Many people from very different groups do not like establishment psychiatry. Some of them are my friends, however, some of them belong to authoritarian groups that I dislike as much as I dislike establishment psychiatry.
Who are enemies of establishment psychiatry that are not my friends? What kind of dealings—if any—does it make sense to have with them? What has been my personal experience?
The Authoritarian Enemy of an Authoritarian Enemy Is Not My Friend
Throughout history, authoritarian individuals and tyrannical institutions have opposed other authoritarian individuals and tyrannical institutions, sometimes defeating them, and then becoming as or even more harmful than what has been deposed. Ask the revolutionary Thomas Paine, a fierce opponent of monarchy and a proponent of democracy, how good a deal it was for him when Robespierre and the Reign of Terror replaced the French monarchy and threw Paine in prison with only luck saving him from the guillotine. Ask libertarian-socialist/anarchist Emma Goldman, deported by the U.S. government to Russia for speaking out against World War I and the draft, how good a deal it was for her when the anarchist-hating Bolsheviks defeated the Czar, and then how good of a deal it was when the mass-murderer Stalin seized power. Ask Tecumseh and Native Americans to this day how good of a deal it was for them when the British Crown was defeated by its rebellious colonies that then stole even more Native land.
I dislike establishment psychiatry because I judge it to be an illegitimate authority— not only scientifically so but also morally and politically. I dislike it for the damage it does by its bigoted pathologizing of human differences. I dislike it for its unscientific labeling of certain behaviors as symptoms of illnesses rather than recognizing these actions as normal human reactions. I dislike it for classifying human reactions that create tension—especially for authorities—as defective in some biological way, and for then exploiting this manufactured defectiveness by prescribing drugs and other remedies that routinely have serious adverse effects; and I dislike it for its financial partnering with drug companies. Politically, I dislike establishment psychiatry because the normal human reactions that it pathologizes are often the result of individuals feeling alienated from their surroundings, and its pathologizing of these reactions maintains a dehumanizing society—one that alienates us from our humanity and from one another.
There are, however, other people who dislike establishment psychiatry for very different reasons than I dislike it. They dislike psychiatry because it is a competitor to their authoritarian ideology and institutions. Such people would like to abolish psychiatry and replace it with their idea of what human differences they deem inferior and what human reactions they deem as defective; and they would like to replace psychiatric treatments with their own coercive remedies.
When I first began my psychology schooling, behaviorist psychologists such as B.F. Skinner with their reinforcements, punishments, reward schedules, and other manipulations were an authoritarian rival of establishment psychiatry. Many authoritarian institutions in society—for example, standard schools and prisons—that value the coercive function of establishment psychiatry also see value in the coercive craft of behaviorists. Currently, there is no real conflict or competition between establishment psychiatry and establishment psychology; the two have forged a mutually beneficial truce, with both institutions helping each other make money and gain prestige, and with neither disparaging the “treatments” of the other.
There remain, however, competitor powerful authoritarian religious institutions and authoritarian political groups that oppose establishment psychiatry. While different authoritarian groups may have very different dogma and authorities, all authoritarian groups see hierarchy and coercion as natural and necessary. All authoritarians abhor the tension created by human differences—disagreeing only in which human differences are most tension-producing. And all authoritarian subordinates will give power to authorities that they believe will erase those differences and eliminate tension. An authoritarian society and authoritarian individuals will reward not just psychiatry but any institution that promises to reduce this tension.
The current era is one in which U.S. society has become increasingly authoritarian, with an increasing number of people wanting to control and erase people who are different from them. Authoritarian eras are fueled by heightened fear, including financial fears and other perceived threats that create insecurity. Authoritarians attempt to exploit that fear by scapegoating individuals and groups who are different from the group they are appealing to. Rival authoritarian groups focus on different human differences, have different scapegoats, and seek the erasure of different types of people.
What Enemy of Psychiatry Today Poses the Greatest Threat to It?
In the current authoritarian era, establishment psychiatry’s major existential anxiety is not—as it was in the more anti-authoritarian 1960s and early 1970s—that it will be abolished in favor of anti-authoritarians, mutual aid, love, and non-coercive ways that humans help other suffering humans. Rather, establishment psychiatry’s major existential threat is that it will be replaced by a competitor authoritarian institution.
While authoritarian establishment psychiatry is certainly annoyed by anti-authoritarian critical thinkers, such as those in the Mad in America orbit, for challenging its authority and that of its Big Pharma profiteering ally, establishment psychiatry recognizes that such anti-authoritarian critics lack significant financial or political power to replace it. Thus, establishment psychiatry most fears competitor authoritarian institutions that do have significant financial and political power.
Through the 1970s, in a more anti-authoritarian era, the critically-thinking anti-authoritarian left did pose a significant threat to establishment psychiatry. There were prominent anti-authoritarian critics with best-selling books, including democratic-socialist Erich Fromm who said, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man. The specialists in this field tell you what the ‘normal’ person is, and, correspondingly, what is wrong with you; they devise the methods to help you adjust, be happy, be normal.”
In the early 1970s, the anti-authoritarian left was so significant in U.S. society that psychiatrist Loren Mosher could become the chief of the Center for Schizophrenia Research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and launch an anti-authoritarian approach for people diagnosed with schizophrenia called Soteria. The Soteria staff was comprised of non-professionals who, Mosher reported, were “selected and trained to relate to and understand madness without preconceptions, labels, categories, judgments of the need ‘to do’ anything to change, control, suppress or invalidate the experience of psychosis.” The two-year follow-up results showed that Soteria participants had superior outcomes (including independent living status) as compared to a control group who had received standard psychiatric treatment. Soteria results, produced by a non-professional staff and by significantly limiting psychiatric drugs, embarrassed establishment psychiatry. However, by 1980, U.S. society had become increasingly authoritarian, and Mosher was fired from his position and funds were cut off from Soteria.
Beginning in the 1980s, establishment psychiatry, seeking to retain its power, began to heavily ally with drug companies who profit from its treatments. Another hugely important ally for establishment psychiatry is the faux-left mainstream media which accepts establishment psychiatry’s dogma and also profits from Big Pharma advertising. An important member of the faux-left mainstream media (though not the only member) is the New York Times (see my CounterPunch articles that debunk New York Times coverage of Inner Compass Initiative in 2025; STAR*D in 2024; and its antidepressant claims in 2022). This faux-left is in no way the same as the anti-authoritarian left that has long been a critic of establishment psychiatry.
After the anti-authoritarian left lost its prominence within the general public, effectively marginalized by the ruling class and its mainstream media, the most prominent critic of psychiatry for much of the general public—owing to the mainstream media—became the Church of Scientology. This was a huge political win for establishment psychiatry. “Thanks to Scientology,” Robert Whitaker concluded in Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), “the powers that be in psychiatry had the perfect storytelling foil, for they could now publicly dismiss criticism of the medical model and psychiatric drugs with a wave of the hand, deriding it as nonsense that arose from people who were members of a deeply unpopular cult, rather than criticism that arose from their own research.”
Establishment psychiatry’s major tactic to discredit all of its critics was to falsely associate them with Scientology. Attempting to counter this in 2008, I published an article in the Huffington Post (now called the HuffPost) titled “Thinking Critically About Scientology, Psychiatry, and Their Feud” in which I describe the similarities between establishment psychiatry and Scientology. True then and now, the teachings of Scientology’s creator (L. Ron Hubbard) and the teachings of the American Psychiatric Association (including its DSM diagnostic manual) are mere jargon and dogma that have nothing to do with science. Both Scientology and psychiatry embrace techno-babble that poses as scientific fact. In Scientology’s “auditing,” the claim is that its Electropsychometer (E-Meter) can assess the reactive mind of the preclear by passing a small amount of voltage through a pair of tin-plated tubes that look like empty soup cans which are wired to the E-Meter and held by the preclear. Psychiatry is no more scientific, as its biological theories of mental illness are repeatedly rejected in scientific analyses, after which psychiatry replaces them with other unscientific bio-babble theories. The authoritarian nature of both Scientology and establishment psychiatry is readily apparent in how harshly they both deal with ex-insiders who come to reject them.
The association of criticism of establishment psychiatry with Scientology by the mainstream media has continued. This is exemplified by the faux-left Rolling Stone’s 2022 hatchet job (see my summary) of establishment psychiatry critic Joanna Moncrieff following her widely publicized systematic review of the research that debunked the serotonin imbalance theory of depression. Disregarding the fact that Moncrieff has nothing to do with Scientology, Rolling Stone stated: “Moncrieff’s work is frequently promoted by an organization called Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which touts itself as a ‘mental health industry watchdog’ and was established by the Church of Scientology, which is virulently opposed to psychiatry and medical interventions for mental illness.”
Today, establishment psychiatry’s most powerful enemy is not Scientology but the current right-wing coalition that has gained power in the United States (and several other nations in the world). Thus, the Rolling Stone hatchet job of Moncrieff was titled “Who Is the Psychiatrist Behind the Antidepressant Study Taking Over Right-Wing Media? In the article, Rolling Stone specifically includes the prominent right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, who has become a highly visible critic of psychiatry. Rolling Stone knew full well that Carlson has long been an inflammatory figure for both faux-left Rolling Stone readers and the anti-authoritarian left, with Jon Stewart famously calling Carlson a “dick” on a show co-hosted by Carlson in 2004. Since 2004, Carlson has moved away from his pro-war neoconservative views to the “alt-right” camp, and the Guardian reported in 2018: “A growing number of companies have said they will stop advertising on Tucker Carlson Tonight or are re-evaluating their ad buys after a segment last week in which he said immigrants make America ‘poorer and dirtier’. . . . Carlson railed against the idea of diversity, questioning how it could be seen as a positive.”
The political right is filled with many different groups, and not all of them are enemies of establishment psychiatry. However, the right-wing coalition that is currently in power is an enemy of psychiatry. The right-wing coalition in power today includes opponents to gun control, the alt-right, and the religious right.
Opponents to gun control, including the gun industry, are well aware that the U.S. general public have gotten increasingly enraged by mass shootings. So gun control opponents are looking for anything that they can blame for increasing mass shootings other than guns and bullets, and the fact that psychiatric drugs can increase the possibility of violence is a great distraction from the larger reality of how a lack of any meaningful gun control is a far greater cause of this mayhem.
The alt-right, in contrast to its right-wing neoconservative adversary, claims to oppose free trade and “never-ending wars” (and so alt-right leaders such as Carlson and Steve Bannon opposed Trump’s bombing Iran). The alt-right claims to be a fierce proponent of American nationalism, while at the same time admiring nationalist authoritarian dictators from other nations, especially if they are white (such as Putin in Russia and Orban in Hungary). And a major part of the alt-right agenda includes mass deportations, with some in this alt-right camp fear-mongering a “great replacement theory” in which nonwhite people replace white people.
Why would Rolling Stone make sure to include Scientology and Tucker Carlson in an article about Joanna Moncrieff even though she has made it clear repeatedly that she is no Scientologist, no right winger, and no fan of Carlson? The answer is obvious: an attempt to marginalize her criticism of establishment psychiatry by associating it with institutions and an individual that most Rolling Stone readers are repulsed by.
Another hugely important component of the current right-wing coalition in power is the religious right, many of whom are also opponents of establishment psychiatry. One example is John MacArthur, whose name and opposition to psychiatry became known to me only through strange circumstances (that I will later discuss). MacArthur is a pastor, host of a national Christian radio and television program, author and editor of more than 150 books, with his MacArthur Study Bible selling more than one million copies, and he has been acknowledged by Christianity Today as one of the “top 25 most influential preachers.” MacArthur is not simply a critic of psychiatry but a critic of same-sex marriage, the ordination of women, the Roman Catholic Church, and the social justice movement. He has asserted “no one is gay” as “God didn’t hardwire anybody” to be gay any more than he hardwires individuals to be adulterers or bank robbers, comparing the assertion that sexual orientation is a born trait to a hypothetical bank robber’s protestation, stating, “That’s like saying, ‘You know, I keep robbing banks, but I’m a robber. I’m a bank robber. What am I gonna do? I’m a bank robber.’ That is not an excuse for what you do.”
In the 1970s, the anti-authoritarian left, led by gay activists, defeated the illness bigotry against homosexuality promulgated by the authoritarian American Psychiatric Association; this defeat initiated the process of removing homosexuality from the APA’s DSM. However, today, the authoritarian religious right attempts to restore a sin bigotry status to homosexuality.
The current right-wing coalition in power knows full well the great animosity that many Americans have for both psychiatry and its Big Pharma partner, and they are always seeking to enlarge their coalition to increase their power. The billionaires who fund this coalition care mostly about winning elections so they can have the power to eliminate taxes for themselves, eliminate environmental and other regulations which cost them money, and reap government contracts.
Dealings—If Any—With Enemies of Psychiatry Who Are Not Friends?
When psychiatry critics enter the public discourse, including media interviews, they may well discover that they have entered a minefield. While the goal is to get the word out to the general public about psychiatry’s lack of science in its DSM and chemical imbalance theories of mental illness, the ineffectiveness and adverse effects of its bio-chemical-electrical treatments, and its other false claims, it is difficult not make honest mistakes in decision making as to how to navigate this media terrain.
Much of the mainstream media are faux-left psychiatry apologists who will ignore psychiatry critics or do hatchet jobs on them. This compels some psychiatry critics, even those who have previously self-identified as “liberal,” into the welcoming arms of the right-wing media. My experience is that much of the right-wing media care only about having controversial guests to drive up their ratings, but some also aim to exploit psychiatry critics for their own political agenda. In any case, those right-wing podcasters and broadcasters with large followings can be quite charming and “love-bombing”—and more than one psychiatry critic has been seduced into joining with them not simply in psychiatry criticism but in other ways they come to regret.
Historically, some of the most astute critics of establishment psychiatry have not had that same astute thinking when it comes to the minefield of public discourse. One of the most brilliant critical thinkers when it comes to establishment psychiatry was Thomas Szasz, author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), but his political decisions are a cautionary tale.
In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) to oppose involuntary psychiatric treatments, and Szasz served on CCHR’s Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner. Szasz made clear that “I don’t believe in Scientology. . . . I no more believe in their religion or their beliefs than I believe in the beliefs of any other religion.” Szasz’s libertarian political judgment for his involvement with CCHR was that it was the only organization that had money and access to lawyers and was, he recounted, “trying to free mental patients who were incarcerated in mental hospitals with whom there was nothing wrong, who had committed no crimes, who wanted to get out of the hospital. And that to me was a very worthwhile cause.”
Szasz’s thinking neglected the political consequences of his association with a pseudoscientific and secretive institution with a reputation for financially exploiting members and retaliating against former members who speak out against it. Establishment psychiatry and its allies used Szasz’s association with Scientology to not only discredit Szasz, but because he was the most well-known critic of psychiatry, to also discredit all criticism of psychiatry. A more politically astute thinker would have recognized that while Scientology had financially backed a few winning anti-coercion skirmishes, its presence as the most visible opponent of psychiatry was a great political benefit to establishment psychiatry.
To be clear, all of us—including myself—who have written extensively about establishment psychiatry and have engaged in public discourse are vulnerable to errors in judgment that include naivety around the political agenda of interviewers, not predicting the embarrassing career direction of an interviewer, and simply being involuntarily used.
What do I mean by “involuntarily used”? This is how I discovered the religious-right opponent of psychiatry John MacArthur. In the spring of 2024, my publisher AK Press and I noticed a huge bump in sales for my 2022 book A Profession Without Reason, which employed the philosopher Spinoza as a lens and foil to critique psychiatry We discovered that the Christian Post had run stories in which MacArthur positively referenced A Profession Without Reason along with Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness; and MacArthur’s psychiatry criticism created a buzz in other evangelical Christian sites on the Internet.
MacArthur talked about my book’s chapter questioning whether the so-called “noble lies” of psychiatry (including its falsehoods about the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness and the scientific validity of its diagnoses) were in fact noble. However, he hypocritically neglected the chapter on “Two Bibles” about how Spinoza’s critique of the Bible as not being the literal word of God parallels the critique of psychiatry’s DSM diagnostic bible not being a scientific truth. Spinoza had challenged the idea of the Bible being the literal word of God because he knew that this idea provided clergy interpreters of the Bible with the power to subvert free speech and democracy; and my point was that psychiatry’s falsehood of its DSM bible as the word of science gives its psychiatrist interpreters power to control and damage its patients and society. This parallel was ignored by MacArthur, who believes the Bible is the literal word of God; and MacArthur who also conveniently ignored the reality that Thomas Szasz, while routinely calling psychiatry a religion also made clear that he didn’t believe in any religion, including Christianity.
I have found that one of the most difficult areas to navigate is discerning between self-identified libertarians who oppose all coercion including that of psychiatry, versus those self-identified libertarians who oppose psychiatric coercions but hypocritically support other coercions.
Following the 2008-2009 bank bailouts by both Republican and Democrat administrations, and both parties’ support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, there were a variety of movements that rose up to oppose these Republican-Democrat policies, with some leftists calling themselves libertarian-socialists or anarchists and joining the Occupy movement, while those on the right calling themselves libertarians or anarcho-capitalists and joining the Tea Party movement. In Truthout in 2011, I wrote about how Ralph Nader, the former Green Party presidential candidate and anti-corporatist, and Ron Paul, former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, had discussed forming a coalition on those issues they agreed on, quoting Nader saying, “To the extent that they are genuine libertarian conservatives and not corporatists—corporatists believe in corporate government—they are great allies with many liberals and progressives to challenge the bloated, wasteful military budget, to challenge undeclared wars overseas, to challenge hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, to challenge the invasiveness of our civil liberties and civil rights by the notorious PATRIOT Act, to challenge the sovereignty-shredding, job-destroying NAFTA and World Trade Organization Agreements. . .” Nader knew that there were differences between himself and Paul on many issues, so this was not about forming a political party but a coalition on the issues in agreement.
