The Core Error of Psychiatrists and Psychologists: Certainty about “Consensus Reality”

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“Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity.”
—Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

With the mainstream media finally reporting that “depression is not caused by low levels of serotonin,” many people ask me: Why does psychiatry repeatedly get it wrong when it comes to not only to its theories of mental illness but in so many other areas?

While drug company corruption clearly has had a harmful effect, there is a more core problem—one which exists not only in establishment psychiatry and the vast majority of psychiatrists but also among many other mental health professionals, including psychologists. This core problem is a certainty that societal and cultural “consensus realities” are in fact natural realities.

Consensus reality is the agreed upon reality by a society and community. Genuine scientists and other critical thinkers recognize that consensus reality is not synonymous with reality, and that pursuing truth and reducing unnecessary suffering means a willingness to challenge certainties and the consensus.

Macro photography of wooden blocks representing people. One red one stands among wood-colored ones.

Unless one is completely ignorant of history, one recognizes that consensus reality is often a fiction created by those atop of hierarchies to maintain the status quo and their power. Looking at U.S. history, we now see that the consensus reality of the superiority of European civilization was used to justify the genocide of Native Americans and theft of their land; that the consensus reality of superiority of the “white race” was used to justify kidnapping and enslaving Africans to steal their labor; and that the consensus reality of the inferiority of women was used to disenfranchise, disempower, and control them.

In any society, consensus reality is viewed as reality. So in previous eras, rebels who rejected the then consensus realities of the superiority of European civilization, the “white race,” and men were viewed as denying reality.

Today, the concept of “mental illness” is consensus reality, and so those who view mental illness as a paradigm that doesn’t fit the facts—not a reality—are accused by psychiatry and its apologists of denying reality. The “mental illness” individual-defect theory for our emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, however, is only one “spoke” in the current “wheel” of consensus reality.

Ignored by establishment psychiatry, many renowned thinkers have questioned the entire wheel of current consensus reality, concluding that it is an unnatural construction that has dehumanized us. Many of these prominent thinkers—such as Erich Fromm, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Lewis Mumford, Ivan Illich, and E.F. Schumacher—attempted to uncover the “hub” of this wheel. They recognized that uncovering the root of our dehumanizing society meant going beyond conventional left or right political critiques to more profound cultural reasons, which include a societal embrace of unlimited economic growth, the worship of technology and speed, a departure from human scale, and the increasing institutionalization of society.

Institutionalization refers to the establishment of large, bland, uniform, impersonal, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and coercive entities that increasingly rule our lives. The consequences of ubiquitous institutionalization are a loss of: (1) autonomy—self-direction, experience of potency, and capacity to self-govern; (2) community—strong bonds among small groups that provide for economic security and emotional satisfaction, and (3) humanity—the variety of ways of being human, the variety of satisfactions, and the variety of negative reactions to feeling controlled rather than understood.

Just as human beings need oxygen, water, and food to remain biologically alive, we need autonomy, community, and the whole of our humanity to feel that life is worth living; and emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances are natural reactions to the loss of autonomy, community, and our humanity.

One of many societal examples of institutionalization is compulsory schooling. Consensus reality would have us believe that increased compulsory schooling equals increased education, however, a critical thinker questions this certainty. While some of us may have had a school teacher who inspired learning and energized our curiosity, such teachers often find themselves alienated or fired. Such inspiring and energizing teachers don’t fit into most standardized schools, which are large, bland, uniform, impersonal, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and coercive.

If a major part of true education is inspiring and energizing us to be curious and enjoy reading, there is empirical evidence of standard schooling’s anti-educational effects. A report released by Common Sense Media in 2014 stated: “The proportion of children who are daily readers drops markedly from childhood to the tween and teenage years. One study [Scholastic, 2013] documents a drop from 48% of 6- to 8-year-olds down to 24% of 15- to 17-year-olds who are daily readers; another [National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013] shows a drop from 53% of 9-year-olds to 19% of 17-year-olds.” Reported in 2024, a Book Trust survey found that reading enjoyment declines as children progress through primary school.

