture and arbitrary detentions.
So I stand with a friend and explain to a Senior Constable how to ‘harvest’ morphine from another patient and then use that to tip someone over the edge and have an ‘unintended negative outcome’ A posteriori knowledge….. but he found it best that he didn’t know about that. And I guess his immediate problem was the means to ensure he didn’t take the documented proof and made a referral to mental health. He has no probable cause if he doesn’t take the documents, and then he doesn’t have to investigate the attempted ‘outcoming’ in the E.D. Nor even report it to his superiors, who would be upset about being informed when they have worked so hard to NOT see.
Sure, I get it, they let them run with their ‘little problem’ to see where they would go…… found out how they were dealing with such ‘little problems (and didn’t have the stomach for it) …… had a few harsh words with them about the ones they had already done, and told them naughty naughty, don’t do it again. Saves having to pay the compensation to the people who lost family members………. a saving to the State, and in the public interest.
Of course me turning up with the proof of the original offenses AND the ‘cover up’ after they had let them run, and ensured police neglected their duty……. what a mess Mr Hart.
So they had to ‘tip off’ the criminals to get out of Dodge, and pretend that there was nothing wrong with the Chief Psychiatrist rewriting the law and ……..the “editing” of legal narrative and ……. you know, they weren’t outcoming a lot of people for the State (and a few ‘cashies’ for Private clinics I assume).
Luckily they can pretend to be the ‘good guys’ and no one will actually check that they are doing their duty. A bit like the Feds finding out about Police corruption, and jumping into bed with them, knowing that leaves the community absolutely nowhere to go. Especially given they are denying citizens access to legal representation by claiming they are ‘investigating’ the matters….. for the next 40 years.
I’ve never heard of fluphenazine Fiachra (had to ask an Irish friend how to pronounce that, your name that is :). I’ve not had a lot to do with these drugs, which may have bothered the people who found it necessary to ‘spike’ me with them. Imagine people getting a choice where ‘mental health professionals’ are concerned?
The simple fact that you disagree with them is proof there is something wrong with you……. not unlike the Taliban really. You WILL attend Friday prayers or be whipped in public. Aren’t the Muslim population of this State going to be shocked to find out they can be ‘spiked’ with intoxicants by anyone who thinks they need to have their heads looked at. Maybe they can even force the women into wearing bikinis once they drug them without their knowledge? Use ‘coercion’ and call it ‘liberating’ them lol
I mean, what are they going to do? Complain? To people and ‘authorities’ that feign ignorance and enable human rights abuses with their gross criminal negligence? I can tell them how that works, but they prefer to think “they wouldn’t do that”, thus meaning they don’t need to even check the facts.
Honestly, I’ve seen the pictures of the place they are taking the Jews, and it looks really nice. I don’t have to go there to KNOW that. Because I trust the people telling me that.
Report comment
THE BIOLOGICAL CREATION OF “SCHIZOPHRENIA”
“Schizophrenia” is supppsed to be a long term mental illness. So how is it possible to diagnose it?
I believe a person is often considered “Schizophrenic” if they relapse as a result of stopping medication.
I “relapsed”several times and ended up in hospital, until I went back on medication, and slowly tapered – and could only then withdraw from treatment and remain well.
I also had to find a way to deal with my dreadful ‘psychiatric drug withdrawal anxiety’.
But I didn’t originally have the necessary symptoms for a “Schizophrenic Diagnosis” – the symptoms had been game played.
Most people are probably like me – they become “Schizophrenic” through co operating with psychiatric treatment.
Report comment
In My Experience:-
The approach represented in this book here:-
https://youtu.be/CqLU8nKau1M
…Works better than this Drug here:
THE IMPACT OF FLUPHENAZINE DECANOATE DISCONTINUATION –A RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY
From National University Ireland Galway 2021
Report comment
Masson is a giant in the world of investigative journalism. It is so good to hear from him again.
Report comment