Nader talked to libertarian media about those issues, and I have talked to them about establishment psychiatry. With some of the libertarian media, I could have respectful dialogue on not only areas of agreement but on areas of disagreement (such as how anarcho-capitalism was not possible because of the essential coercive nature of capitalism creating wage slavery and debt slavery). Some of these podcasters I have spoken with are no embarrassments and I have continued to speak with, but not so with others.
Specifically, in 2009, before few on the left knew much about Alex Jones, I was invited by his producer to be on his show. What I could find out about Jones was that he was a Ron Paul supporter and that he promoted all types of conspiracy theories, some of which seemed whacko but others, such as the conspiracy between establishment psychiatry and Big Pharma, were not whacko at all. So, I agreed to talk to Jones, and we talked about psychiatry (though I did feel compelled to tell him that I didn’t understand how Ron Paul could call himself a libertarian but not support a woman’s right for bodily autonomy, which Jones simply ignored).
Little did I know that Alex Jones was soon to become a notorious figure, most infamously for his cruel conspiracy theory about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. After Sandy Hook, I received other invitations from Jones’s producer, but I have ignored them. My dealings with Jones did provide me with humility about how we cannot predict how embarrassing the people we deal with may end up becoming; and it also provided me with an experience to share with people who are ashamed of a past relationship and in need of a “de-shaming” chuckle, which sometimes occurs when I tell them: “You may have had private sex with someone who turned out to be a jerk, but I had a public conversation with Alex Jones!”
After a podcaster or someone in the media makes it clear to me that they are—to use Jon Stewart’s diagnosis of Tucker Carlson—a “dick,” I’m not going to talk to them, as it would be impossible for me to have a respectful dialogue. However, it continues to be difficult to assess beforehand who deserves that diagnosis. For example, I would have, as Joanna Moncrieff did, talked to Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson before she then did a hatchet job on Moncrieff; and I may well have talked to New York Times reporter Ellen Barry before she did a hatchet job on Laura Delano, Cooper Davis, and Robert Whitaker (see summary); and only after their hatchet jobs could I assess Dickson and Barry with Jon Stewart’s diagnosis and now ignore them.
Not all is bleak out there. There are some anti-authoritarian critically-thinking podcasters and broadcasters interested in psychiatry criticism and where one can get the word out without fear of stepping on landmines. I believe that it is in the interest of anti-authoritarian critics of establishment psychiatry to help support anti-authoritarian media, so here is a list of some of the podcasters in this group whom I have recently talked with: This is Hell! hosted by Chuck Mertz; Back from the Borderline hosted by Mollie Adler; Radically Genuine hosted by Roger McFillin; Psychology Is hosted by Nick Fortino; Howl in the Wilderness hosted by Brian James; Eternal Strength hosted by Wes Robins; Belly-Flopping into Mysticism hosted by Penni Kolpin; and Radio KUBA hosted by Jonas Ditlevsen.
Finally, I think it is incumbent for critics of establishment psychiatry to recognize how difficult it is to navigate the public discourse terrain, and how all of us are vulnerable to honest mistakes. The dissident mental health professional organization now called the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry (ISEPP) modeled tolerance for honest mistakes in 2011, as following some dissension because of Thomas Szasz’s past dealings with Scientology, ISEPP ultimately agreed to provide him with a platform to address its 2011 annual conference. Szasz’s past Scientology decisions had been made with the best of intentions but had negative political consequences, and rather than abandoning him, ISEPP took the opportunity to model tolerance and respect for his important contributions.
Well Bruce a deep dive into the Socio Political context and recent history of now. I have found it massively and terribly confusing and walking on an active minefield is probably a violent but sometimes it feels like it metaphor. Thanks for all of this. I wish I had known all of the fractions and push you pull mes.
I have two comments to add.
Social Work was part and parcel of this all in both helpful and non helpful ways along with the development of the counseling profession. I know more about social work and I will stay with that. Long history with much eliteism but more than not and many females and gender plays a big role here many with accurate and precise perspectives of and on the problems of the times. And truth be told when you are just trying to survive day to day treading water with arms and legs exhausted hard to create a deep treatise or manifesto on the way things are and what needs to done. If you are from an othered group even harder. What if you don’t have use of your arms? Then just treading becomes more difficult!
So Social Work hasd really cool visionaries then was allowed to slip into respectability and somehow became tied with psychiatry and the status quo of just keep on keeping on. Jane Addams and her radical actions like following garbage disposal patterns and moving into a zip code area not elite and away from her status something to be commended . She also had a long term relationship with another female. That was not that uncommon in those times and always off and on depending on how society tolerated that form of relationship. During the lavender scare not at all.
There also were a massive amount of WWIi refugees who came into our country and many tried to help and serve but few very few had the knowledge and thus includes me that the Nazis had studied Jim Crow and Eugenic laws. Also all of the immigrants who became Social Workers most no idea of the genocide of the indigenous populations in both North and South America.Or how the KKK terrorized even in the North in the 1920’s many groups. And even if one was aware it really didn’t hit you in the gut .
So the profession compromised and then came private practice and another tangled and twisted dance like Bruce’s description several different views being held at the same time. The profit making push for even nonprofit agencies helped drive out clinicians into private again profit issues with insurance and dx labels and payment insurance .
The crisis is ever continuing with no adequate system or systems or group or community to offer solace or support to so many in crisis today . It’s just not in the news reports in media it’s all the underlaying tragedies facing so many folks. So many data points are submerged in terms of nothing to see here.
So well some folks debate and argue and fight on the internet and other media people are still dying. We dont have a tally like the newspapers did during the Vietnam War. And so many different kinds.
And beyond belief and never what I signed up for or many folks who wanted to help and for the many folks who needed support and didn’t get much or harmed.
The only way through I can think of is to tell the truth as Bruce did and apologize for harms done intended or totally mistakes out of sheer ignorance. And then we all try to walk together somehow. But truth apology and amends. Only way I know how to begin to solve the problem.
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I’m surprised you didn’t mention anti-vax anti-authoritarians mingling with anti-psychiatry anti-authoritarians. Is there a taxonomy of medical anti-authoritarians? Should they work together on patient autonomy?
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Bruce mentions Roger McFillin whose podcast I also follow. He is a staunch opponent of biological psychiatry and the trend of folks seeking out diagnoses to wear on one’s sleeve. He is also a vaccine critic. Issues over Covid fractured independent media outlets like the Grayzone. So we are always going to find ourselves in agreement and disagreement with people we are in coalition with. Bruce offers a cautionary tale, but I do believe we need to reach out to persons on the other side of the political spectrum. One of Laura Delano’s most interesting interviews is with Tucker Carlson. Whatever Carlson’s shortcomings are, his podcast is certainly more thought provoking than the fare on Fox News which he left behind.
I came to this issue first with my imprisonment at TransAllegheny Lunatic Asylum and secondly through my work with the developmentally disabled and at-risk youth, two groups who are prescribed psychiatric drugs at a high rate. As things have currently shaken out here in Charleston, West Virginia, the nondenominational church River Ridge is at the forefront of the effort to address the foster care crisis. The staff at the Children’s Home Society (site of my last job) bring the children from their emergency shelter to the church on Sundays. The church is partnering with a non-profit that seeks to provide support for foster youth who have aged out of the system. I’m hoping to get involved with that.
I attended a seminar yesterday on Christian Nationalism yesterday. I’m much more aligned with the faith group that put this seminar when it comes to foreign policy. I talked to the ACLU folks at the seminar about involventary commitment laws. I hope to compare notes with their staff on this topic.
Thus far I don’t have a strategy as to how to broach the issue of psychiatric drugs being prescribed to minors, but I do feel there are members of the public who are interested in having this conversation.
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Chris, you raise some interesting points that need to be fleshed out more and clarified.
You said, “Bruce offers a cautionary tale, but I do believe we need to reach out to persons on the other side of the political spectrum. One of Laura Delano’s most interesting interviews is with Tucker Carlson. Whatever Carlson’s shortcomings are, his podcast is certainly more thought provoking than the fare on Fox News which he left behind.”
Yes, the anti medical model movement can sometimes (very carefully) use Right Wing social media to get out its message and reach a broader audience, BUT BEWARE! – THEY ARE ALSO GOING TO USE US TO BROADEN THEIR BASE AND PROMOTE THEIR AGENDA.
Tucker Carlson has been one of the THE key spokespeople in media who helped build the MAGA movement and get Trump elected. When we see how women (half of humanity) have essentially lost control of their bodies and reproductive rights, when we see masked ICE thugs rounding up people and repeatedly violating the rule of law, when we see the purges and control over intellectual thought at universities, the “white washing” of Black history, the banning of books, the complete denial of the January 6th insurrection and attempt to steal the 2020 election – to name just a few of MAGA injustices – we have Tucker Carlson to thank for this.
Yes, Tucker Carlson is more articulate, strategic, and devious than the standard Fox News fare – and this actually makes him much more dangerous. He is a Christian Nationalist with a heavy dose of White Supremacy – Trump and parts of MAGA serves this agenda well – up to a point.
Deep down Tucker C. hates Trump and is smart enough to know all of his narcissistic and ignorant weaknesses. This is why he has smartly maintained some critical distance from parts of MAGA. If somehow Trump loses some current favor and/or an Epstein scandal were to bring him down, Tucker C. has positioned himself well to be a key figure stepping into the breach.
What hasn’t been discussed in this blog or in the comments so far is – what is a correct orientation for the anti medical model movement to have towards MAHA (Make America Healthy Again)?
I believe MAGA and MAHA are one and the same. With the ascendancy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr there are some “kernels of truth” that are being expressed about Big Pharma, the FDA, and certain drugs, but this is combined with a whole lot of anti science and related conspiracy theories that “other” people and potentially do great harm to society. To work with MAHA (even with good intentions) would represent a major example of “fools’ gold,” and lead to great harm to our movement in the long run. This would become FAR more harmful than any kind of Scientology connection.
We must not forget that psychiatry performs a very important role in capitalist society of social control. Many of the sections of society most likely to challenge the status quo and fight for more equality are also THE MOST HEAVILY LABELED AND DRUGGED. Both of the major political parties have a stake in allowing psychiatry to play its role of social control and individual focus on “genetic theories of original sin.”
Like Scientology, the evangelical Right and the Christian Nationalists (like Tucker C.) view psychiatry as a major competitor for the hearts and minds of their would be base of support. They might prefer to place some limits on the power of psychiatry, but don’t be fooled into thinking they would want to abolish psychiatry.
Richard
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I don’t know where you get your information.
But the emphasis on “authoritarianism” seems to be the hallmark of the original article, and I think this is misplaced. You can get authoritarians in any political, business or social group. They can rise with the impression that they are people who “get things done.” Yet their desire to solve problems with law, order, and punishment gets them into endless trouble with those around them.
Scientology sees Psychiatry as a “major competitor” because Scientology is in the business of providing therapy to paying customers. You cannot say the same for most other religious groups. Psychiatry, when it performs ECT or over-drugs someone, creates a person who is very difficult to make well, and would probably not be allowed to receive Scientology therapy. This is why my church opposes Psychiatry and does wish to abolish it, to say nothing of the human rights violations that Psychiatry is guilty of. All of this is no secret. Policy on this subject is public and quite clear on these points.
There is much more that could be said on the subject of “authoritarianism.” But needless to say, it is not the property of either the “Right” or the “Left” and is eschewed by many in this world, whether or not they take any side in politics or religion.
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Your comment about Scientology being in the ‘business” of providing therapy to paying customers is most revealing.
Compassionate, non-judgmental, non-hierarchical support for persons in emotional distress–an approach that is certainly not a hallmark of the corrupt, profit-driven, power-hungry, intellectually bankrupt mental health industry–should in no way be provided in the guise of a commercial service available only to those enough money to afford it. And what, may I ask, distinguishes individuals who are deemed worthy of receiving Scientology therapy from those who aren’t? Do financial considerations play the key role in reaching a decision in this matter?
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You need to study source documents, Joel, rather than relying on the propaganda being delivered to us daily by enemies of spiritual freedom. If you are not in some “business” you cannot survive economically in this world. And the church has no desire for any form of government or corporate sponsorship, which would be necessary to offer its services on a charity basis.
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POSTING AS MODERATOR:
OK, you two. Enough of this. It is not productive and ultimately is not on the topic o the article.
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If you will indulge me a slight digression. I won the nomination for Congress in the southern district of West Virginia on the Democratic ticket. In my estimation following the lead of the DNC was a for sure losing strategy-as it turn out our statewide and Congressional campaigns averaged around 30% with Trump getting 70% of the vote. Derrick Evans, the January 6th prisoner garnered 11,000 more votes than me in the Republican primary in a losing effort.
Evans has positioned himself as the more stalwart Trump supporter and is a fellow travel of the Freedom Caucus which has positioned themselves as opponents of our involvement in the Ukraine.
I oppose our support for Israel’s genocide as well as our involvement in the Ukraine. Tucker Carlson and the Freedom Caucus view the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church favorably, while my objection to our involvement in the war is based on my long-standing opposition to NATO and the Atlantic alliance which gave us the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan as well as the colonial wars of France in Algeria and the UK in Kenya.
On the campaign trail I tried to pitch a non-partisan critique of the war economy, while emphasizing that we should be investing at home on education and infrastructure instead.
Most of my career was spent as an educator with at-risk youth and I’m a supporter of public education and oppose efforts at school privatization as well as the use of psychiatric drugs on at-risk youth. I most assuredly opposed both the RNC as well as the DNC in my campaign, I didn’t set out to antagonize the West Virginia Democratic Party since they don’t hold any significant power here, but that happened nonetheless.
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Richard: I appreciated your feedback on my first post. If you could please remark on my second post.
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Richard, maybe people who call themselves Scientologists, Christian Nationalists and the like merely have a natural aversion to people and institutions who systematically—and systemically—tell lies about what causes emotional misery.
Automatically thinking other people’s beliefs are politically motivated borders on authoritarianism.
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Birdsong
You accuse me with the following statement: “Automatically thinking other people’s beliefs { Christian Nationalism } are politically motivated borders on authoritarianism.”
Christian Nationalism in the U.S. is, by its very definition, an attempt to wipe away the separation between church and state – a fundamental component of American democracy. Can’t get MORE political than that!
Richard
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Richard, I’m not accusing you of anything. But I am suggesting that it’s often wiser getting to know people before deciding they are your enemies.
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There were indigenous American warriors before whites showed up to the continent. There were tribes attacking white settlements. A lot of the first white people that settled in Americas were Quakers and Puritans, religious Christians who were persecuted in England, and they were being threatened with being burned at the stake. What were they supposed to do?
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This attack on Hubbard’s work is non-factual and unwarranted. You need to find out the truth about it. There is more to psychiatry’s false domination in the field of mental health than its authoritarianism. It is not effective! It does not produce mental health by almost any measure of that elusive goal. While Hubbard’s work has not been tested in the crucible of academic scrutiny, its effectiveness has never been seriously challenged. This was probably the major reason that organized psychiatry (and Medicine) turned against it.
You are a PhD of Psychology, Bruce. Rise up to your ideals and study Hubbard’s work for real. Have you ever tried an e-meter? Have you ever run an assist on someone? You should. I have.
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Inasmuch as Hubbard’s work has not been tested in the crucible of academic scrutiny, what other credible, objective evidence might there be for its supposed veracity? What exactly is “non-factual” and “unwarranted” about Dr. Levine’s trenchant criticism of Scientology? What makes e-meters and so-called assists far more efficacious as diagnostic and therapeutic modalities than transcranial magnetic resonance, NLP, CBT, primal therapy, psychedelic substances, and Core Energetics, to name just a few of the nostrums endlessly touted as “treatments” by proliferating psychiatric cults?
Through the years I have read numerous detailed accounts by former members of this movement who denounced its preposterous claims and were later harassed for “apostasy.” I see no grounds to question their integrity or perception, unless you can present a convincing argument for me to conclude otherwise.
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I’m afraid that at this point this is not worthy of an answer.
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Posting as moderator: Again, this is not the place for personalized conflicts. Let’s let it go after this comment.
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Steve: thanks for posting my second comment. I was worried I was getting too far afield from the topic at hand.
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Nothing can “produce” mental health, just as nothing can create imaginary creatures such as unicorns and griffins. This entire concept is solely a useful but illogical metaphor used by would-be professionals to classify thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are sanctioned or proscribed in a particular culture at a specific moment in time–as one can readily see from the example of the drapetomania disorder concocted in the nineteenth century in order to pathologize the rebelliousness of runaway slaves.
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Joel, I don’t know what Woof meant, but anyone who has experienced a terrifying psychosis knows that mental health is not only a metaphor. I did not have merely “thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are sanctioned or proscribed in a particular culture” – I was literally unable to function and often terrified because of my belief that I was soon going to be murdered (this fear was completely unfounded). My thinking was completely distorted because of my hallucinations. Hallucinations and delusions do exist.
Oh, by the way, I experienced my psychotic episode in two very different cultures (an African and a European one). In both cultures people saw that there was something wrong with me, that I was hearing distressing, often terrifying and frequently loud voices which they did not hear. Only people’s interpretations were different in these two cultures because in Africa at least some people seemed to interpret my state through a spiritual/religious lens (which is much less depressing than the biomedical interpretation).
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You raise valid questions on the true nature of psychosis and other forms of emotional distress. Following Thomas Szasz, Jeffrey Schaler, and similar thinkers, I contend that it’s illogical and misleading to apply the concept of illness to patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior that have not been proven (on the basis of rigorous scientific and medical testing and verification) to originate in organic pathology. Without objective criteria, we are in fact operating in the realm of metaphor and subjective hypotheses.
As for hallucinations and delusions, such states of mind undoubtedly exist but are not universally regarded as pathological. Cultural anthropology is replete with examples of non-western societies that perceive reality in a way totally different light, e.g. the dream time of Australian aborigines, voodoo possession, shamanic communion with plants, animals, and otherworldly beings.