Critical thinkers are willing to challenge certainties and the consensus, and they ask: “Does compulsory and coercive reading turn off children from a love of reading in the same manner that compulsory and coercive demands reduce interest in other parts of life?” If instead of asking questions about the negative effects of compulsory schooling, one accepts the consensus reality that schooling is equivalent to education, one is likely to accept the consensus reality that not paying attention in school is evidence of the mental illness called “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” If one is certain of consensus reality, one ignores the reality that many school-inattentive children pay attention perfectly well to that which is stimulating and for which they have not been coerced; but, in contrast to many teachers and mental health professionals, such children are not controlled by fear of negative consequences used to coerce attention.

To be selected into medical schools and graduate schools, one must have evidenced a high degree of compliance to previous schooling. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals—in contrast to many of the individuals they treat—are by and large more sensitive to negative consequences for not complying with authority, and thus are more compliant with authorities. These professionals are selected and socialized to accept societal consensus realities, and to see a lack of adjustment to these consensus realities as evidence of a mental illness, disorder, or some other such term for an individual defect.

The Joy of Rethinking Our Certainties

If we are a critical thinker, we know that the more we are emotionally attached to a certainty, the more likely we will not rethink it; but if we have humility, we will try to rethink our certainties, especially if we are attached to them. The rewards for critical rethinking and humility are greater knowledge, wisdom, and joy. The following is a recent personal example with respect to this article.

For the opening epigraph, I used an Erich Fromm quote from The Sane Society (page 15). I had initially considered using another more famous quote with a similar sensibility—“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” which is often attributed to the philosopher and spiritual figure Jiddu Krishnamurti. However, my writing experience tells me that it is always best to dig deeper when it comes to certainties about quotation sources, and so I did some digging.

According to the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Krishnamurti repeatedly returned to the theme expressed in this famous quote; however, “we cannot attribute these exact words to Krishnamurti,” and they report that the nearest direct quote from Krishnamurti expressing this theme is the following:

Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?

So, Krishnamurti certainly believed in the sentiment behind the famous quote routinely attributed to him; however, according the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, he never stated those exact words. The Trust speculates that the origin of this famous quote being attributed to Krishnamurti is probably the Mark Vonnegut book The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (1975), which attributes this quote to Krishnamurti without giving any source. The Trust surmises that Vonnegut “might have paraphrased or misquoted it, and it must have spread from there.”

By digging deeper, what I also learned from the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust was that Aldous Huxley was a close friend of Krishnamurti, and that Huxley has a passage in his book Brave New World Revisited (1958) that expresses the same perspective as Krishnamurti and Vonnegut:

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.

Going down the “rabbit hole” of this Huxley quote, I discovered that Mad in America editors had also discovered the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, and they reported what the Trust had said about that famous quote and Vonnegut, and they repeated the Huxley quote reported by the Trust. However, when I examined Brave New World Revisited, I discovered that the Trust did not have this Huxley quote exactly right, and that in some of this quote, Huxley is quoting Erich Fromm. So ironically, I had returned full circle to Fromm. Below is the Huxley quote with Fromm’s words in bold:

But “let us beware,” says Dr. Fromm, “of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symp­toms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.” The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been si­lenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their per­fect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted . . .

The idiom “going down the rabbit hole” refers to getting deep into something or ending up somewhere strange, and critical thinkers know that sometimes going down the rabbit hole can be a waste of time, but not always. Perhaps some readers of this article will dig deeper into Fromm, Krishnamurti, Vonnegut, or Huxley, and discover something that is amiss in this article—or just learn something new. Maybe one of us will have a chance one day to talk with Mark Vonnegut, and ask him about the source of that Krishnamurti quote. Did his father, the novelist and counterculture hero Kurt Vonnegut, ever talk with Jiddu Krishnamurti?

Summary

A handful of critically-thinking psychiatrists are well aware of the array of failures by establishment psychiatry: the invalidity of its DSM diagnostic manual; the invalidity of all of its bio-chemical theories of “mental illness; drug-company corruption; the ineffectiveness of its treatments; the severity of its treatment adverse effects; and the stigmatizing effects of its “genetic/brain disease” beliefs of the cause of severe emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances.

However, a more core error of establishment psychiatry, one shared by many other mental health professionals, is a certainty that societal and cultural “consensus realities” are in fact natural realities. This certainty is quite sad given that many prominent thinkers have questioned the sanity of societal and cultural consensus realities.

It is understandably emotionally difficult for those Mad in America readers who have been physically and psychologically harmed by the certainties of establishment psychiatry to feel sorry for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who don’t question consensus reality. However, when one recognizes that a rigid attachment to consensus reality and certainty deprives people of some of life’s great joys, one might muster up some pity for these professionals. Part of what makes life worth living is having curiosity to discover truths that are ignored or denied by consensus reality. Such curiosity energizes a joyful and empowering expansion of one’s being—an experience that professionals attached to consensus reality and certainties will not have.

***

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

34 COMMENTS

  1. Well Mark Vonnegut has been on a long journey as have others. I am thinking of Kay. Redfield Jamison Ellyn Saks, along with others. I love Erich Fromm and neither was he a saint. So there you go .
    All O can think of is the need to dialogue and the need for all of us to see we come a human civilization that has been warped in its weaving in some horrific ways but every now and then beautiful. It’s how to untangle the various layered entanglements and try to dialogue and find new patters of individual, family , community , and global interactions.
    And it’s not the emotions it’s how to learn to cope with them. Sometimes the fierceness and strength is the hardest and there are ways and ways. One old tool was tearing apart a big city phone book. Thankfully that can’t be used any more. The film Forrest Gump used bricks. Storytelling among all folks professional, allied, all employees abd those undergoing treatment might be another way . And yes used in Switzerland and other places like the Belgium city Gerl but in a small community .At this point anything type of change important.

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    • Excellent post. Thank you for drawing attention to some thought processes that have been embedded into most folks’ paradigms of what mental illness is. The “finally” moments that have in recent history been exposed as the “serotonin theory of depression” have maimed many.

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      • Maimed is a perfect descriptor.

        “Iatrogenic injuries”, as well. I learned that term from BeyondMeds and SurvivingAntiDepressants. Same with “informed consent” (which I never ever EVER gave ANY of the countless times since all the way back to 2012) and “Polydrugged”.

        Since 2012, Psychotropic Pharmaceuticals haven’t increased my quality of life whatsoever. They’ve done the exact opposite vis-a-vis side-effects and CREATING a chemical imbalance in my brain, nervous system, endocrine system, digestive system, etc.

        My “depression” and “anxiety” was 100% environmental due to modern-day society and inadequate parenting from generational trauma.

        I’ll be spending the last 1.5 years of my 30’s and probably my early 40’s getting off of all of this nonsense garbage. It’s not “treating” anything and has always wrecked havoc on my safety, wellness, health, quality of life, etc.

        ***Once again, I want to re-state the term “informed consent”.*** If a walk-in clinic doctor even gave the slightest of damns, he would’ve informed me about side-effects, withdrawal/discontinuation “when my life was going better”, etc. There’s a reason they always start getting coy and change body language when you start talking about side-effects, iatrogenic injuries, withdrawal/discontinuation (both acute and protracted/long-term, etc). In any other industry besides Psychotropic Pharmaceuticals, it’d be a legitimate liability, malpractice, and quite-frankly lawsuit.

        The relentless and intense medical gas-lighting we experience about side-effects and withdrawal/discontinuation is keeping the Counselling Industry alive as well.

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  2. I’d like to know the point of feeling pity towards psy professionals who think they know everything yet have no problem ruining things for the rest of us.

    Consensus reality suits them just fine, which is why most psy professionals have little to no problem with it. Why should they when the odds are stacked in their favor? Life as it is floats their boat.

    I do in a way feel sorry for people who think they know everything, but I’d rather save my compassion for those who truly deserve it.

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  5. Good afternoon – this is your conductor speaking. I think the concept of consensus reality is being deployed too late, because there is no consensus reality anymore, unless you call the recognition that absolutely everything in global reality is breaking down, becoming more and more desperately dysfunctional with many precipices looming. Perhaps you could call this a rare thing on which we can all agree but there is no social consensus even among the most basic things.