The hearing of voices and other inexplicable occurrences that you found so terrifying may very well not have been a sign of some putative brain pathology. There could be a number of plausible explanations for all your experiences, but that’s a complex matter.
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Joel, I am not saying that e.g. auditory hallucinations should be interpreted as symptoms of an “illness”. I am absolutely not implying either that my experiences were caused by a brain pathology.
I only disagree with the view that all “mental illnesses/disorders” are merely “thoughts, emotions, and behaviors sanctioned or proscribed in a particular culture”. As far as I know (and I am familiar with some of his books), Szasz did not really address the problems of people who experience(d) auditory hallucinations or obvious delusions.
I could see the striking difference between the way my mind usually works and the way my mind was working during my psychotic episode (for the lack of a better term). I am not saying that I was mentally ill – and some aspects of my experience remain impossible to explain.
To return to the concept of illness, we don’t have to assume we can use this term only if a state originates in a proven organic pathology. Extreme mental states can be triggered by multiple causes, including trauma. In my own case I think that trauma and an anti-malaria medication were among the causes of my hallucinations (I have never had any other episode of this kind).
I know that non-Western cultures have a different attitude towards auditory hallucinations. However, my own interpretation of these hallucinations is not “Western”. What is important to me is that the voices I heard were often saying very distressing or even terrifying things and prevented me from sleeping. If a person is unable to sleep for more than one night because of “voices”, this can’t be good for the person (well, unless we assume that people don’t really need sleep…).
As to delusions, of course many beliefs can be unfairly pathologized in this way. But let me first point out that most people have never talked to someone who is having REAL delusions.
By “delusions” I mean only obvious delusions, e.g. my main voice was often telling me that my mother wanted to kill me. Such a thought would not be embraced in any culture. In my case the delusions always came to me “from the outside” – these were things my main voice was telling me and this is why I strongly believed them (I did not feel that these were my own thoughts). I have never heard about someone else having a similar experience.
Or – to mention another example – a person I know from the social media remains convinced that she lost her job because of her mother and that the latter wants to force her to get pregnant (the person who has these thoughts is a woman in her 50s). This person (who does not even live with her parents) is obsessed with the idea that her mother is very powerful and determined to destroy her life by forcing her into a pregnancy. Such thoughts would not be embraced in any culture.
In general, it seems that some “psychotic” people feel a visceral hostility towards their mother – or another family member – and portray this person as all-powerful. This hostility unfortunately sometimes has very tragic results. After one has encountered at least one person with an obsession of this kind, it becomes very difficult to claim that all “mentally ill” people are merely unfairly pathologized by an intolerant society.
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I just want you to know that I literally and involuntarily yelled “hoo boy!” out loud about five words into your comment. Not arguing or perpetuating any more discourse, simply relaying my visceral disagreement.
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I can’t respond meaningfully to visceral reactions, only to coherent intellectual arguments. If you think my logic is faulty, please enlighten me: Is the concept of mental health universally valid throughout the course of history, or is it wholly subjective and culture-bound? It would seem to me that the hundreds of disorders hypothesized–not discovered under rigorous laboratory conditions– by DSM panels of psychiatrists (who are predominantly western-educated, from privileged social strata, and affiliated in some way with pharmaceutical companies) convincingly prove my point.
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“Is the concept of mental health universally valid throughout the course of history……. ”
Does it have to be mutually exclusive? What if ‘suffering’ is universal, but the responses to it culture bound?
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Boans, in my opinion you are right: at least some forms of mental suffering are universal, but the responses to this suffering are heavily influenced by culture.
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Conventional psychiatry’s entire raison d’etre is the premise that various forms of emotional distress stem from brain pathology (e.g. a chemical imbalance, faulty circuits), and hence should be considered illnesses that can be diagnosed and treated with the use of medical procedures. If this notion is false, psychiatry cannot properly be regarded as a legitimate science or branch of medicine in the absence of verifiable, universally accepted criteria.
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I would go further to say that if there is not convincing evidence that this notion IS TRUE, then psychiatry can not be regarded as a legitimate science or branch of medicine. It is not others’ job to prove psychiatry’s main premise false. For real scientists, every hypothesis is assumed false until proven otherwise. Claiming that “it must be the brain” in the absence of actual evidence of brain lesions or other measurable damage is not acceptable and would be ignored by any real scientist. Unfortunately, we have the opposite going on, with psychiatry’s claims being held as truths which must be disproven, leading again and again to damage being denied and minimized and positive effects being overblown or even outright invented. It’s as far from science as we can get!
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Joel, conventional psychiatry does not assume that mental disorders stem only from a brain pathology. E.g. “severe adverse life events” are taken into account in this article from the journal “World Psychiatry” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5428165/
And here’s an article from the journal “General Psychiatry” which states, among others, that “Adverse childhood experiences are closely related to the occurrence and development of many mental disorders”: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9036421
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Bruce, this article describes the intractable and futile contradictions and overlappings of competing interests/concerns.
You know what? I’m a patient. I long ago gave up hope for any salvation or extrication from this godawful dung hole in which we are all trapped, otherwise known as, “life.”
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If you asking about trauma and history violence and power and control it needs an encloypedia! Every culture back beyond the Code of Hamurubui had issues such as these. The Bibical narrative of Cain and Abel and the question am I my sibling’s keeper? Noah’s drunkest and lewd behavior after he and his family saved by the flood. The older tale of Gilgamesh and the writings and tales of the Becic texts . Lord Krishna on the battlefield. All the crusades. All the crucifixtions. France and its savage battles of heretics. Islamic and Jewish and Christian issues once in a blue moon some peace but always worries of people living in those tines. Mayas and Incas and Axtecs also issues and whole cities and regions disappeared. There was one priest who spoke out about the enslavemebt and colonialism at the times. A historian by the surname McCoy mentions the priest in detail. Fir your Puritans and Catholics Guy Fawkes Day and the Roundheads that outlawed theater . Priest holes and Bloody Mary and Sir Thomas Moore. Puritans ended up with the Salem Witch Trials. Quakers tried but when they had missions in Ireland during the famine they made the people change religion or no food.
We all are imperfect and t trauma and other systems in play that we are just learning about . We all I think as a human civilization have been in a way way way overlong toddlerhood. I hope we can survive into the wonderful imaginative pre school years.
Trying to weave an entire story of human civilization on one loom impossible. The old proverb fits many hands and many looms make light work.
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All I can think of whenever I see advertisements/commercials for neuroleptics are the thousands—perhaps millions—of people who are going to needlessly suffer the dire consequences (akathisia, tardive dyskinesia) of such unnecessary “treatment”—no matter what their political persuasion.
And all because of psychiatry’s authoritarian mindset.
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Not quite all. Some people take those drugs voluntarily, though the side-effects are easily researched. If one rejects psychiatry, one must embrace personal responsibility.
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It’s not quite as simple as that.
Most people may think they are taking psychiatric drugs voluntarily, but most of the time this is not the reality. The reality is most physicians are still telling their “patients” the patently false information that they have a “chemical imbalance”—or some other biological fiction they’ve picked up on the fly from their equally misinformed colleagues.
On top of this, most of the doctors prescribing these kinds of drugs are still incorrectly telling their “patients” that the risks of “side effects” are minimal and that protracted withdrawal doesn’t exist—that is if they’ve ever even heard of protracted withdrawal.
So please tell me exactly where “embracing personal responsibility” realistically enters this picture.
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Birdsong, embracing personal responsibility is possible, but very difficult for most people. As I said in my reply to Nicholas, many people don’t even read the leaflets of medications. Most people assume that they should trust doctors. Many people don’t have enough confidence in their own intellect to research the side effects of psychiatric drugs.
Especially people diagnosed with a mental illness are often convinced that they must listen to their psychiatrists. They can even think that they will be dangerous to others if they come off neuroleptics.
And plenty of people actually do come off psychiatric drugs, but have a relapse and then start passionately supporting psychiatry. At least this is what I noticed years ago in an online community for people diagnosed with schizophrenia where I was constantly attacked because of my attitude towards psychiatric drugs.
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Joanna, I understand and agree with all that you say as I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility. However, thinking for oneself is discouraged in our medicalized culture, something that often creates a lose-lose situation for people who are looking for non-drug alternatives. So coercive pressure to trust the doctor often seems to make sense for people seeking quick relief (psychiatric drugs) from emotional pain.
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Birdsong, yes, this is what I was talking about myself – most people don’t even read the package inserts/leaflets and most people are conditioned to obey doctors. As you say, thinking for oneself is definitely discouraged and punished.
When people feel emotional pain, it is very often linked to their experiences or their situation. A psychiatric drug simply can’t bring genuine relief to a person who is suffering e.g. because of the breakdown of a relationship.
Today’s culture unfortunately encourages people to believe that seeing a “specialist” is what they should do if they feel emotional pain. And this is how so many people get trapped inside the psychiatric system…
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Thanks Joanna 🙂 It’s a relief hearing from someone who’s on the same page.
I don’t know about you, but I’m happiest being an introvert as it’s always been my inclination. The mental health system makes people out to be “disordered” for choosing not to be “in a relationship”—especially if it’s not with one of them!
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You are very welcome, Birdsong! It’s always a pleasure to talk to you here.
I fully understand your choice not to be “in a relationship”, being an introvert myself. I also agree with you about the mental health system’s attitude towards relationships. After my psychotic episode in 2012 I often encountered the idea that being in a relationship is a sign of recovery. It reinforced my earlier anxiety – in fact, when I was in my 30s, I started being afraid that other people might assume that men had rejected me.
In consequence, after my psychotic episode I tried to find a relationship, though I actually love living alone. I have had some deeply disappointing and painful experiences, including a relationship brutally ended by the other person.
I am now in my mid-40s and I feel strangely liberated because I no longer think that I should “find love” and be ready to endure emotional pain in the name of love. I would have avoided a lot of suffering if I had always put my real needs first. Actually my past mental breakdowns were always triggered by the experience of being rejected by a man I loved.
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I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through, Joanna.
It’s a shame, and even a crime, the way psychiatry and the entire mental health system pathologizes sensitive people for having their hearts broken by insensitive people. Sudden rejection, or rejection of any kind can be devastating, but it can also be life’s greatest teacher.
I think the most important thing in life is to never abandon oneself to be in a relationship, or to stay in a relationship.
Be that as it may, it’s awfully nice knowing you’re a happy introvert, too! 🙂
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Thank you so much, Birdsong. You put it so well – “the mental system pathologizes sensitive people for having their hearts broken by insensitive people.”
The fact of being diagnosed as mentally ill more than 10 years ago had a very negative impact on my self-esteem and I have realized it only recently. The diagnosis impacted me, though I rejected it soon after being released from the mental hospital and though I virtually never tell other people that I once had a psychotic episode (the surname I am using here is not my real surname).
I fully agree with you that one should never abandon oneself to be in a relationship – and this includes friendships. People who don’t genuinely accept and value us will not change their attitude even if we keep doing our best to be great partners or friends. Such people will probably always feel that we are “not good enough”, that they “deserve better”. I have learnt this lesson and I will definitely remember it!
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Joanna, as a woman it can be hard to live in a society where women are to some extent still raised to believe our worth comes from receiving a man’s approval, a belief I always considered authoritarian in some ways. Nevertheless, I grew up dreaming of meeting and marrying a wonderful man who would appreciate me for who I am. But life didn’t work out that way thanks to psychiatry.
But the good thing is I’ve never felt sorry for myself, because I see what other people, both women and men, have to put up with even in good marriages. So, I now consider myself lucky in some very important ways.
One of the biggest is my having lived long enough to finally come to my senses and divorce psychiatry, a miserable marriage I now regard as most definitely annulled.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that psychiatry was invented by a man!
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I’m so happy you’ve learned to honor yourself instead of trying to please everyone but yourself, Joanna.
It’s wonderful finally feeling secure enough within myself to know how costly it is to spend one’s life pretending to be ”nice” to people who think your aim in life should be trying to please them. Doing so is spiritually corrosive: other people may think you’re wonderful, but you lose yourself in the process. And if people don’t like you for speaking up for yourself, that’s THEIR problem, and if they call you mean, selfish or defensive that is THEIR way of trying to make YOU feel guilty for not kissing THEIR rear. You don’t owe these types of subtly controlling people ANYTHING, be they therapist, friend or boyfriend or family member. They’re usually people who know instinctively how to manipulate sensitive people like yourself.
This has become my favorite adage: “To Thine Own Self Be True”.
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Birdsong, yes, the belief that a woman needs male validation in the form of “commitment” is one of the most toxic ones for women.
Regarding the dream you had when you were growing up, I would say that it is quite difficult to meet the type of man you describe – a man who truly sees women as men’s equals, is loyal, does not find outspoken women annoying and values a good heart much more than looks, popularity and social status.
However, I think that if I had not had a psychotic episode and been diagnosed with “schizophrenia”, I would have found it much easier to walk away from situations where I was disrespected and abused. I would add that whenever I shared my experiences with a man I trusted, it seemed to influence his attitude towards me in a negative way.
As to “good marriages”, many of them can be actually oppressive. I suspect that few women feel truly free in their marriage. Even in “good marriages” women may feel that they have to suppress some of their emotions and constantly cater to their husbands’ needs.
I am very happy that you have “divorced” psychiatry. And yes, psychiatry has been definitely used to oppress women. I suspect that I was diagnosed with schizophrenia after only one psychotic episode partially because I did not obey traditional societal expectations towards women. And at that time a “friendly” female doctor actually told my mum that I should find a husband 😉
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Oh my gosh, Joanna! I once tried telling a “friendly” female therapist how out of place I felt in a society that pressures women to be like men. She went out of her way to make me feel something was wrong with me for not being that excited about having a career outside the home. I respect woman who either choose to do that or have to do that, but pathologizing women like me who’d rather be homemakers is a form of authoritarianism, in my opinion at least.
I relate very much to what you say about how your life would’ve have been so much easier had you not met with psychiatry because I feel the same way. The mental health system made me feel even worse about myself which I now know made me a target for men who take advantage of women who either don’t know to speak up for themselves or are afraid to do so.
And I also believe it’s very likely that most women don’t feel truly free in their marriage as it’s usually the woman who has to make sacrifices to keep the marriage together. This can lead to feeling unsafe as well as unfree, especially with husbands who aren’t interested in making any sacrifices themselves—which makes it hilarious a female therapist thought you should find a husband! 🙂
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Any therapist who feels s/he is entitled to tell you what to do is not really a therapist, but an enemy.
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Birdsong, I understand what you were trying to explain to that “friendly” therapist. She clearly did not understand that there are many women who don’t think like her. And yes, her approach was very authoritarian.
I must say that the impact of the mental health system on my life had some positive aspects. Being labelled as “mentally ill” can be strangely liberating if one is not broken by the system: instead of accepting the label and the drugs, I realized my own strength.
I also became more empathetic and less afraid of other people. However, I was not able to completely avoid internalized stigma. Even though I did not see myself as mentally ill, on some level I worried that other people (people who did not know about my diagnosis) might perceive me as “crazy”. On some level I felt “flawed” because of my experiences and this made me vulnerable.
Yes, marriages, even “good” marriages, can be very unequal. It’s interesting that you mentioned husbands who don’t want to make any sacrifices – what I noticed is that at least some men think in a very selfish way and see it as normal. There are some really obnoxious men who have adoring wives… Some women seem to assume that they should feel deeply grateful to their husbands for marrying them – this is very sad when the husbands actually seem to look down on their wives.
Yes, that doctor’s idea that finding a husband would somehow be good for me was both hilarious and cringeworthy! I have actually often noticed that many women with a diagnosis of mental illness are convinced that their life would be completely different if they were married.
I feel that such women have a fantasy about a loving, devoted and gentle husband – a kind of father figure – and don’t see that reality is often very different. I am very happy that I did not embrace this fantasy which would torment me, make me desperate and also make me unable to truly appreciate the love and kindness of other people, including my family. I feel sorry for people who seem to think that romantic/sexual love is the only type of love which really matters…
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I agree, Steve – some therapists are literally harming people who seek their help!
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Birdsong, you are so right: people can accuse us of being “selfish” etc. only because we are standing up for ourselves. And in fact what I noticed is that lots of people assume that others are like them and think like them. In consequence a selfish person may be convinced that most other people are just as selfish.
There’s one example which comes to my mind. I was very worried about the health of a close male friend (and more than a friend) because of some symptoms he had mentioned. I decided to call his mother and his daughter, hoping that they would convince him to see a doctor (I knew that he was not going to listen to me).
The friend later claimed that I had done it because I wanted to feel important. His words hurt me, but I now know that he assumed that I was thinking like him – mainly about myself and my own needs.
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Joanna, you have amazing insights, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
What comes through for me most in our discussion is how often even the most well-meaning people can actually be authoritarian and not even know it, something that validates the gut feeling that long ago told me that the underlying dynamics in psychotherapy are actually the acquisition and maintenance of power on the part of the therapist, something that puts well-meaning people like you and me in a very awkward position that can last long after the so-called “therapy” is believed to have ended, because clients are subtly encouraged to give up their own power and even their own identity.
Your mentioning how the mental health system paradoxically had some positive aspects for you is very interesting because I feel the same way, meaning I eventually decided that being faced with an authoritarian, dogmatic system could be seen as an opportunity to find my own answers, a process that can be shared empathically with others faced with the same challenge.
And as for true love, a lot of times people are better off being by themselves, a simple truth too many people seem afraid to embrace.
One thing that can’t be avoided is how good intentions can be taken the wrong way, which is a horrible feeling if you happen to be offering good intentions. To me it’s the comedy and tragedy of being misunderstood, especially by therapists who too often seem convinced they’re incapable of misunderstanding anything.
Your decision to not disclose a schizophrenia diagnosis shows you have good instincts as most people believe what they want to believe no matter what the diagnosis. That’s why playing with people’s perceptions, psychiatrically speaking, is so deeply unethical.
It’s authoritarianism through the back door.