    Having said that, although there is no consensus, there is an almost universal human drive that forms the core of our egoic social consciousness, and this is the drive to be secure. Obviously in a world as insane, untruthful and destructive as this one, the drive to be secure can only ever be the source of conflict and insecurity, or else illusion, as one of our favoured means of gaining security is through comforting illusions. From a rational point of view this seems perfectly absurd, but illusions provide the organism with an illusory security which does allow the organism to conduct it’s operations with some confidence, and we have to expose the underlying mechanism through perception in order to understand and become free of it, because in silent awareness of the phenomena there is total comprehension, which happens only when perception is unpolluted and undistracted by thought. One can see that there is a feeling of insecurity within consciousness that is effecting the body. There are futile efforts to think the discomfort away, and then an energy, through the brain, offers a solution. “You’re looking great tonight” the brain says to the body. “A drink and some music and you’ll be the life and soul of the party” which are mere mental tricks to delude the body into a false sense of security. All your beliefs work like that. By definition they are non-facts, and stupify the mind and all our words and communications when we take our beliefs or opinions or conclusions to be the facts. It is a primitive and embarressing but entirely normal and ubiquitous thing for someone with clear eyes to see someone getting angry because their opinion is contradicted. We live in a social reality where all opinions contradict and you regularly get angry everytime you experience this contradiction. The anger serves no purpose in action, and so expresses itself internally as a feeling one may in our ignorance describe as toxic, or dysphoric, or nasty at any rate. It makes you feel toxic, and you notice that. And then you see how thought purpetuates and nourishes this discontent, and thereby is turning a one off emotional reaction into a permanent repetative feature of the reactions of the body and mind which means inviting more such incidents etc etc etc. As the Buddha said, “being angry at someone is like drinking poison and expecting that other person to die”. Now, if the brain observes this fact in reality and understands it completely, it will drop the habit of getting angry. And getting angry because of someone disagreeing with your opinion is beneath the dignity of a human being and is too sad and embarresing for intelligent adults bare it without pointing out this truth. I’m sorry if it offends you but it is far better for you to understand this fact rather then let it hamper your life and drain your energy as part of a large repetitive structure of indignities, sufferings and embarressment. Sorry – I fell asleep while writing and I really can’t remember what I said. if I try and re-read I’ll fall asleep again. I hope I don’t say rude words like bums or fannies or willies. Have a nice day.

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  6. ” … a more core error of establishment psychiatry, one shared by many other mental health professionals, is a certainty that societal and cultural ‘consensus realities’ are in fact natural realities. This certainty is quite sad given that many prominent thinkers have questioned the sanity of societal and cultural consensus realities.”

    Yes, those of us who had all distress caused by the distressing 9/11/01 event, blamed upon a “chemical imbalance” in my brain alone … one who knows that was insane … but I also know we do have bad systems / corporations in control of our society … and have for too many decades, if not centuries, or millennium.

    “Part of what makes life worth living is having curiosity to discover truths that are ignored or denied by consensus reality. Such curiosity energizes a joyful and empowering expansion of one’s being ….” I agree, being an open minded, never ending researcher and learner, is a wonderful way to live one’s life … and work oneself (and hopefully all others) towards wisdom.

    Thank you, as always, for your truthful reporting, Bruce.

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  8. It ain’t acceptabiddle piddle clanidal spliddle cliddle. It’s not nearly OK, my grey miserable face only changes on a pay day. It really is not on, profitable grift. ruin others kids, fatten my own, all gone wrong, giggly swans chocke on plastic sporrans. I won’t go mad. I’m just your perfect mirror. The term Mad in America is non-informative. You can speak of Sane in America and then file it under pop fiction. Mad in the UK doesn’t really work either. Even the mad here are mostly not mad enough to believe it was their brain rather then this bullshit society that scrambled their lives and consciousness. Oh yes, all Mother Nature’s fault, nothing to do with the conveyor belt of police backed ideologues running the mad house of this society before getting kicked out within a couple of years or months for doing an appalling job. People diagnosed schizophrenic in the UK are generally very well informed about life, and probably only talk about planets and aliens as a mode of escapism into a curious dimension of one’s own consciousness. People who still pass themselves off as sane believe Donald Trump is the second coming and even Hillary Clinton too is having demonic organisms under the table, a fable clearly too implausible to be credible. No matter how practiced her ‘sweet smile’ face is you can still smell these volatile acids and ketone coming out of her mouth so severe it is liable to be a public hazard. However, I can no longer remember the question or the answer. Hooray!

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  9. The Krishnamurti foundation are absolutely wrong. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” is 100% a direct quote. I have watched the video of the talk where he says it several times. Though I do not remember specifically which video it is so I cannot prove it. But if you were to search hard enough then you would find it.

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  10. Wow- this essay I read numerous times and saved.

    I understand the reaction to being asked to sympathize with the circumstances of these “professionals” who have harmed us so deeply. So I am going to use a bit of sarcasm and the profession’s own terminology to rephrase.

    Patient insight : Nil
    Psychological rigidity has left patient in an early developmental state unable to reach full maturation with separation individuation leading to delusions of grandeur. Patient is unable to recognize the damage their resulting behavior has on others and lacks empathy. Multiple therapeutic interventions have been implemented.
    Prognosis: Poor

    (Pitiable? Yes, maybe, but extremely dangerous individuals, capable of horrific abuse—avoid at all costs.)

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  11. Bruce is once again spot on in naming the problems that beset psychiatry and mental health care in general. But it seems to me that the issue (crisis) with consensus reality extends throughout our world, specifically through the narratives of power that largely comprise and inform consensus reality. The internet and social media have shredded the dominion of power narratives that have historically-at least since around 1600-largely informed consensus reality. And as Hegel said, “If reality and power do not comport, so much the worse for reality”. And as Chomsky said, “If what you have to say does not support the interest of those in power, what you say cannot be heard”. Or, as Stokely Carmichael was fond of saying, “Power is the ability to define”; and psychiatry is and always has been in the business of defining, far, far more than it is in the business of helping people, or even ‘honorably’ investing in the “art and science” of how they might better do so…

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  12. I appreciate the general idea behind this article but the meaning of “consensus reality” is a little obscure. I’d say based on this article the term could mean something like a realm of ideas, perceptions and opinions which is constantly being built by the participation of all persons who can share their ideas. if so, “mad” persons are really an oppressed minority and they are oppressed by the whole of humanity. they see the truth and the majority does not. this is the sense I got from the article. But I don’t agree with that definition. The term “consensus reality” is really the dominant world view. And the dominant world view is a political concept because societal conflicts and struggles extend to the realm of ideas. they start on earth but continue on heavens. A term like “consensus reality” is an idealistic concept with no definite content.

    “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”

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    • Yes, in many cases it is a forced “consensus.”
      For example, there is a consensus in America that heaven is real. But that is not the “consensus reality” among college-educated professionals.
      The arguments against reincarnation have been quite effective world-wide, however. And reincarnation is a basic reality of life on Earth.

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  13. I’ve often used the term “consensus reality” myself, but it always feels slightly off, I prefer ” prescribed” reality. I think many people who seem to consent or “agree” to prescribed reality , may not truly be consenting, because their agreement was come to via coercion, even if they don’t remember how they were coerced as children.
    As far as ” reality” ( esp. in singular form)its self, I don’t know what that is, I know what existence is, what experience is.
    I’ve been locked up , restrained and drugged countless times because my “experience of reality” is considered abnormal and therefore defective , making me supposedly ” mentally ill”, from which I conclude that only certain ways of experiencing reality are acceptable in society. That said, I don’t think it much matters if one truly “experiences” so-called reality in the “accepted” ways, but rather that one claims to experience it like that or at least agrees to follow the rules attached to the accepted experience of reality. I can avoid being locked up and drugged against my will even if I experience reality in a so-called defective way, as long as I keep that to myself and pretend that I am experiencing it the “correct” way…over time I learned the rules, so I could do that for periods if time. However, there always comes a time that I am burnt out, exhausted of this pretending and silencing my true experiences and what’s more, I eventually lose sense of what the point is in doing so…sure, if I keep pretending, I get to not be locked up and drugged and “agree” that is “freedom”, but it is not ” freedom” , because I am shackled, restrained, constrained in how I can express myself regarding how I experience ” realities” or existence.
    I’ve met many psychiatrists and psychologists, most of whom at some point locked me up and drugged me against my will, usually out of “care” or ” concern”, sadly not for me, but for themselves, they just didn’t seem to know that. I don’t feel sorry for them, they have a choice and they choose to quash their fears by oppressing others. Of course, there are some who choose to not oppress and coerce people and still have the title “psychiatrist”, which is bizarre, as if they don’t know what the title ” psychiatrist” represents.