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Birdsong, thank you so much for all your kind and heart-warming words! I have personally never had psychotherapy (largely because it’s too expensive). I think that today’s Western culture unrealistically portrays psychotherapy as the solution to all kinds of problems. Moreover, therapists can financially exploit their clients.
Yes, being faced with an authoritarian system can be a crucially important experience. In my case I found out how marginalized people are treated (most of the people on my locked ward were poor), I experienced the effects of involuntary drugging with one of the strongest neuroleptics (perphenazine) and I learnt that “experts” can be completely wrong about a person.
In my country, Poland, I don’t know any other person who resists the psychiatric system. Some middle-class people have publicly talked or written about their experiences of psychosis and psychiatric treatment: all of them are on neuroleptics and trust their psychiatrists.
Especially the women sound as if they wanted to please everyone – and they also actually sound more like little girls than adult women. One of them sounds as if her brain had been damaged. They don’t question the psychiatric system.
It’s actually very difficult to come across women who have rebelled against this system. When (years ago) I was in an online community for people diagnosed with schizophrenia, women were the most hostile towards me because of my attitude towards psychiatry and my decision to come off neuroleptics.
Yes, I, too, think that I did the right thing when I decided not to disclose my diagnosis. My family members – who saw me during my psychotic episode – know that I am not mentally ill. But strangers might interpret anything which seems “weird” to them as a symptom of mental illness…
You are so right in pointing out that good intentions can be misunderstood. By the way, one of the things I find annoying is some men’s assumption that if a woman is nice to them, it’s because she wants a relationship!
I totally agree with you that it’s often much better to be single than to be in a relationship. I cringed when I recently read in a film review that “no one wants to sleep alone”. I actually really prefer to sleep alone 🙂
And I think that true (romantic) love is rare, much more rare than it is widely assumed. I have the feeling that many people simply don’t want to be alone. And many other people want to be with someone who is going to enhance their social status. Finally, we live in an oversexualized world where the mainstream view is that it is wrong not to be sexually active.
The truth is that today’s Western societies are in many ways very oppressive – there is seemingly so much freedom and tolerance, but many people are ashamed when they don’t have what they should supposedly have (a career, friends, a partner, a slim and toned body, a great sex life etc.). And I suspect that this is one of the causes of mental health issues.
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You’re very welcome, Joanna 🙂 It’s a pleasure speaking with someone who sees the zeitgeist so clearly.
I agree that Western society can be oppressive in ways that aren’t always apparent. And I believe that one of the most oppressive things in Western society is how it makes people believe they need psychotherapy for having a hard time living in a materialistic culture. Maybe that’s why the medical model has become so culturally embedded, simply because it thrives in a materialistic culture, a culture that’s recently been kicked into high gear with the arrival of direct-to-consumer advertising for psychiatric drugs, advertisements that portray signs of material success.
Maybe this has something to do with why the women in the online group attacked you. Or maybe it was because taking a pill is a lot more comforting than dealing with things they’d rather not face, especially in societies that may not have a lot of respect for women. But few people like having their choices questioned, especially in matters of pain relief. Nevertheless, it’s never a good feeling to be on the receiving end of someone’s hostility, even online.
And I totally agree that we live in an oversexualized world that exploits the fantasy of finding romantic love. I find it disturbing the way “experts” automatically think something’s wrong with you for not being sexually active or interested in the other trappings of modern society: having a career, being in a relationship, collecting friends, being obsessed with physical appearance, etc., in other words, Western societies’ smorgasbord of culturally oppressive values and beliefs, things I also suspect are responsible for a lot of mental health issues.
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You’re most welcome, Joanna. It’s a pleasure speaking with someone who sees the zeitgeist so clearly.
I think Western society can be oppressive in ways that aren’t always apparent. And I believe one of the most oppressive things is how it makes people believe they need psychotherapy if they’re having a hard time living in a materialistic culture. Maybe that’s why the medical model has become so culturally embedded—because it thrives in a materialistic culture. A culture that’s recently been kicked into high gear with direct-to-consumer advertising for psychiatric drugs, advertisements that portray the signs of materialistic success. This makes what can happen to people who lack material resources (money) all the more tragic because this makes people more vulnerable to being abused by the mental health system (involuntary commitment, forced drugging).
Maybe our materialistic culture has something to do with why the women in the online group attacked you. Or maybe it was because taking pills seems more comforting than dealing with things they’d rather not face, especially in societies that may not have a lot of respect for women. But few people like having their choices questioned, especially in matters of pain relief. Nevertheless, it’s never easy being on the receiving end of someone’s hostility, even online.
And I totally agree that we live in an oversexualized world that exploits the fantasy of finding romantic love. I find it disturbing the way most “experts” automatically think something’s wrong with you for not being sexually active or interested in the other trappings of modern society: having a career, being in a relationship, having lots of friends, being obsessed with physical appearance, etc. In other words, Western societies’ smorgasbord of culturally oppressive values and beliefs, things I also suspect are responsible for a lot of mental health issues.
And I also prefer sleeping alone, and that it’s one of the keys to good mental health! 🙂
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Birdsong, let me first explain that in the case of people diagnosed with schizophrenia there is a very specific attitude towards psychiatric drugs.
In fact, it’s not that many of these people feel that they can’t cope without their pills in a materialistic society. In reality they are literally brainwashed into thinking that the most important thing is preventing a relapse of psychosis and that a patient who refuses to be on neuroleptics is doing something unacceptable – something shocking and “sinful”.
So it’s not really a choice for these people to be on neuroleptics. It’s a consequence of brainwashing. Most of them – even highly educated people – are convinced that it is impossible to avoid a relapse without a neuroleptic.
Let’s not forget that psychosis remains very deeply stigmatized and associated with marginalized and despised people, and – even more importantly – that “schizophrenics” are widely seen as dangerous unless they are “taking their meds”.
Spouses and other family members can literally coerce people diagnosed with schizophrenia into taking their pills. And of course there are also people who are coerced by nurses who regularly visit them and inject them with a neuroleptic. This level of coercion would be now completely unthinkable in the case of most other psychiatric diagnoses.
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Birdsong, I see with pleasure that we are on the same page when it comes to the oppressiveness of today’s Western societies. To me, the emphasis on sex for its own sake is even worse than the fantasy of romantic love.
I often have the feeling that “experts” and many mainstream media are brainwashing people into thinking that everyone must be sexually active virtually until the end of his/her life. I am so happy that I am not trying to force myself into “being more like other people”!
There are so many important, beautiful and fascinating things in life, but mainstream society wants people to spend plenty of time thinking about sex and engaging in it – and to feel frustrated and miserable if their sex life is “not as it should be”. If I ever engage in sex again, it will be only if I feel that a man is worth it and that he is going to respect my wishes.
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Joanna I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to gloss over the grim realities forced upon people who’ve experienced psychosis and/or a diagnosis of schizophrenia—specifically the grim reality of being subjected to much more intensive brainwashing and coercive abuses than people diagnosed with other psychiatric diagnoses.
I very much appreciate your explaining in painful detail the devastating ways a schizophrenia diagnosis affects people’s lives namely by describing the specific ways mental health professionals use fear to manipulate (brainwash, coerce) people into “taking their meds” by telling them not taking neuroleptics always leads to a “relapse”—and that deciding not to take them is a sign of willful disobedience (sinfulness).
It’s terrible the way psychosis is not only stigmatized but conveniently associated with marginalized people. It’s a massively cruel way of blaming people who are just responding to hurtful situations they didn’t create.
When I mentioned materialism, I was thinking of the way the psychiatric system uses drugs to make people “functional”, meaning psychiatry wrongly focuses on biology instead of exploring the contexts of people’s lives, contexts that make them unable to function, meaning holding down a job. In other words, psychiatry uses people’s fear of economic destitution and fear of being seen as worthless to society to coerce them into taking psychiatric drugs. In other words, psychiatry ignores people’s feelings about what’s happening in their lives.
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Joanna, it’s wonderful hearing I’m not the only person who sees Western values as oppressive. And I wholeheartedly agree that the emphasis on sex for its own sake is even worse than pursuing the fantasy of romantic love.
I can’t tell you how much I resent the way experts use their expertise to brainwash people into believing that having an “active sex life” is part of being healthy. Don’t they understand that it’s a matter of personal choice??? And that propagating such a narrow-minded view is deeply disrespectful to people who don’t feel the same way??? Yes, once upon a time in the not-so-distant past people were made to feel guilty and ashamed and for having sexual desires, but something seems to have happened in the intervening years that seems to have made the experts devoid of emotional sensitivity and critical thinking—vitally important things that seem to have gone out the window in their pursuit of expertise. Perhaps that’s because respect for other people’s feelings and perspectives isn’t very high on an expert’s over-sexualized agenda.
So thank you Joanna for saying there are so many more important, beautiful and fascinating things in life—things that make “sex” pale in comparison—a reality routinely ignored by a class of professional people whose income depends on making others feel insecure about the choices they themselves know are healthy for them to make.
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Birdsong, it’s so refreshing to talk to someone with a similar perspective on life! Yes, I find it so depressing that people are brainwashed into thinking that it’s wrong and “unhealthy” not to be sexually active. Especially in the case of women it can lead to many painful and sometimes even traumatizing experiences.
It’s very true that the unwillingness to engage in sex is now often pathologized in Western societies and this type of oppressiveness very often goes unnoticed. People who don’t want to separate sex from love may now be mocked and perceived as prudish. I am sure that the male “incel” phenomenon (I mean the communities of frustrated and often misogynistic men) has emerged largely because men who are not having sex are frequently mocked and despised.
And yes, so many “experts” don’t have enough sensitivity and respect for people who don’t think like them and don’t have similar experiences!
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Joanna, in your latest reply to me you brought up the subject of delusions in the context of psychosis. You also mentioned the existence of “extreme mental states.”
This complex topic goes far beyond the parameters of the MIA comment section, so I will just note that the criteria for deciding exactly what constitutes an “extreme” state of mind in contrast to a “normal” one are wholly subjective and not obtainable by value-free scientific experimentation. A shaman experiencing astral projection or communing with the spirit world, for example, should not be viewed through the lens of conventional biologically oriented western psychiatry. For what one culture smugly dismisses as hallucinatory visions may be another culture’s parallel universe or higher plane of reality.
Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Brian Weiss, an American hypnotherapist who has conducted thousands of past-life regressions since the 1980s? The valuable insights he has gleaned from his numerous case studies may shed light on your own personal struggle with emotional trauma.
Lastly, Thomas Szasz has in fact written and spoken extensively about schizophrenia and psychosis. His ideas on this subject are well worth considering.
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Joanna, conventional psychiatrists, whatever disingenuous references they make to adverse early experiences, almost invariably diagnose clients with a bogus disorder listed in the DSM (for the sake of insurance reimbursement) and “treat” them with the latest fashionable neurotoxin so that they can reaffirm their status and justify their credentials as bona fide doctors.
That is exactly the reason why the iconoclastic Danish therapist Peter Goetzsche (who contributes regularly to the MIA website) advises people with problems in living NEVER to consult a psychiatrist. Otherwise, they will emerge from their session with a fake diagnosis and a prescription for a drug with brain-disabling effects.
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Joanna, I should have added to my last comment that the chemical imbalance hypothesis and the fanciful notion of defective brain circuitry still circulate in promotional material designed for mass consumption. What valid reason would conventional psychiatrists have for prescribing SSRIs, or stimulants for children diagnosed with learning disorders, if they did not believe in biological causation? What I suspect is that they are knowingly propagating an urban myth for the sake of enhancing their professional status, not to mention the lucrative financial aspect of this sordid business.
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Joel, Szasz did write about “schizophrenia”, but e.g. in “Cruel Compassion” he portrayed it as a “disease” diagnosed in young people who are idle. Even the title of one of the sections in this book is “The Useless Young Adult: Schizophrenia”. According to Szasz (in the same book) “the young adult’s uselessness” is diagnosed as an illness.
This struck me as very biased and unfair. When I had a psychotic episode, I was certainly not an idle and “useless” young woman. I had a full-time job and I was living on my own. I have not read everything Szasz wrote on psychosis, but I am not sure to what extent he understood this phenomenon.
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Joel, I totally agree with you that psychiatrists are deliberately propagating the “chemical imbalance” myth when they talk to their patients. And I suspect that many psychiatrists actually take this myth seriously because they are too lazy to read about the role of adverse childhood experiences, poverty etc.
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… and one more thing, Joanna. I too was deeply affected by the diagnosis I was saddled with: “Moderately Severe Depression, Borderline Manic” which isn’t the most stigmatizing diagnosis, but the doctors still told me I wouldn’t be able to function without medication and had no hope of living a normal life. In other words, psychiatric diagnoses ruin people’s self-concept, based on nothing but psychiatry’s biological lies.
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It also allows prejudice and discrimination like the behavior you describe. You are seen through the “lens” of a “diagnosis” and people stop listening to you or wondering what you are thinking, saying or doing. It’s very mechanical!
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Psychiatrists and therapists listen to label, not to get to know who you are and what you value in yourself and in your life. They only listen to pathologize and then pathologize anything about you they either don’t like or can’t identify with or both. They may say they care about you, but the only thing they really care about is getting paid for the nasty, manipulative, hypocritical bullshit they call “work”. THAT was MY experience and I will ALWAYS stand by that. It’s a disgusting, abominable way to treat other human beings just trying to come to terms with a world geared toward those who are, in my opinion, congenitally insensitive. So it’s way, way worse than just being “mechanical”. It is the personification of evil itself.
Psychiatry and its sycophants in my experience feel entitled to tell people who they are. That makes them everyone’s enemy because what happened to me can happen to anyone. And that is not just my opinion, that is a FACT.
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Birdsong, it’s outrageous that doctors told you that you would never have a normal life. Of course all kinds of psychiatric diagnoses can deeply damage people’s self-esteem and self-image.
The problem with the schizophrenia diagnosis is that it is so stigmatizing that one needs a lot of courage and a good life situation to share it with others. Anyone who is not successful in mainstream terms risks a lot if s/he reveals a diagnosis of schizophrenia – lots of people will assume that doctors must be right about the person.
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Yes, Steve, it’s unfortunately very true that most people see a person with a psychiatric diagnosis through the lens of the diagnosis. It is much easier to label people than to really see them as they are. I made the mistake of mentioning my diagnosis to a man I trusted and he often used it against me.
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Birdsong, I did not feel in the least upset by any of your comments. I just wanted to explain the situation of people who have experienced psychosis because it continues to be little known and often misunderstood.
Yes, you are so right – mental health professionals (and not only them) use fear – and also shame – to manipulate patients diagnosed with schizoprenia. And what I have also noticed is that the system rewards obedient patients from a middle-class background. In my country only obedient patients are invited to podcasts, TV programmes etc.
I also know a thought-provoking case of a patient from another country, a former academic. She has published some articles in various academic journals, articles filled with advice for patients like her (though I probably only very few patients read these expensive journals). Her advice always included using neuroleptics, being nice to everyone and generally obeying the system (she also kept emphasizing how important it was to have a partner).
She now lives in a care home because of her mental health issues and her mental state seems to have worsened, not improved – despite her being a “good patient”. This example speaks volumes…
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Thank you so much, Joanna! 🙂 I greatly respect and appreciate your first-hand experience, knowledge, and insight.
It’s so important for people to know how horribly the mental health system treats people that have received a schizophrenia diagnosis or who have experienced psychosis.
The situation here in the US sounds a lot like where you live. It’s probably because the mainstream media everywhere for the most part is controlled by Big Pharma—a worldwide conglomerate that isn’t interested in hearing from people who see things differently.
I look forward to a time when a diagnosis of schizophrenia and/or psychotic states in general are no longer seen as things to fear and control.
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Birdsong, thank you so much for all your comments in this discussion!
Let me just add one final note: people who don’t question the psychiatric system should not be seen only as victims. First of all, some of them attack and try to silence dissenters.
As I said earlier, it happened to me in an online community for people diagnosed with schizophrenia where many other members (including some very popular ones) decided to side against me. My comments were sometimes cruelly mocked – even when I was writing about my personal experiences or my views which were not related to psychiatry. Once a very large group of other members started mocking me because of a discussion unrelated to psychiatry.
Secondly, there are people who are rewarded by the psychiatric system for being “good patients” and for encouraging others to obey the system. The rewards include publications in academic journals, invitations to conferences etc.
In my country the rewards include jobs in peer support – people can be recommended by their psychiatrist for such a job. In my city these jobs have never even been advertised – I think that they all went to “good patients”.
Thirdly, let’s not forget that many of the “compliant” people diagnosed with schizophrenia have university degrees and some of them are highly intelligent. They would be perfectly able to resist psychiatric brainwashing if they were less intellectually lazy and conformist and had more courage.
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I have to say, while I understand the anger at those who internalize the psychiatric message, I still hold psychiatry responsible for setting up the moral conflicts and propaganda that drives “peers” to attack other peers. This kind of “internalized oppression” has been broadly studied in abused and disempowered groups and is very predictable. I don’t think it’s really fair to blame them for being “intellectually lazy” when they themselves are also victims of a very oppressive system.
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Steve, thank you for your comment. I know that my words may sound harsh, but I don’t think that they are too harsh. First of all, I don’t feel anger at these people. Secondly, when people are attacking, bullying and mocking another person, we can’t blame psychiatry for their behaviour. Psychiatry only encouraged these people to see me as someone they had the right to attack.
This was a very toxic situation and I am not exaggerating the level of hostility I faced. Moreover, many of the people who attacked me had a much higher status than me in that group and – unlike me – were not socially isolated.
All kind of people get psychiatric diagnoses and they are not always good people: I think that it is crucially important to remember about it. We should not see people with psychiatric diagnoses as “innocent”. I was simply a victim of so-called cyberbullying in that online community – and perhaps I would have been bullied even if I had not said anything critical about psychiatry.
As to my comment on “intellectual laziness”: Steve, please remember that I am talking as a person who was in the same situation, not as an outsider. And I am criticizing in this way people who are well-educated and in some cases highly intelligent.