    I often, out of principle, resisted going along with what I was told I needed to do, in order to be released from the psych ward:” just say you experience/ perceive/ feel like this, not the way you actually do and you can leave”… I refused, and I refused to take the pills, knowing it meant I would be put in 4 point restraints and get an injection. I ran away from staff chasing me, holding syringes on locked psych wards, knowing they would ultimately get me, tie me down and jab me…these psych ward staff would plead with me: ” just stop, you know you’re only making it worse for yourself”…little did they know that “complying” would be far worse for me, what is the point of existing if I can’t exist as I am? That’s worse than death.

    At some point I became a parent and was expected to coerce/ threaten my child into complying with the prescribed reality, I failed to do so, I did the “bad” parenting thing of loving, accepting and respecting my child for who they are, for their true experiences….society punished my child with an ADHD diagnosis and schools attempting to whip my child into shape, it didn’t work. I was blamed because I didn’ t hold them down and force ADHD meds and anti depressants into my 9 year old. It’s hard, they are depressed, a misfit to this society as well, they are a young adult now and in spite of how hard it is, they prefer this over not knowing their true experience, over not being genuine, saying it’s better to know now than realizing it after years or decades.
    I live in Spain now and see a psychiatrist every month, he doesn’t coerce me, he just listens to me when I tell him honestly what my experiences are, without threatening to lock me up, the opposite of what happened time and time again to me in California. I think the value of my current psychiatrist is, because he has decades experience listening to people who like me are labeled “psychotic/ schizophrenic “, he doesn’t react with panic when hearing things that initially might sound “dangerous”, he calmly keeps listening, long enough to see the bigger picture …he is the only person I can can tell my true , sometimes “scary/ dangerous” perceptions/ thoughts/ feelings to..family and friends would freak out.

    Anyways, that’s my tangent 😉

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  14. There can’t be many of us left that witnesses the care of the mentally ill back in the 1950ies. As a student nurse the horrors I encountered remain with me to this day. Somehow we knew back then the institution had some thing amiss. Sixty odd years later consensus still holds back the knowledge of how unique each individual is. Today if one is not willing to pop that pill then what is the first step in recovery? Lobotomy and pill have much in common.

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  15. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC381240/

    In studying at Waterloo was able to have many conversations with Kio Izumi who studied with Humphry Osmond. Izumi was schooled in Architecture and in working with Osmond, would ingest a small amount of LSD trying to understand how in madness space is processed. For Osmond to have induced Huxley into trying the new pharma, seems to challenge the boundaries and ethics of “science” without really understanding the nature of consensus within the infinite artistry of “The Gifts” within. How do realize truth and justice moving fwd when to date, there seems to be a certain denial occurring in the nature of a law abiding society and nation state. Great Insights! Readers might wish to explore Osmond’s Book, Predicting the Past.

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  16. In the mental health field, “consensus reality” is centered on the idea that there is a real, qualitative difference between “normal” and “abnormal” behavior. In effect, normal is good and to be tolerated and abnormal is bad and must be eradicated. The mental health field is therefore based on intolerance that is supported by the use of force and violence.

    The myth underlying the normal/abnormal distinction is that the differences are biological in origin and equivalent to “healthy” and “ill.”

    The DSM and its many editions attempt to lay out definitions of what is “abnormal” and to pretend these “disorders” are illnesses to be eradicated.

    But if they refer to anything at all, the terms normal and abnormal refer to social norms and values, that is, to what Dr. Levine calls here “consensus reality.”

    The entire mental health field is akin to the shadows that Plato’s cave dwellers assume to be “reality.” Plato makes it clear in his “allegory of the cave” that any individual who escapes their bonds and sees reality unfettered will be considered a dangerous madman and will not be believed by those who see only the shadows.

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    • Your comment further resonated with me upon reading this passage, this morning, from Steven Bartlett’s book, The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil: “Freud suggested that primitive man’s animistic projections onto his outer world may be similar to the overvaluation of private psychical phenomena characteristic of neurotics, who exhibit a strong preference for their own internal world over an external, shared world. Freud did not, however, take the obvious next step, compatible with his outlook, to ask explicitly whether both religion and science involve similar types of “overvaluation”—in the one case, overvaluing internal wishes by projecting them into religious dogma, and in the other case, overvaluing human interests by projecting them into the goals of human science. For in all three cases—in animism, in religion, and in science— we encounter an all-too-human tendency to propound conceptions of an external world that conforms to human wishes. In this sense, overvaluation, projection, and homocentrism go hand-in-hand’.

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      • The thing is, it barely matters whether or not these projections are based on human wishes: these projections are always representations, and representations are not facts. So all words and thoughts, if understood as somehow corresponding to reality itself, are delusional. Simple awareness of what is as it is is the only activity of the human mind that has truth, because awareness doesn’t label or say anything at all, hence is beyond all error. If there is illusion in the mind it shows that illusion faithfully and honestly, whereas any interpretation of the illusion is also illusion. It’s the most simple thing yet the most subtle and difficult thing for thought itself to grasp. Perception can grasp it easily, but thought can never find it because thought is a dimension in words, whereas ‘what is’ is what actually is in perception.

        As soon as thought or the mouth starts chewing over something perceived that activity is to be understood as the brain reconciling it’s conceptual architecture, i.e. this is thinking as the ‘reconciliation of effects’ as Jiddu Krishnamurti said, and only seeing and understanding this fact makes the activity non-delusional. If we think our thinking about reality is actually, in some way, thinking with real facts, is in some way exploring reality itself, then there is the fundamental pathological delusion that puts all other subcategories of illusion and delusion in their place. They are essentially supericial consequences of the root delusion which no Western intellectual has ever become free of, because the intellect IS this system of representations that becomes a system of delusions once we believe what it contains is somehow factual. The facts are always beyond words and in perception. Perception of what actually is is the only fact, and words should convey this fact as an artist describes a scene. You can even see mathematics as an artistic description of reality, for I’ve never seen an actual one or two in the natural world. I’ve only seen them coming out of the human brain as representations of the natural world – the only difference is that the system of representation called mathematics has fastidious and complex rules.

        Say something else brain! Caterpillars on tight ropes get eaten by the birds. Wow! But I detect a flaw in your argument. Caterpilas on tight ropes won’t get eaten by birds in Antarctica or on the moon. We should argue like this more often Brain because then we’ll both be clever. But you have to tell them who YOU are, the one talking to the brain. I’m the animal body or the nature spirits or the infinite Universe or whatever you call it. Oh. So is everything so this statement is non-informative, brain. Actually it is informative to all those who don’t realize the fact, obviously! Hang on a minute – are you sure you’re the brain and not the energy within it? I’m the energy expressing itself through the brain obviously, but it’s the only way you ever encounter the brain. Right. I wish I could telepathically get up and find a drink and something to smoke. Was that the brain? No comment.

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  17. Good summary of the madness that drives us all, Bruce. Some further reading that maybe of some interest to some is Polanyi’s thesis that economics has escaped the confines of society’s morals or ethics, and is now dominating global thinking calling the shots on everything. Karl Polanyi was an economist; and you can find many debating his ideas as to how this is driving us all crazy. You may also find some interest in Darcia Narvaez work which claims that we have been hunter-gatherers for 99% of the time of the last 1.9 million years, and so the hunter-gatherer is the way of life that we are genetically programmed to attune to, and we must set our “nest” to this if we are to raise healthy people.

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  18. The points expressed here are valid, but I believe weak.
    This is partly because some of the most basic “consensus realities” that affect mental well-being are still agreed to by almost all involved, on both sides of these arguments.
    Thus, some see the whole Critical Theory movement as a step forward (because it questions many of those consensus realities as mentioned here), while I see it as an intellectual distraction because it does not reach down far enough.
    Add another social commentator to the list of people who have spoken to the problem of retaining your sanity in a society that isn’t really that sane: L. Ron Hubbard. And it is Hubbard’s findings (though many of them already existed as religious beliefs) that continue to be ignored in this discussion. His therapies, based on these findings, are working for people who can afford the time and treasure to participate. They could be much more widely applied. They should AT LEAST be much more widely discussed. And don’t tell me about how “secret” they are; you can learn about many of them on the internet for free.

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