I, too, experienced psychiatric oppression, including involuntary psychiatric drugging on a locked ward for more than a month. However, I was ready to do some online research and question psychiatry. It is possible to resist oppression, especially if one is well-educated and if one is not deprived of personal freedom. (I am not talking about people who are forced to live e.g. with family members who coerce them into using neuroleptics.)
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I think it takes a LOT of courage to do what you have done, and having intellectual capabilities doesn’t translate into having that kind of courage (though courage without intellectual capabilities can get one into more trouble!) And I certainly make no excuses for people who take advantage of peer situations to flex their own need for “power over” others – they are victimizers as well. But I still stand by that most of these people are simply intimidated or brainwashed into compliance, and are fearful for their own survival if they start talking about standing up to the pressure they are under. Again, no excuse for abusive behavior, and there is plenty of it from “consumers” claiming “peer” status. But it is the psychiatric “thought leaders” who have set up this system and who overtly and covertly punish those who step out of line that sets up the situation. Consider the “capo” in a jail setting. They have “gone over” to the side of the guards, but generally do so to protect themselves and to have a little more power than the powerless situation prisoners find themselves in. We can decry their decision to collaborate with the enemy, but we have to remember who the REAL enemy is, and it’s the ones bribing and threatening the “capos” into action!
I admire your courage and persistence. Perhaps you yourself don’t appreciate how unusual you are in being able to stand up to that kind of pressure! You deserve a ton of credit – it is NOT easy to do!
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Joanna, thank you for all your comments, too! And I’m very sorry you were treated so disrespectfully online. There’s no excuse for that. This is why I only comment on MIA.
It may not sound like it, but I don’t see people who don’t question the psychiatric system as victims. I see them as uninformed. But that doesn’t mean I have sympathy for those who attack people who do question the psychiatric system. And I don’t understand why people are threatened by information about mental health that goes against what they know.
It’s frustrating the way some of the most highly educated people don’t realize how close-minded they are. You would think having more education would do the opposite. I have a lot of respect for education and people who devote themselves to it, but in the area of mental health I think the information offered is often harmful and sorely mis-used.
I think the behavior you describe shows how easy it is for anyone to be brainwashed—and this is something the advertising industry knows how to exploit, all too well…
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CORRECTION: I see them as mis-informed!
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Birdsong, great to know that you understand me so well. Yes, I, too, avoid any online spaces where people may bully others! And MIA is the only online space where I feel ready to discuss psychiatry.
Regarding education, I have often come across the idea that mainstream education can stifle critical thinking and I think that it is true. And I guess that especially people from privileged backgrounds are also much less likely to question various systems and institutions. Unfortunately it is dangerous for them when they get involved with the psychiatric system.
In my case I was fortunately prepared to question the psychiatric system because of my own and my family’s experiences – including the fact that my dad lost his job more than once despite having a university degree in Economics and several decades of professional experience.
What happened to my dad proved how cruel the neoliberal system is. Once he wanted so much to keep a new job that he kept coming to work despite having an infection and feeling very unwell. He was finally diagnosed with sepsis and spent many weeks in a hospital – and I know how dangerous sepsis is. This has been one of the eye-opening experiences when I was much younger.
Like you, I don’t know why many people feel so threatened by mental health information which goes against their knowledge and beliefs. Maybe it’s because they feel upset and frightened at the thought that the drugs they have been using for years might be harmful. And maybe they are also afraid of disobeying their psychiatrists…
And in my case I think that those people were so hostile partially because – contrary to what they were expecting – I had not had a relapse. Later one of the most popular women actually started claiming that I had never had a psychosis and that I was harming other people (though I had never encouraged anyone to come off neuroleptics).
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Steve, thank you so much for all your kind and encouraging words – they truly mean a lot to me! Yes, I don’t think that what I have done is easy – and I actually often think about it whenever I go through a difficult time in my life. I am then saying to myself: “If I was able to resist psychiatric pressure, it means that I must be actually quite strong and resilient.”
I do agree with you that even people who are bullying others ar very often either brainwashed, or intimidated by the more popular people. It was obvious that for many people in that toxic online community it was an important space where they felt welcome and could make friends or perhaps even find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Many of the members also participated in offline meetings organized by that community.
Yes, some people in that community probably assumed that if they showed me any support or agreed with me, they would be also attacked. Of course they may have been wrong because bullies often get more shy when they see that the bullied person has at least one ally!
And yes, there are striking similarities with the prison system, especially in the case of middle-class patients who can get various rewards for obeying the system – as I mentioned in another comment, in my country even job opportunities in peer support seem to go to patients chosen by psychiatrists. Yes, we definitely can’t forget who the REAL enemy is!
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Clarification: I don’t see people who don’t question psychiatry as victims. I see them as misinformed, but that doesn’t mean psychiatry doesn’t seriously harm (victimize) people—people who deserve a lot of sympathy for what they go through, if that makes any sense.
And I have no sympathy at all for anyone who attacks someone who question psychiatry.
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I think that is an excellent clarification. Being victimized is not an excuse for victimizing others!
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🙂
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Birdsong and Steve, I fully agree with both of you: yes, psychiatry victimizes people and at the same time people who are victimized can behave in an oppressive, hurtful and sometimes even cruel way!
By the way, I think that if I had obeyed the system, I could be now physically injured by psychiatric drugs, like Chris Reed who has shared his experiences in this discussion. And I certainly don’t think that I would be able to work as a freelance book translator (a job I really love). When I was on neuroleptics, I was literally unable to read longer paragraphs in books unless I read them aloud – the drugs were somehow impairing my ability to concentrate and to think (and it was only one of the many side effects).
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Joel, I do agree with you and Peter Goetzsche – and probably most other people on this website – that people with “problems in living” should not consult psychiatrists.
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Joel, thank you for mentioning Brian Weiss, I am going to find out more about his approach. I would like to emphasize that I am not talking from a “Western” perspective which pathologizes certain experiences. I am talking about the very real impact of certain mental states on people and their families – largely on the basis of my own experiences.
By the way, it would be mistaken to assume that today’s non-Western cultures have a respectful approach towards people who are e.g. hallucinating. I started hallucinating in an African country and my experience was not treated with respect. Unfortunately some people even seemed to feel disgust or fear (though I was never angry or violent). A person I saw as a very close friend told me to leave his house and did not show me any warmth (fortunately my country’s embassy was ready to help me when my mother contacted them). “Mad people” are now clearly stigmatized in many non-Western cultures.
In my opinion it is possible to define an “extreme” state of mind in a way which is not subjective. As an example, if a person is frequently unable to sleep because of “voices”, this is clearly not a normal state. As another example, if a person starts seeing a loving family member as a cruel, dangerous and all-powerful enemy, this is not a normal state.
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Joanna, it’s intellectually stimulating to exchange opinions with you, even when I disagree with some of them, particularly your view regarding supposedly extreme states of mind. I simply don’t accept the idea that there is or can be a universal definition of “normality,” given the incredible diversity of human cultures and their different perception of reality. This would naturally include the phenomenon of hearing voices.
Parenthetically, I was intrigued by your recent remark that you are Polish and have worked as a freelance translator (hence your excellent English style and grammar). It so happens that I was a professional translator, mostly from the Slavic languages, including Polish. My favorite writer is Stanislaw Lem, and I translated a book, “Nieuchwytna Sila” [The Elusive Force] by journalists Marek Rymuszko and Anna Ostrzycka, which describes an extraordinary case of paranormal occurrences in Poland during the 1980s. This book also deals with brain functioning and the nature of human consciousness in general, and you might find it relevant to your own interests.
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Nicholas, many people don’t even read the leaflets of prescribed medications and many others assume that the side effects are very rare. Most people assume that psychiatrists are reliable experts. This is not these people’s fault, but a consequence of beliefs inculcated by the societies we live in, including the mainstream media. Few people are rebels.
Moreover if one disagrees with psychiatrists, one may be unable to get any medical help while coming off psychiatric drugs. E.g. in my own case the psychiatrists I talked to claimed that I should continue to take a neuroleptic, so I had to go through the process of coming off the drug alone. This would be scary to many people, especially because the dangers of coming off psychiatric drugs are often exaggerated.
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I apologize for misspelling Nicolas’s name in my comments.
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We can see this article as a meticulously crafted, highly political critique of “establishment psychiatry.” There are those who hold “extremist views” among both right-wing and left-wing critics of psychiatry, and those who don’t.
I think you’ve missed the point here: “How many people has mainstream psychiatry killed and maimed /disabled (injured) between 1950 and 2025?”
Maybe that’s not your article’s topic. But while many people criticize institutional mainstream psychiatry… it’s always these “iatrogenic injuries and deaths” that are often overlooked. This seems a bit unfair. At least for the people killed and injured by psychiatry and their grieving families.
There are people who are killed and maimed /disabled (iatrogenically injured) by mainstream psychiatry. And that’s a fact. But we don’t see and/or are unaware of these things. Because… a culture of cover-up is rampant in the mainstream medical world. Iatrogenic deaths and injuries, especially those caused by psychiatric medications, are always blamed on other causes. This is why people die and are injured for ‘nothing.’
We might argue that just as it is important to offer “political critiques” of established psychiatry, it is equally crucial to expose the HIDDEN GENOCIDE that mainstream psychiatry has been wreaking havoc on for decades. Unless these are brought to light, criticizing mainstream psychiatry will be of no use. On the contrary, we might even consider that mainstream psychiatry might (albeit unintentionally) help continue its hidden genocides.
I have a very important call for all HONEST psychiatrists and politicians (and other HONEST professionals, societies, and governments) around the world.
You know… There are probably people with intellectual disabilities who are generally unable to care for themselves and/or who cannot be cared for by their families. The vast majority of these are likely people who have suffered permanent brain damage (damage) from psychiatric medications. However, it’s never explained that these people are in this state because of the psychiatric medications. They are simply labeled “mentally ill.”
And then… Individuals with intellectual disabilities in this situation are generally placed in ‘mental health units’ such as ‘mental hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, care homes, rehabilitation centers’… to remain there for the rest of their lives (until they die). These people are labeled “mentally ill” and forced to stay in these mental health units for the rest of their lives (until they die), but the reason they are in this situation is never questioned.
Probably… The public doesn’t realize that it was the psychiatric drugs that caused them this way (causing permanent chemical brain damage), and it’s always covered up by mainstream medicine and mainstream psychiatry.
Here… My biggest call to all HONEST psychiatrists and politicians (and other HONEST professionals and societies and states) in the world is in this direction. Let them uncover what is/could be causing these innocent people… to become like this (that is, to suffer permanent chemically induced brain damage).
Probably… It will turn out that what caused them (caused them to suffer permanent chemical brain damage) not all, but the vast majority. was/could have been psychiatric drugs .
However… I doubt that mainstream psychiatry would allow this research to be conducted. Therefore, heavy pressure from states and societies is necessary. It may be possible for the courts to intervene.
Because… people suffering from permanent chemically induced brain damage caused by psychiatric medications are not limited to those in these mental health facilities. As of 2021, an estimated more than 1 billion people worldwide were labeled as mentally ill.
Considering that there are tens/hundreds of millions (perhaps more) of people using psychiatric medications worldwide… this means that in almost every household, there are people using psychiatric medications who are also at risk of (experiencing/may be experiencing/at risk of experiencing) permanent chemically induced brain damage. Considering that psychiatric drugs have been used for decades… this number could mean that perhaps several BILLION people, along with those who died, were also ‘harmed – killed and injured’. I estimate that ‘psychiatric genocide’ is happening every year due to psychiatric medication and other harmful psychiatric treatments like ECT.
As a final word… These “Secret Psychiatric Genocides” absolutely must be exposed. And without delay. This shouldn’t continue. You can’t predict who might experience permanent chemically induced brain damage, especially from psychiatric medications. But this permanent chemically induced brain damage is happening. And it’s happening silently. Secretly. And no one knows about it. They’re unaware.
Probably… Tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world may not even be aware that they may be experiencing permanent chemical brain damage from psychiatric medications.
***
As a final note, let me also state this. I have a personal observation I’ve been making for many years. Of course, this is just a simple observation. But perhaps it can offer some insight for honest scientists and honest psychiatrists.
Something I noticed during these observations caught my attention. I’m working on it now. I plan to publish it on my own blog when it’s finished. Let me briefly explain my observation as follows.
Probably… I realized that there are/may be two types of chemically induced permanent brain damage caused by psychiatric medications, and each has two stages. So, I guessed that there are actually four stages of chemically induced permanent brain damage. I also realized that stage 4 is the most dangerous stage. I will publish my work on my blog when it’s finished.
Thank you, Bruce Levine, for your critique of the established psychiatry system… Best regards…
With my best wishes.. Y.E. 🙂 (Researcher blog writer (Blogger))
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Thanks for your critical reflections. And good luck with the landmines. I’ve always been skeptical of the statement that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. For one, I think it makes political expediency and realpolitik for impractical, self-defeating alliances, particularly subject to power plays, disabling real relations among community-based movements for a more egalitarian society. Nowadays, however, enhanced by such psychological warfare as the digital (c)age has created for colonizing consciousness in solitary confinement to algorithmic manipulation, the politically polarized landscape appears to provide powers that be with the additional advantage of making every friend an enemy for the slightest deviation from prescribed scripts of sectarian divide-and-rule dogma often little more than sloganized thinking of the sort Orwell depicted in 1984.
Since the 60s, it seems public discourse has been so overtaken by a complex authoritarian system of psywar to make stepping on mines inevitable no matter how savvy one’s strategy of damage control. Of course, as with the CIA’s MK-Ultra program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, the 60s already had developed much of the science of social engineering consolidated today in what sociologist Sheldon Wolin called an “inverted totalitarianism” under which we’ve been living for some time, certainly since 9/11 and the war on (of) terror, of which there’s ample evidence these were planned and staged events to move us into a more perfect surveillance and security state (and the war of bioterror with the covid pandemic took us to a whole new level of war on humanity).
I’m already stepping on mines mentioning these specific cases, and adding there are many, many more. For example, Scientology shares roots with MK-Ultra, as did Jonestown, where ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ was the cover story for mass shooting and murder, not suicide. Furthermore, comments like these leave me liable to be called a conspiracy theorist, words weaponized originally by the CIA to smear and dismiss any suspicion of the official Warren Commission cover-up of the JFK assassination, thus confirming what we’re conditioned to deny.
Speaking of mass shootings, which shot up dramatically since the 60s, am I suspect of being an Alex Jones acolyte for mentioning that as many as a third of the perps have been in the military and/or drugged by doctors pushing pharmaceutical addiction, including anti-depressants; or of being a devotee of the NRA for noting that the majority of gun deaths are suicides and suggesting controversy over gun violence and control plays into increased population control by the state’s monopoly of violence? Consider just the massively militarized police state to have emerged over the past decades, and how we’re currently on the fast track to digital dictatorship under AI control grids, to where predictive policing, as with the movie Minority Report, is no longer science fiction but fact coming to your neighborhood network. Where’s the real or biggest threats to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness coming from if not from our self-appointed protectors?
In short, it’s virtually endless rabbit holes to fall down or halls of mirrors to pass through as to end up paralyzed and powerless. The breakdown from being able to make sense of the world, like shock doctrine regime change of reality, follows upon former CIA director William Casey’s game plan for a completed campaign of lies and illusion where nothing seems what it is. Maybe common sense, of the sort Paine called for, makes it imperative for us to try to build common ground for confronting powers that (shouldn’t) be perpetrating constant problems and crises to march us down dead ends for their final solutions. Rather than automatically reacting to stereotypes manufactured by the Ministry of Truth or Matrix corporate state propaganda media have become, rebuild communities to listen and learn together for the sake of radically reshaping freer social relations among equals. Rather than ruling classes the world over united in dividing us for the sake of building our own prisons to their pyramid schemes of profit and power, reclaim our inalienable rights in solidarity and resistance before war combining the worst crimes against humanity from both psychology and politics turn our brains into battlefields for conquest by technological totalitarianism.
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” (Aldous Huxley)
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-resources/
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/stare-into-lights-my-pretties/
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What if psychiatry is no better or worse the psychology, and neither benefit the people who simply need a little humanity in their lives.
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Psychology as a profession is the poor man’s psychiatry. Certainly not better, just more accessible.
IMHO.
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There is still more diversity among psychologists, though it’s disappearing fast as the feminist Left is taking full control of the profession. There are Szaszian (or Szasz-admiring) psychologists, but one would be hard-pressed to say the same for psychiatrists.
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You seem to be ignoring the BRUTALLY SIMPLE FACT that both psychiatry and psychology are beautiful examples of MEDICALIZED BIGOTRY and all the political shenanigans that go along with that.
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I don’t see this. Where I am it is much easier to get a prescription for a drug than it is to get regular sessions with a “therapist.” The former is much less costly for the insurance companies, for one thing. Yet psychiatrists are willing to do horrendous (and expensive) treatments like “ECT” which psychologists would not touch. You’re going to suffer less biological harm in the hands of a psychologist, I’m pretty sure. But possibly not less trauma.
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I was going to say something of the sort. Therapy is much less accessible than the drugs, and some insurance companies even REQUIRE drug “treatment” for certain conditions before even approving of any other sort of therapy. I’d much rather talk with someone than be drugged – at least I maintain my bodily integrity and can easily exit if I don’t like what I’m seeing. Admittedly, not everyone has the latter skill, but I’d still rather they talked to someone, however inept or misguided, than had their brains altered with these drugs!
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Both of you seem to need to get your facts straight.
The truth is it’s typically still more expensive to see a private psychiatrist than other psych professionals.
This explains why most psychiatric drugs are prescribed by general practitioners.
Besides, don’t either of you know that therapists are required by law to advise their “clients” to see a medical doctor for “medication” when listening to their clients makes them uncomfortable?
This explains why so many people who seek “therapy” end up on psychiatric drugs.
And also explains why having “mental health” insurance doesn’t guarantee “mental health” at all!!!
And Larry is right. Seeing a therapist is no guarantee against being re-traumatized.
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It is very true that many insurance companies require drugs to be prescribed in order to even see a therapist. I think I said that before. I’m not recommending therapy for anyone. I’m saying in general, it is better to talk to someone than to be drugged. At least in the first case, there is some chance you run into someone who actually cares and listens and can help. Whereas in the drug scenario, you are invalidated just by participating, and seen as a freak and a weirdo by those trying to “help.” Admittedly, a lot of therapists ALSO see you as a freak or a weirdo, but again, at least the person can escape without physical harm!
In other words, talking CAN be helpful, whereas the drugs are generally destructive from the get-go. But of course, you well know I don’t believe anyone needs a degree to learn to listen and ask intelligent questions. People mostly need someone to see them and accept them without judgment and hear their stories. My experience says the majority of therapists are not particularly skilled at this, but I can guarantee that being given drugs does little to nothing to address “Problems in living,” as Szaz so aptly puts it. So at least with a counseling referral, there is an outside chance you might get some help, whereas a mainstream psychiatric referral is almost assuredly going to lead to damage.
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Birdsong, there are huge differences between countries. In my country it is easy to see a psychiatrist in a public mental health clinic (one does not need a referral from a GP) and (as far as I know) neuroleptics are prescribed only by psychiatrists.
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That might be the case with certain HMO’s, and some therapists working within these insurance networks may feel compelled to align with psychiatric recommendations to maintain their reimbursement eligibility, but according to my information, things are much more lenient in PPO’s.
That being the case, the fact remains people take HUGE chances entering into any so-called “psychotherapeutic relationship” with any currently licensed psych professional as these so-called “experts” have the authority to label, i.e. PERMANENTLY STIGAMTIZE. This is a blatantly authoritarian act, meaning these types of professionals have an unreasonable amount of POLITICAL POWER.
That’s asking too much of people who just need to talk to another human being, IMHO.
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I don’t disagree. I’d put the odds at 90% that any given therapist is going to be aligned with the DSM and the psychiatric worldview these days. Used to be less, but so much training now is DSM-based, and the idea of “biological diseases” is deeply ingrained in the culture, particularly the psychiatric/psychological world. Those who don’t go along with it are swimming against a very strong tide.
I find that community support groups are a better bet, but even those are now being taken over by “facilitators” who have a DSM orientation in many cases. It’s hard to find anything truly helpful in the system as it is today. So yes, I agree, it’s a dangerous undertaking to open that door, and anyone going in needs to be well informed and prepared to insist on getting what they need out of it. The odds of getting entangled in “the system” are too great.
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Two words: primary care. Mini-psychiatrists without actual psych training whose only source of usefulness (meaning revenue) in health care is screening and writing scripts. We need to understand primary care as the funnel to overdiagnosis and easy psych meds, now exacerbated by online rent-a-docs.
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In my country, too, it is much easier to get access to a psychiatrist than to a psychologist or a psychotherapist. In my region people have to wait for more than a year to get some psychotherapy from the public health care system.
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Joanna, on the whole psychiatrists in private practice in the United States still charge more than other psych practitioners.
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But insurance is far more likely to pay for psychiatrists than any other psych practitioners, in my experience. Again, with the caveat that I’m not in favor of funding “therapy” with insurance, either. It’s just less accessible for financial reasons, at least for those lower on the income scale.
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Steve, to the best of my knowledge, people pay more out of pocket for psychiatric visits than other psych practitioners.
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Yes, out of pocket it is more per hour. But it is less likely to be covered by insurance. Otherwise, not too many people would visit psychiatrists. Almost every person I’ve ever met who saw a psychiatrist had it covered by health insurance. They are technically “doctors” and as such are automatically covered by most insurance programs. And the drugs are also covered by Medicare/Medicaid. That’s part of the racket – the public pays for most of these drugs and for the psychiatrists, either by paying insurance or through public assistance. I think it’s fair to say that without public assistance and insurance coverage, most psychiatrists would quickly be out of business. This is one reason why reform of the system is extremely challenging – the bulk of the funding goes to psychiatrists and drugs because that’s what’s covered by insurance.
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I agree, Birdsong, private psychiatrists tend to be more expensive than private psychotherapists.
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I get it Steve. Psychiatrists are the pill pushers which costs far less than 45-50 minutes-a-week session with the other psych professionals for extended periods of time. Cutting costs is what insurance is all about.
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Joanna, people are still being sold a bill of goods either way because people still leave with a “diagnosis” either way, although it’s much more dangerous to see a psychiatrist for obvious reasons.
That’s the definition of a lose-lose situation, in my opinion.
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Saddam was using chemical weapons of mass destruction on the Kurds. One Iraqi man who was affluent enough to get close to the U.S. President to hit him with a thrown shoe is who becomes representative of Iraqis in general… of course others were busy pimping their rides (they weren’t allowed to before) and celebrating more rights for women (I think they were finally allowed to drive and stuff… ). Everybody needs some common enemy so it’s military.
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All I can think of whenever I see advertisements for so-called “psychiatric medications” are the countless numbers of people who are already needlessly suffering—or who are going to needlessly suffer—the all-too-possible consequences (akathisia, tardive dyskinesia, metabolic dysfunctions, etc.,) from these kinds of so-called “interventions”, interventions that most of the time are totally unnecessary—NO MATTER WHAT the “patient’s” political persuasion.
And all because of psychiatry’s authoritarian mindset.
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… an authoritarian mindset the majority of “clinical” psychologists seem to have willingly assimilated (irrespective of the of their own political leanings), for reasons most of them probably don’t fully understand.
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No one’s ideas are immune to misinterpretation (intentional or not), but it’s more likely to happen the more radical the ideas.
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As an erstwhile friend and ally of Tom Szasz, I enjoyed this article. It’s long been my view that his alliance with Scientology was an error, though one for which he can be forgiven given his insights and courage. It especially marginalized him from the Left. There’s a very fine 1970 audio interview of Szasz by Studs Terkel that one can google up. Alas, the Left (which I abandoned for Enlightenment liberalism in the early 1970s) has fully embraced the authoritarian medicalization that Szasz and Ivan Illich warned against from different angles. The New Right is no less authoritarian, and I predict will someday abandon its opposition to the therapeutic state. Their positions are more visceral than intellectual, to put it kindly. In any event, psychiatry is likely to rule for hundreds of years, and to have periods of viciousness that parallel its roles in the Holocaust and American eugenics. I’m glad I won’t be around to see them.
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It’s good to see Illich mentioned. His writings influenced me when I was young.
But if Hubbard and the Vedas and the Gnostics are correct, you will indeed be around to see the future unfold on this planet. This is one reason many of us work hard for changes that we may not see fully realized in our lifetimes. The game of life in bigger than the lives of mortal men and women.
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So glad I took the time to read much of this essay and some of the Comments. I found the author’s arguments insightful, refreshing and straightforward. My own life and that of my children have been ravaged by such difficulties that some classify as “mental illness”. It has been challenging to discern when to “intervene”‘ in the classical sense and when to try and simply ‘be there”, whether for oneself or others. On the whole, what I have learned, is that often just “getting through the day” is what makes the difference. So I try to remember to encourage others – and myself- that this, indeed can be enough.
PS: one of my kids recently advised me that punctuation has new nuances today, so i risk being misunderstood using the marks ‘ and “. Oh well, we all do the best we can – don’t we?
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I’ve been part of the anti-psychiatry movement since the 1980s. I’d say the worst problem we face is the authoritarianism of our own organizations and its tendency to blacklist people based upon little information. I think also promoting people with questionable backgrounds–for example, criminals and murderers–simply because they wiggled their way into some platform they should never have been on is another. In 2003 my teacher at AU in CT talked to me about how people could get black listed and be out of the movement forever if they didn’t conform. It is too bad to hear that within your own peer advocacy group. That was one of the many classes at AU that started with 12 members and ended up with 2. Meanwhile, we are a small movement making barely an impact. Why is that, because we don’t promote one another and support one another when we should, and some very egotistical folks like power and control over others. We need to look at ourselves and our own attitudes before we start criticizing others.
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Authoritarianism is the first enemy!
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When I was involuntarily committed in 1989 there weren’t forums on the internet like this to educate the public. I had an experience similar to what Jim Gottstein described (sleep deprivation leading to erratic behavior). Unlike Jim’s psychiatrist, mine described Lithium. After my second go around with psychiatry, which I attribute to the effects from abrupt Lithium withdrawal, more drugs were added.
It seemed to me at the time that there was a lot of social pressure coming from the news and entertainment media to conform and take the drugs. I did so out of faith that this would help me to avoid further hospitalization.
About fifteen years ago I started to question this. Bruce’s writings were one of my go to sources to criticize Psychiatry. It was also at this time that doctors informed me that the Lithium had damaged my kidneys. I titrated off Lithium and the other drugs, save a tiny amount of Zyprexa, which is a very difficult drug to get off of.
I have had the operation for a fistula in case the course of action is dialysis, and I’m meeting with the transplant people tomorrow.
Beside the harm to my kidneys, I expect my weight gain is a result of the Zyprexa. I really don’t think I experienced anything like informed consent. Psychiatry has caused me severe physical harm, but despite their best efforts, they didn’t murder my soul. I managed to have a twenty-five year teaching career, have been married to my lovely wife for thirty years, raised a son who is preparing to go off to China to persue a post-doctorate, and I won the Democratic Congressional primary in the southern district of West Virginia, much to the chagrin of partisan Democrats here.
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Well done, Chris! It sounds like you are a very strong person who persevered despite many barriers and intentional confusions. I admire that greatly! And I’m glad to have someone like you representing the interests of real people! I hope you win!
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Chris Much respect! Carry on!
Richard
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Incredibly inspiring story of courage and of generosity, Chris.
Thank you.
I doubt I am and will be the only one hoping/wishing/praying that you never need dialysis, but instead now go from strength to strength to strength, and to experience ever deepening fulfillment and joy.
Bon courAGE!
Thank YOU!
Tom.
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Thanks (again) Dr. Levine.
You are a constant beacon on a buoy in the ocean of acidity that engulfs this topic of power that ends in enslavement, suffering, & death.
Selfishly I plead, never stop writing.
You have been a tremendous support for me, calming my ‘regular’ spikes of alarm & fear…as a self-rescued, 15-year, former (psychotropic) gladiator fighting to the near-death (heart failure+,+,+…) against this enemy.
As a 54-yr/old female, I thought I knew the hostility & dangers of the world….I’m now 74 & am ever-vigilant against the relentless, continuing diminishment of my worth defined by the culture & government. Psychiatry remains the most hostile element out there as it’s superpower is to adapt/morph instantly to any legal, cultural, or ethical issue…having it ALL ways in any policy, influence, discussion, or justification
‘We can shape-shift to achieve OUR survival’….
Reading your articles helps me be stalwart against continuing encroachment on & threats to, my credibility and safety. My heart rate goes down.
Thx again.
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how many times the article uses the term “authoritarianism”? so many times in so varied contexts that the word becomes completely meaningless. but “authoritarianism” is not a valid political category anyway, it doesn’t have any explanatory function but works in the opposite direction, it obfuscates the issues. it doesn’t mean anything other than a vague connotation with organized power and coercion. but that basically defines any human organization. all human organizations are based on discipline and common will. in a trade union or any effective political movement, individuals serve the common goal and in many ways are coerced to do so. all these are so common place that it is mere pedantry to mention them, if not for the obfuscation and deception shaping the common sense of people. this is the result of cold war propaganda which made politics itself an evil. as gramsci said “discipline must be met with discipline”. otherwise how are you going to achieve anything? when an invading army is at the gates, you don’t have any choice but to form an opposing force with an effective and clear hierarchy. political movements are the same since they are the primary tools used by groups of people to defend themselves against hostile forces which are also highly and ruthlessly organized. it is delusional to think you can dispense with discipline.
it is also really ridiculous but only possible in this climate to cheaply attack great revolutions of the past. we owe everything to the jacobins and also the bolsheviks. if you follow the thinking of the author, you wouldn’t support the soviet union against the invading nazi forces. that is how absurd you’ll get if you think in these shallowly abstract terms.
“… the right-wing coalition that is currently in power is an enemy of psychiatry. ” then why are they not trying at least to disrupt the workings of psychiatric institutions; why are they not changing laws, closing down mental hospitals and stopping enforced treatments? psychiatry is an effective tool for the ruling class and they will never dispense with that. because in contrast to the “anti-authoritarian left”, the capitalists are actually intelligent and know the world they live in.
this issue is political which means it can be improved by political means. politics means organization. only people who mistake their illusions for the reality can think otherwise.
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I’m not going to expatiate here on your definition of authoritarianism and its possible relation to the mental health field, but I do feel compelled to reply to your assertion that one should not cheaply attack great revolutions of the past, that we supposedly owe everything to the Jacobins and Bolsheviks, and that capitalists are intelligent.
Are you ignoring or trivializing the fate of countless millions of people throughout history who have been imprisoned, disenfranchised, executed, reduced to penury, starved to death, driven into exile, confined in hard labor camps, and otherwise suffered as a result of those very revolutions? A few random examples: the Great Terror following the French Revolution (which ultimately led to the bloody dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte), the Great Leap Forward in China, the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia, the Holodomor in Ukraine. Do you actually believe that such mass atrocities served a higher cause? That they advanced human progress?
As for your claim that capitalists are intelligent, the world financial crisis in 2008-2009, the widespread immiseration of the working class and ever-growing inequality of income (which inevitably lead to oligarchy, tyranny, and violent revolution, as Aristotle wisely observed over two millennia ago), and environmental devastation resulting from unchecked exploitation of natural resources (e.g. in the Amazon Basin) would seem, rather, to indicate their gross incompetence, shallow mercantile motivation, and hopeless stupidity.
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all the things we take for granted and only by now starting to grasp that could be lost are the fruits of past revolutions. revolutions are history’s engine. their violence doesn’t come from nowhere, it is an extension of the invisible violence which went on for centuries before a revolution became unavoidable. as mark twain said about french revolution, there were two reigns of terror: one which went on a few months and took the lives of thousands, the other went on for centuries and took the lives of hundreds of millions. imagine a person abused for years and finally reacted in some violent way. that violence was a delayed response and was justified just like very bloody slave rebellions were in principle, justified. who doesn’t think of john brown as a hero?
being intelligent doesn’t mean being omniscient. the current economic system has deep and irreconcilable contradictions. but you have to look at the end result; who lost and who benefited from the last financial crisis? did the bankers, financiers and capitalist class in general weaken? just the opposite, they earned more money than before while millions of families became homeless. how did that happen? as bernie sanders replied a similar question of joe rogan: “because they make the laws, joe!”
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If I were to follow your logic, the Gulag, the Holodomor, the Katyn Massacre, and the mass deportations of Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and other ethnic groups perpetrated by the Bosheviks, or the Great Leap Forward under Mao (which claimed the lives of tens of millions of Chinese peasants), or the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, were quite justifiable “delayed reactions” to past injustices. Do you consider the enslavement, murder, and expulsion of hundreds of millions of people a perhaps deplorable but ultimately fair price to pay for the vague chimera of “progress”?
Your tendentious argument that revolutions are “history’s engine” and that material interests, more than spiritual and moral values, constitute the real driving force in history, regurgitates the tired fallacy of crude, dogmatic Marxian economic determinism (otherwise known as scientific socialism), i.e. that history moves in a linear fashion. Like other simple-minded dogmas that arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as racial hierarchies, Lombrosian criminology, and Freudianism, this notion has proved its harmful intellectual bankruptcy time and again.
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Actually, your claim that the first Reign of Terror in France took the lives of thousands is only partially true; it ultimately led to the dictatorship of Napoleon, whose bloody campaigns resulted in the death of countless combatants in many European countries as well as Haiti. The French Revolution, far from being an engine of historical progress, ushered in a period of reaction that lasted for decades.
As for your assertion that the other reign of terror (?) took the lives of “hundreds of millions,” what is the source of your information? Are you referring to the history of Europe from the time of ancient Greece up the storming of the Bastille in 1789?
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Good points, ahmet.
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I grew up in a university town at the height of the Vietnam War. I couldn’t stand the left then and I can’t stand it today for simple reason that they don’t know how the world works, not to mention the fact that the kids of the lefties were A WHOLE LOT NASTIER than the kids with conservative-leaning parents who at least took the time to teach their kids BASIC MANNERS.
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sure, maybe conservative kids had better manners but that is neither here nor there really. this is not a personal matter based on personal experiences or feelings. this is an objective, historical issue. we have to rise above our own narrow lives. what does it mean to be “left” or “right” anyway, today especially? these terms have always been amorphous but by now they’ve lost all real content. the thing is to get what a political issue is, politics at its core is not about ideas or values but always about material interests. the material interests of some people necessitate the destruction of lives on a mass scale. this is the plain and undeniable reality. people benefiting from the carnage themselves are not even evil but they are not stupid either. they all know what they are doing. this is hard to accept but what are you going to achieve by denying it? it is sort of a war and the logic of war have to dictate the actions of both sides. psychiatric oppression is not separate from the general misery of most people. the problem and the solutions are concrete.
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Well, SOME of them are pretty stupid…
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ahmet, I suggest you take another look at the title of this essay which goes as follows: “Psychiatry Criticism Politics: When the Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend”.
I took this to mean exactly what it says: that it’s wise to be careful with whom you speak when criticizing establishment psychiatry for the not-so-simple reason that establishment psychiatry is what it has always been—a hot-button issue politically, meaning there’s a very good chance whatever you say might be taken out of context to either support or detract from political ideas you may not agree with. It is its own kind of political sleight of hand that could be called “Authoritarianism Lite”.
And the truth is politics is always personal, and establishment psychiatry is a prime example of this tried-and-true axiom.
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All the malefactors know what they are doing? Really? You are crediting the powers-that-be with far too much knowledge. Furthermore, I would say that a good number of people benefiting from the “carnage” (those who knowingly pollute the environment for the sake of short-term profit, or food company executives who deliberately put out addictive toxic products that lead to obesity, illness and premature death) could properly be described as evil.
Lastly, what are the concrete solutions you hint at? Could violent revolution possibly be one of them? How would that remedy psychiatric abuse?
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ahmet, I could be mistaken, but to me it seems your reaction to my initial comment to you proves what Bruce seems to be saying in his essay, which I took to be this: that it’s easy to have one’s point of view misconstrued (sometimes willfully!) in order to fit the other person’s political objectives. I consider this to be authoritarianism dressed up as friendly discourse.
What I was trying to say was this: no matter where someone stands politically, one side can be just as authoritarian as the other, authoritarian meaning suppression of dissenting views.
My unfortunate experience on the schoolyard playground mirrored what was happening on the college campus across the street where the left-leaning students—who touted themselves as being “tolerant”—very aggressively SHUT DOWN their classmates who dared challenge THEIR intolerance. It was not just unfriendly, it was authoritarianism in infancy.
I would appreciate it if you would try to appreciate the personal rather than deify the impersonal because that’s where understanding begins in a disharmonious world.
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Birdsong, I totally agree with you – authoritarianism can exist in various parts of the political spectrum. Authoritarian people are simply people who don’t allow others freedom and this includes freedom of speech.
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I agree as well – authoritarianism is an attitude toward others, and it has no requirement of a particular political view. There are plenty of left-leaning authoritarians.
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CLARIFICATION: No matter where someone stands politically, politically meaning power, influence and ideological control, one side can be just as authoritarian as the other, authoritarian meaning silencing opposing views, which by another name is also called war—in psychiatry or anywhere else.
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Birdsong
You said: “I grew up in a university town at the height of the Vietnam War. I couldn’t stand the left then and I can’t stand it today for simple reason that they don’t know how the world works…”
Where did you stand on the anti-Vietnam War movement, AND the Civil Rights and women’s equality movement – to name a few of the causes led by Leftists of that era? The Right Wing of that era was fighting against those righteous causes. It seems like the Left knew just little better “how the world works” at that time in history.
Richard
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For goodness sake, Richard. Your question just proves my point: that authoritarian mindsets assume the worst of people they barely know.
Perhaps if you’d taken the time to read my comment carefully, it might have occurred to you that I was just a little girl at the time.
This is not meant to suggest a child’s perspective on serious matters isn’t worthy of respect because very often young children are able to see things more clearly than adults who very often are unknowingly hogtied to their own political beliefs.
And as for how the world works: I don’t believe wartime environments foster real progress, whether on college campuses, schoolyard playgrounds or anywhere else.
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Birdsong
You said: “Your question just proves my point: that authoritarian mindsets assume the worst of people they barely know.”
Funny, I thought you just said in an above comment that you were NOT accusing me of “authoritarianism.” Now, with me merely asking a question about where you stood on some world shaking events in the past, you then essentially say you should take credit because I’ve somehow allegedly proven your original point.
This particular conversation can go no further for me at this time. BUT I will assume the BEST in the future and make a fresh start if we were ever to engage again in the MIA comment section.
Carry on! I wish you the best. Richard
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Richard’s, it’s very possible for even the most egalitarian-minded person to unknowingly think in an authoritarian way—especially about things they care deeply about. It’s just part of being human.
Which means there’s a difference between having an authoritarian mindset and actually BEING an authoritarian.
And one of the tell-tale signs that it’s happening is believing you’re immune to thinking in an authoritarian way.
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It seems to me, Richard, most people confuse the cultural Left (what Bruce refers to as the authoritarian Left, and Musa Al Gharbi calls “symbolic capitalist”-and others the PMC and elite, etc.), with that of the highly marginalized antiauthoritarian Left. To illustrate how this might look in public spaces, Chomsky said that he had an excellent relationship with the professors and administration at his “conservative” MIT, but anytime he met a colleague at the Left “liberal” Harvard club, “a silence and coldness descended upon the room as if Satan had entered”. I highly recommend reading Al Gharbi’s book “We Have Never Been Woke”, a searing analysis of the faux Left, and how they bamboozle the masses into thinking the cultural faux Left is the progressive Left. These are complex political issues that require significant reading and deep consideration, lest one otherwise fall into acceptable thinking that is anything but thinking. As Hannah Arendt said after her (New Yorker) analysis of Eichmann caused such an uproar, “Thinking is a lonely business”…
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I am sympathetic with this comment…
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ahmet, I think what authoritarianism might mean in the context of this essay is governing bodies or other powerful institutions or people that seek to systematically silence different opinions by any means possible, something referred to in some circles as institutional narcissism, something that’s the opposite of the democratic process.
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“Finally, I think it is incumbent for critics of psychiatry to recognize how difficult it is to navigate the public discourse terrain, and how all of us are vulnerable to honest mistakes.”
Yup.
Unfortunately, some people can never quite grasp that life in many respects can be much like a chess game, especially in things political, and that it’s always helpful to find out beforehand what someone’s favorite flavor of Kool-Aid is and how often they drink it.
Even more helpful is avoiding the die-hard Kool-Aid drinkers altogether, if at all possible, a very difficult task in a world overflowing with ideological addictions of every imaginable flavor.
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A helpful hint: Never trade nuance for narrative, discourse for dogma, discernment for certainty, or insight for ideology.
In other words, never sacrifice your own intellectual or emotional integrity to appease the blowhards holding the mike.
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Thank you, Bruce and MIA, for yet another absolutely priceless piece.
Why have we humans, thus far in our evolution, so often given power to malicious autocrats?
Some possible clues:
1. Isn’t it odd that most if not all of us cannot tickle ourselves to laughter, nor lift a maximum weight over our head without grimacing?
Ever wonder why not? I did (and read that some who experience auditory hallucinations may be able to tickle themselves to laughter).
2. “The inclination to share thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature. If in pain I wish to let you know it, and ask your sympathy and assistance; and my pleasurable emotions also, I wish to communicate to, and share with you.”
― Abraham Lincoln, who, with charity toward all and malice toward none, also reminded us that the greatest threat to the US would come from within the US and declared (in his first Inaugural address:
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
3. Tom Paine pointed out that confused and foolish as we are, “Men weary themselves in pursuit of leisure,” while neglecting to acknowledge that women, being wiser, do it for Love.
4. Erich Fromm well understood that, while we crave freedom, paradoxically, we fear it, too, and take endless opportunities to give away our freedom, our power, our autonomy to various authorities – thus far, at least.
5. Steinbeck understood that we are all (endlessly) perfectible creatures, of course:
“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
6. Marianne Williamson (and then Nelson Mandela) acknowledged that “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure,” but did not, so far as I know, fully explain this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhZOTveyzGM
Marianne wrote that in her “A Return to Love,” a book inspired by “A Course in Miracles,” a book which includes the following lines:
“I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.”
While, of course, we cannot all endorse or share the Him part, we may yet all acknowledge our own inherent, indwelling divinity?
7. The Founding Fathers, in insisting that it is “self-evident that all men are created equal” (discounting, in true Biblical style, the women and children!), have fed us The Great Lie, if, being equal as and only as immortal beings, we can none of us ever have been created, at all, of course!
We humans, in our mad, common and collective tribal passion for agreement and approval and Groupthink, seem to have been destined, up until now, at least, to allow “those who can make us believe absurdities to make us to commit atrocities” – and invariably by believing that there are good guys and gals and bad gals and guys.
Are there, really? And, even if we were all created equal, how could there be, even if we were all miscreants?!
What if, deep, deep down, we actually all know that we are here only to be truly helpful, and to as many and as powerfully and efficiently as possible, of course, as well as that we are infinite and immortal, one and all, de Uno, plurimi, et de pluribus, Unum?
This might explain everything (as our old biology teacher, Bill, told us back in the ’70’s having read “in ‘Woman’s Own’ or was it in ‘Woman’s Way,'” he said, “that they’re after discovering there’s a depressant in white bread!”)?
And it might explain why
8. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
And also
9. Rousseau’s “Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.”
and
10. Francis of Assisi’s: “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
I believe the above might explain, inter alia, that our very deepest fear and also the reason we cede our freedom, power and autonomy to authoritarians and others is because we know we must somehow ultimately learn to realize, to unleash our unique and unlimited potential in service of all, and are so often overwhelmed by evidence seeming to suggest that we can never achieve this, when, in fact, we all inevitably can, must, and will – together, and soon.
Heartfelt and soulfelt thanks, again, Bruce and MIA, for such an extraordinarily splendid essay, and for one in the most superb service of us…ALL!
Tom.
“It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
“And indeed, all Evil whatsoever, is in some Sense an involuntary Misfortune to the Soul; for the Soul never chooses Evil, considered as Evil, but under the Disguise and Pretence of some Good; as sometimes Riches, sometimes Sensual Enjoyments, or Honours, or Preferments and Greatness.” – Epictetus, who died c 135 A.D., as translated by George Stanhope in 1700.
“…for we are all as God made us, and many of us much worse.” – Sancho Panza in “Don Quixote.”
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I really appreciate Bruce using the term “authoritarian Left”! I’ve never before seen this designation, but I desperately hope more writers and intellectuals utilize it, save finds its way into the public lexicon. Though I’ve read a slew of books during the past couple months ‘alone’, that take several different yet equally damming tracts calling out the faux Left-that Bruce alluded to here, the moniker Authoritarian Left was substituted with various euphemisms. One very easy example of how this Faux left operates is the recently passed budget bill by the (supposed) liberal “Left” city of San Francisco. This is a budget bill that is so Trumpian (significant increases to the Police and all things corporate, and significant cuts to all things civic/civil), that it makes Project 2025 appear unambitious. Yet…the San Francisco careerist and political class will continue to regard their city as Left-progressive, and the legacy media and general public et al will swallow this blue pill narrative and continue to dislike San Francisco for mostly all the wrong reasons.
Of which brings me to the commenter who “can’t stand” the Left due to his or her experiences with them during childhood. Firstly, having lived in Ann Arbor and Boulder Colorado for over a combined 25 years, I totally understand how you (might) feel! FWIW, I find the faux Left impossible and insufferable, and not a little dangerous. But when it comes to the “cultural faux Left”, I think of them the way I do faux Christians like House Speaker Mike Johnson. In fact, at this point I’m not sure which is more dangerous to American civil society. But I’d bet the farm that both are as equally disdainful of the Left I identify with, the Left that has always been the moral and intellectual consciousness of this nation, the Left that without, we may very well still be living in slavery, have no New Deal, and women and people of color would not have “the vote” (Etc.!). What terrifies me now is that the very antiauthoritarian Left that sacrificed so much to give America these rights, is now largely populated by a professional class who’ve been enculturated in vast privilege’s that earlier generations who brought us these rights, never knew. Simply, I’m not confident todays antiauthoritarian Left is up to the task of seeing America through our current authoritarian deluge; hell, I’m not even confident their up to standing up to the faux Left…
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Thank goodness. It’s awful feeling you might be the only person on MIA willing and able to see the confounding hypocrisy—and idiocy—of both the faux Left and the cultural faux Left.
FWIW, I see the cultural faux Left as far more dangerous than the faux Left. And if anyone wonders why, just talk to any teenager having a hard time finding a safe place to discover their own political beliefs.
In any event, I believe the anti-authoritarian Left of yesteryear bears little resemblance to today’s Left, whether it be faux or cultural faux. And that’s why I call myself independent with a social conscience.
IMHO.
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“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force” George Orwell.
I guess we should be careful what we wish for. The ‘unintended negative outcomes’ of those exposing the truth can only increase. Good to see that at least there was one with the courage to intervene and who doesn’t have the stomach for ‘it’.
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With you, Joel.
Szasz wasn’t the first or last to realize that clear, deep thinking demands and requires (and maybe also commands) courage.
While we may sense the truth of something wishing to reveal it’s to us, yet we may baulk at the expenditure of energy we
suspect required to unravel and reveal it to us, for us.
Churchill spoke of “the mouse in the room;” Einstein said that it wasn’t that he was so smart, just that he stayed with the problem longer, Jesus, in vain, begged folks to deny their egos, to realize that they are the light of the world and that the Kingdom is within them, and Meister Eckhart,
“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.” etc..etc..etc.
When we experience a “visceral reaction” to a statement, I think it may be because we cannot yet summon our reserves necessary to rebut, modify or understand it, and it may be that we all share one single Deep Truth, if only we can find the terms necessary to expunge our superficial disagreements?
Some ancients seemingly saw what we consider insane behavior as madness, others as Original Sin, as sinfulness, forgetfulness, ignorance, pride, vanity, narcissism/ego.
But all the mystics, I suspect, like Socrates, saw that all or almost all our human suffering resulted from blinkered vision, from blindness and from wilful blindness, as his Cave Allegory, at least as reported by Plato, affirms, I believe.
“The blind leading the blind” is a phrase which appeared in at least two Upanishads long before Jesus reportedly lamented it.
Jung taught us, too, that human suffering is all or almost all about unconsciousness, its cure spiritual awakening, or so I understand him.
“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”
– Meister Eckhart, in the 13th century!
Wishing you mirth, and with heartfelt thanks,
Tom.
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Tom, by saying that “all or almost all our human suffering” results “from blinkered vision, from blindness and from wilful blindness”, you imply that it is always or almost always people’s fault that they are suffering.
This is not true. Mystics often led a life isolated from other people and it distorted their perspective. What about oppression and abuse? There are people who are cruel to others (and even people who literally torture others). There are people who exploit others. Suffering can be caused by other people and evil is widespread in this world. And of course illnesses can also cause suffering, including pain.
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Joanna, I simply do not accept the notion that mystics living in isolation necessarily had a distorted perspective. You are no doubt familiar with early Christian recluses who were revered for their self-abnegation and piety. I can also cite the life of the Cynic Diogenes, who lived in squalor on the street yet was honored by his contemporaries in ancient Greece–including Alexander the Great–for his integrity and wisdom.
Judgment of “correct” perspective evolves over time and is always connected with the mores and prejudices of a given culture. This holds true for psychiatric diagnoses as well.
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Joel, I was not implying that mystics had a distorted perspective. In fact, I was not implying anything negative about mystics and I do respect them.
What I meant in my reply to Tom that if (the “if” is crucial here) any mystics claim that all or virtually all human suffering is caused by “blinkered vision”, “blindness” and “wilful blindness”, this perspective may be linked to the isolation of some/many mystics from other human beings.
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It took me a while to realize that very often the best “antidepressant” is staying away as much as possible from people I find irritating.
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Joanna, I thank you for your comments.
I feel immensely grateful for them.
I noted that you had a slightly similar comments in response to James Hall following a May 16, 2025 blog, https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/05/betrayal-professionals-lived-experience/ .
“Are we [not] a nation of mystics?”
http://mindfire.ca/From%20Caterpillar%20to%20Butterfly.htm
Are we not all destined to become mystics, enlightened beings, Zen or “Ascended” mistresses/masters, even if ever and always here, “on Earth?”
Is not everything, at least since the last big bang, propelling us towards our now imminent global “spiritual awakening,” and no small thanks to you and to MIA?
My belief is that who KNOWS what is right will DO what is right, and that this applies to every human being, always.
I asked a 94-year-old “atheist,” one of whose parents had shot the other dead, looking back on his life, if he had not always been doing his best.
“At the time,” he replied.
Is any of us any different?
When I have acted “badly,” I believe it was and can only have been when fear and/or forgetfulness (thoughtlessness/ignorance/stupidity/”unconsciousness”) overwhelmed me – just like ABSOLUTELY everyone else.
I see any thought, word or act of hostility/aggression as being rooted in weakness, frailty and fear, and any lack of compassion as being forgetfulness, weakness, immaturity.
I look at perfect or pluperfect strangers in traffic and think, “Oh, thank you, you poor fellow human being, for coming here to save me, and to suffer every bit as much as I have, and maybe much more, already, too, to do just that!”
I believe we are all equal, and that we all suffer equally through our human lifetimes, however many it takes.
As souls, I believe every one of us wants to help, but that we are all confused, confounded, misled, blinded and, in turn, blind others, too. And so we all suffer – until we no longer do, or need to.
“Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.” ― Eckhart Tolle, in “Stillness Speaks.”
A. In response to my comments, above, you wrote:
‘Tom, by saying that “all or almost all our human suffering” results “from blinkered vision, from blindness and from wilful blindness”, you imply that it is always or almost always people’s fault that they are suffering.’
Clearly, I have (once more!) completely failed to make myself clear. Sorreee!
My philosophy is that every human being is every bit as blameless, as faultless and as flawless as every other creature that ever was, you see? Likely, you do not.
I ask folks, sometimes (plu)perfect strangers:
“Know what I’d do if I were you?”
“No. What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d do whatever YOU’RE gonna do!”
Sometimes, I think they get it. Maybe.
When I tell other folks that, if I were them, I’d have done the same thing, I suspect they very often do not get it, and simply take my remark as meaning “It was the right thing to do.”
When we kids would return home apoplectic about the “misbehavior” of some other kid, and the injustice of it all, Mom would say,
“Lovey, say ‘There, but for the grace of God, go !I’ Yes! Now! Say it, Lovey!”
Mom (Vera, actually, Joanna – I believe we all get the rightest of right names), endlessly quoted and misquoted her beloved William Shakespeare at us young kids, too, sometimes improving on him. Like Bill, I reckon Vera was something of a mystic, of a Zen master/mistress, for she really understood Hamlet and repeatedly insisted:
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Were I a true, fulltime mystic/Zen master, Joanna, I suspect that
(i) I could, perhaps, have any volume of alcohol or other general anesthetic, or benzodiazepine, or of so-called antipsychotic or of (virtually?) any neurotoxin poured into me and remain unmoved – until I collapsed, unconscious.
(ii) I could have gasoline poured all over me and be set on fire and sit there quietly as I expired – or seemed to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
(iii) I could always remember and believe that this world is – or, infinitely more likely, that these worlds are – always unfolding exactly and precisely as they should.
(iv) No longer wishing to offer or actually offering any (“internal”) resistance (danger-alarm or fear response) to any event, I might find myself dwelling in universes whose challenges, rather than appearing any longer to threaten me or my physical safety (were I still to have one), offer me only endless opportunities to deepen my presence.
(v) Realizing my oneness with all Life and with every lifeform, I would be utterly incapable of wishing myself or any “fellow-creature” any harm, having become utterly incapable of any illwill or negativity, having transcended duality, rather like that seemingly improbable if not impossible character of Kipling’s seemingly ludicrously sexist “If,” below.
(vi) I might be so fully able to understand what I mean by “the blindness of us humans” as to be able to explain it far more satisfactorily to you, Joanna, than I yet can.
While the ancient Jews may have had many nouns/verbs for “sin” in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, at least one of them meaning to stray from the path due to haste/impetuosity, I believe that one Greek word used in a Canonical gospel borrows “Hamartia” from the term used in archery for missing the mark and/or falling short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia
This is very much how I see human suffering, or so-called sinfulness/mental illness: If you want to hit the bullseye you may miss it for want of skill, practice, care, patience, calm…but you cannot miss it deliberately, can you?
When we suffer, sometimes it’s clear that that suffering has such a momentum “of its own” that “we” do not even try to stop it: “We” are carried along by our minds.
When calm, I guess most of us know that anger is not good for us or for others, but when overwhelmed by anger, just try telling me/us, “Calm down, why doncha?”!
Very much like sleepiness, say, I see our unhappiness, suffering, angst, “anxiety/depression” or anxiety-depression” as having a life and a momentum of its own, whether it lies dormant within us or is in active phase.
WE – our “higher” or “deeper” selves, “our/us souls,” our “better angels,” our “awareness/consciousnessor,” our more enlightened selves, our psyches-in-toto – these never choose to suffer, and yet we succumb to suffering because, as mystics teach, our unobserved, uncontrolled minds, our egos, left to their own devices, create suffering – for ourselves and for others…until we all learn better – as mystics, as enlightened beings, as Zen mistresses/masters.
We do not choose to be blind, but we are. “We are born ignorant, not stupid. Education makes us stupid.” Perhaps. Or we are born not as tabulae rasae or blank slates but forgetful, and then led farther astray by others…until we re-awaken, spiritually.
I like to believe that, while the following or something very like it may have occurred in the life of one Jesus of Nazareth, especially taken in conjunction with Jesus’s remarks about the blind leading the blind and both falling in the pit, “blindness” is the nearest available term there then existed for Jesus to refer to (spiritual) unconsciousness or to the “sinful” unenlightened, pre-Salvation/Liberation/Metanoia state, while “the light of the world” refers to (formless) Consciousness (as do “My Father’s House,” and “The Kingdom of The Skies/The Heavens/Heaven/God/The Father/My Father/Our Father”).
‘As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ‘ – Gospel of John, 9:1-5.
The belief that (if he lived and breathed and preached and said some, at least, of the stuff attributed to him) the same Jesus also told a few fishermen (wasn’t it, in Matthew 5:14?):
“You are the light of the world,”
also supports the view that by “the light of the world” he meant Consciousness, for which there then existed no such term – Consciousness, at least for now embodied.
(vii) My belief is that, like every other mystic, Zen master/mistress or spiritual teacher worthy of the name, and like every last one of us, given time, Jesus, too, came to do all he could to explain to us that we are all faultless in every way (Be ye perfect/whole, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect/whole!”), and that, the sooner we see this, the sooner we “like small children,” enter “the Kingdom” and, shameless again, no longer blame ourselves or one another for A N Y T H I N G, ever again.
B. Joanna, you then wrote:
“This is not true. Mystics often led a life isolated from other people and it distorted their perspective. What about oppression and abuse? There are people who are cruel to others (and even people who literally torture others). There are people who exploit others. Suffering can be caused by other people and evil is widespread in this world. And of course illnesses can also cause suffering, including pain.”
What about oppression and abuse? This surely becomes impossible for any of us once we are enlightened, by definition, don’t you think?
Historically, I doubt we know of a single mystic who was not persecuted, as though by less enlightened folks trying to steal their light, their power, their enlightenment, by pulling wings from flies…and by observing the reactions of those enlightened beings when abused, exploited, persecuted, calumnied, tortured, crucified…
Who has not been cruel to others, and to themselves? I know of none. I can imagine none. For all his enlightenment, it seems to me that, if there is any truth in any of the Canonical or Gnostic gospels, Jesus, too, in his own forgetfulness, stooped to impatiently rebuking folks who, obviously, “knew not what they did.”
“There are people who exploit others,” you wrote.
Have we not all – even if only by a a spur of the moment, reflexive retort, by a thoughtless cruel word, or by using force or any threat of force to affect another’s actions?
If Time, Fear and the temporary, relative “evil” they produce are learning devices for immortal beings such as we are, then once we no longer need such crude learning aids, can we not move on as enlightened beings must to nondualistic, transcendent worlds of ever-increasing peace, joy, love? What is it in us which recoils from this very possibility?!
I like to believe that Jesus may indeed have said something like, “In my Father’s House are many mansions,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
meaning that there is much more likely to be an infinitude of “parallel” worlds rather than just one, and that, once we access Atonement/Forgiveness/Enlightenment/Acceptance/Zen/Salvation, they are all ours for the asking:
“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it….”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if—
“And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His Heaven commences ere the world be past!”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44292/the-deserted-village
Comedy = Tragedy + Time.
And
Physical Pain = Sensation + Fear.
Pain? The word, at least in English and French, is related to penalty and to the notion of punishment, as you may know, Joanna, https://www.etymonline.com/word/pain
Various erroneous theories of pain have fallen into the trap of believing that we human beings possess “peripheral pain-recepors,” or “nociceptors,” specialized nerve endings, sensitive to “tissue-damaging or potentially tissue-damaging” stimuli (what conceivable physical stimulus is not both!?) which, when stimulated, transmit painful feelings to the brain.
When we understand that physical pain is turned on and off by the brain/mind, we begin to see how increasing control of our conscious and subconscious/unconscious minds can bring with it transcendence of both acute and chronic pain, as the work of Professor Howard Schubiner and others now clearly shows:
Minute 37:39 – Minute 38:09 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINdA6E14Sk
“I mean, I often say that I’m basically a faith healer: I get people to believe that they’re not broken – I get people to believe that they’re not damaged – and then they heal! Faith healing!”
As Howard points out, what applies to so many chronically painful conditions applies equally to many or all “neuroses,” to anxiety/depression” or “anxiety-depression,” fatigue, insomnia and a multitude of what are now more and more clearly identified as purely or partially psychosomatic conditions.
As for injuries and illnesses, Joanna: Were I a Zen master, I can’t see how I’d have ridden my bike into a kerb and broken my arm three weeks ago, and I am not at all sure the Buddha could have died of food poisoning (if indeed he did) if his immune system had been as potent as those of other enlightened beings may naturally be!
I doubt any of us poor, blind, blinded, blinding and (seemingly) wilfully blind beings would have signed up for these painful lessons we learn as humans had we not decided, outside of Time, that diving at least once more into Time, Pain and Suffering…was worth it, all.
So thank you, too, for being here for me!
Now, where did I leave my sense of humor, please?
Wishing you merriment, mirth, music and mercy – and so very much more,
Tom.
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Tom, thank you so much for your reply to comment. For now let me just say this: unfortunately there are people who seem to enjoy hurting and humiliating others. Anyone who has ever come across such people will know what I am talking about.
Of course one could say that such people must be on some level frightened, weak, immature etc. – but there is a huge difference between them and those who don’t want to hurt others.
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While my personal current belief, Joanna, is that, even, or especially, or essentially, meaning necessarily, as beings so infinitely beyond any conceivable present notions of human perfection, we are necessarily also equally evolving animals who have not yet quite relinquished our “base, bestial, reptilian, [apparent] physical survival, selfish-gene” instincts.
While, for all I know, you may be the or an exception such, I believe that even the most highly advanced, evolved, compassionate, empathetic, unconditionally loving and forgiving of our species still retain at least some instinctual, self-preservation, egoic reflexes which remain to be transcended.
It may be that, no matter how extravagantly and deliberately provocative the behavior of others towards one is, and no matter how sudden and unexpected this behavior is, there are some among us who no longer reflexively think defensive thoughts, say defensive words or take retaliatory action, even in the most intimate settings
It’s been reported that, when a would-be assassin suddenly drew a gun on Paramahansa Yogananda, the latter immediately looked upon the man with such overwhelmingly unconditional love that he instantly dropped the gun, fell down and burst into tears.
I wish I were so well-balanced as to be able to love all sudden would-be antagonists so well. I believe few are, yet, although we may all very well be, soon.
In the meantime, I think our old traditional, religious ways of seeing human beings “as them and us,” “us believers, we, the faithful and those infidels,” “good/virtuous vs evil/wicked,” “normal and abnormal,” “decent folks and beasts, psychopaths, sociopaths,” “perpetrators and victims,” “the enlightened and the unenlightened,” and, perhaps, maybe even “mystics and ordinary folks” etc. are what perpetuates our societal problems.
I believe we can only permanently solve, dissolve or transmute any social problems or challenges or growth opportunities we encounter from higher/deeper/other levels of Consciousness than from those which gave rise to and have perpetuated those problems/challenges/growth opportunities, and that “what we fight, we strengthen; what we resist, persists.”
So, while most certainly some of us clearly still delight in hurting or exploiting others, sexually, emotionally, physically, financially or in any other way, I believe that such stealing of another’s psychic or other energies is animalistic, survivalistic, and that, while it may remain dormant and greatly diminished in some, sufficient appropriate provocation will reveal some remaining vestige of it, at least, in us all.
Your namesake, Joan of Arc, for instance, famously confessed that, stretched sufficiently on the rack, she might confess to anything, at all, but that, taken off again, she would recant: She knew that she, too, had her physical and psychic limitations.
Deprive any of us of sleep for a few days, and I’d expect to see defensiveness, hostility, and aggression, too.
But I still haven’t made myself clear, have I!?
Wishing you mirth and comfort and joy,
Tom.
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Tom, I would not say that we all suffer equally. Some people are lucky. Some people suffer mainly because of their way of thinking. But there are also lots of people who suffer or have suffered e.g. because of other people’s callousness or cruelty.
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I doubt any two of us, from embryo to the most long-lived human, have ever suffered equally in two single human lifetimes, Joanna.
But I think it infinitely unlikely that any one of us could possibly live just one, single, human lifetime, considering all the eternity that is “out there,” either, you see.
Perhaps every single seeming reincarnation story is bogus, whether fraudulent or not.
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/james-leininger-reincarnation-case
Perhaps some of our phobias and other predilections can only be explained in terms of previous human lifetimes? Perhaps not?
Perhaps no identical twins begin life with identical psyches, or with a single psyche rather than as two souls? Perhaps they all do.
Regardless, the notion of having one, finite, mortal lifetime in all timeless eternity strikes me as a particularly bizarre religious belief, no matter how pervasively it persists in Western civilization.
Moreover, were I to ask any “true” scientist: “Did you die, say, three minutes ago?” I would expect her answer would be something like “I do not know! How could I possibly know?!”
Were I to ask a religious person the same question, I would expect an “Of course not!”
Thanks, again.
Dziękuję!
Tom.
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Tom, I think that the problem with discussions about suffering is that many people tend to focus on their own perspective and their own experiences. Of course there are people who very strongly feel that their suffering was caused mainly by their way of thinking. However, we can’t assume that this is everyone’s experience.
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If I think something is painful, excruciating, tolerable or intolerable, so it is – for me.
If I think it is not..
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Hamlet.
Yes, when people speak of “mind over matter,” they are generally not speaking of how our minds can bring about the movement of such molecules of neurotransmitters in our brains as to cause the depolarization of resting membrane potentials in appropriate nerves so that contractions and relaxations of certain muscles occur.
But when people use conscious breathing techniques, be it Lamaze techniques or others to transcend pain, I suggest that they are showing that we can exploit Something-Else-over-mind techniques to transcend pain/suffering – much like any calmly self-immolating monk, or the feats of parents lifting superhuman weights of their kids etc.
Best wishes!
Tom.
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Tom, I definitely have to disagree when you say that “every human being is every bit as blameless, as faultless and as flawless as every other creature that ever was”.
What about people who do horrible things to others? Are e.g. torturers as blameless, faultless and flawless as their victims? Human evil exists and it’s not true that we are all equally tainted by it.
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If we (immortal) beings experience what it is to be human in order to learn what can only be learned by (physically and psychically) being human, first-hand, then, much as Richard Bach, for instance, suggests in his book “One,” it seems unlikely that any of us could learn all we need/wish to only by playing heroes or victims and without ever experiencing what it must be like, for instance, to know the pain of remorse on realizing what horrors we have caused or allowed to happen to others, be it through sadism/cruelty, desperation, ignorance, weakness, foolishness or neglect, don’t you think?
I try to learn from the tremendous cruelty, often masquerading as virtue, which I can see on the “news” daily. When I find it overwhelmingly distressing, a part of me may be relieved that I do, another part may sense that I can do more to help it by so evolving (as that immortal-work-in-progress human being) as not to be so overwhelmed: I can only give of my best when at my best.
“Otherwise,” I remind myself, “how could these possibly be the very best of all possible and impossible worlds?”
(Not that this always cheers me up, mind you.)
Thank you, once again.
Tom.
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Tom, you are asking “Who has not been cruel to others, and to themselves? I know of none. I can imagine none.”
I have to disagree with you. I know people who are never cruel to others. I have never been cruel to another person. It is possible to go through life without ever being cruel.
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Tom, on a final note (I don’t want to bombard you with comments!):
You seem to assume that we are all sometimes cruel, that we all sometimes exploit others etc. But this is simply not true. I am certainly not an angel, but I have never been cruel and I have never exploited another person. And it’s simply not true that we are always or almost always the cause of our suffering.
Tom, there are people who have been hurt, though they don’t hurt others. If one says to such a person “There is no real difference between you and the person who hurt you”, one is distorting reality and actually gaslighting this person. If one says to such a person: “You are creating your own suffering”, one is also distorting reality and gaslighting him/her.
When you say “our egos, left to their own devices, create suffering”, you are unfortunately denying the existence of suffering which is not caused by our own egos.
You may be one of the lucky people who have never been deeply hurt or humiliated by someone else. My experience has been different. I did not create my own suffering – in fact, I love life and appreciate all the good people and things in my life.
But I do feel a bit exasperated when someone – like you – implies that suffering is only a product of our mind. This is how YOU feel about your suffering, Tom. But your experience is not everyone’s experience…
My dad died from a horrible brain cancer. In the last weeks of his life he was fully paralysed and completely unable to talk. What happened to him was something very real – certainly not a product of his ego/imagination.
Of course there are lucky people who will never experience a similar illness and don’t have such a person in their family. But the fact that one has not personally experienced something does not prove that it does not exist. I have not personally experienced lots of horrible things which happen to many other people in this world. I have no right to say that their horrible experiences are only a product of their ego. If someone has experienced only suffering produced by his/her ego, s/he is a very lucky and privileged person!
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I would not suggest for a moment that your father’s suffering was not real or merely a product of his imagination or of his ego, Joanna.
I believe we all necessarily endure tremendous suffering, much of it unimaginable to others.
But I also have to believe that human suffering is finite, and that our motivation to undergo it, as I think we must pre-agree to it all, is because, before forgetting again, we must know, “as souls,” that our efforts are more than rewarded.
I think cancers may be genetic, environmental or stress related, and often all three.
I believe Daniel Kish’s cancer was congenital and probably genetic, and that he made a most unique gift to humanity from his (very different) cancer.
On reading your mention of your father’s agonies, I thought of Stephen Hawking. The following day, on Page 213 of Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth,” I read
‘There was a beautiful line in the article which confirmed what I had sensed when I looked in his eyes many years earlier. Commenting upon his life, he said (now with the help of a voice synthesizer), “Who could have wished for more?”‘
And on a Substack piece on July 31st, I happened to read two more quotes attributed to Stephen Hawking:
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
And…
“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. While there’s life, there is hope.”
Very few of us humans may yet have developed/evolved what it takes to transcend so much physical limitation, and I am not one of them, but some obviously have done so, and assuming that we are all equal, I assume we all can and will do so.
In the meantime, Joanna, my heart goes out to you and to your dad, as well as to Stephen Hawking (for I believe they remain with us), in very great gratitude for all you have all been through, and for the courage and inspiration I draw from your courage and from your life stories.
Thank you!
Dziękuję.
Tom.
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Joanna, thanks a million for your responses!
I was awfully sorry to read of that ordeal which your father and you and your family went through.
WE humans…!
Do you believe that all that experience, and the witnessing of all that suffering – by your dad, yourself and others – has played a part in all that has inspired you to reach out and try to help all the people you most surely do help here at MIA, as you constantly do, please?
Before burdening you and/or Steve with further replies, may I ask you, please, also, if you really believe there are “good” and “bad” people on this planet (rather than all of us muddling through as best we know how at any given moment, say)?
And, if so, do you think people come here this way or not – do you believe we human beings are ever actually equal, at all, in any way, at all?
Thanks, again, Joanna – AND Steve and MIA!
Tom.
“….for we are all as God made us, and many of us much worse.” – Sancho Panza.
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A comment regarding the original article . Throwing the baby out with the bath water will not help .I personally am deeply thankful to orthodox psychiatry being bipolar in most probably hereditary. Long term medication has helped to control mood swings & periods of hypomania which I can well remember details of .In my case fancy therapies would not have controlled my problems .
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Can you cite credible sources to substantiate your supposition that biopolar disorders are hereditary (i.e. genetic) in origin?
Are you aware that long-term administration of neurotoxins has severe consequences (as shown by Peter Breggin and Peter Goetzsche, among others)?
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