Thomas Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) is perhaps the most famous critique of psychiatry. Many people, through either their lived experience of being labeled as mentally ill and/or through their critical thinking, agree with Szasz—concurring that it is not only logically false but also damaging to medicalize our emotional difficulties, disruptive behaviors, and problems in living.
Myths include unfounded beliefs and fictional narratives used to explain frightening natural phenomena. Those of us who agree with Szasz that “mental illness” is a myth will often put quotes around the term to bring attention to its problematic nature. Should we also be bringing attention to the problematic nature of the term “mental health”?
Before discussing psychiatry’s myth of mental health, it is important to understand exactly what Szasz actually meant by the myth of mental illness.
The Myth of Mental Illness
Establishment psychiatry and its mainstream media apologists—owing to both ignorance and malevolence—routinely mischaracterize the essence of what Szasz meant by the myth of mental illness.
Szasz was in no way questioning the reality that human beings can have painfully debilitating emotional difficulties, seriously disruptive behaviors, and what he called “problems in living” which can be quite catastrophic. While establishment psychiatry and its apologists have attempted to portray Szasz as either in denial of this suffering or lacking compassion for it, this is completely untrue.
Instead, Szasz argued that it is a logical error to label debilitating emotional difficulties, seriously disruptive behaviors, and overwhelming problems in living as medical conditions. While the myth of mental illness meets the psychological needs of some individuals and the political needs of many societal authorities, Szasz argued that it is a damaging metaphor that disempowers people and legitimizes onerous coercions and social controls.
What intellectually separates Szasz from most psychiatrists, past and present, is his knowledge of history, politics, analytic philosophy, and logic. He was very concerned with how language is used to control others. One of Szasz’s most famous quotes is: “In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined” (The Second Sin, 1973). Szasz cared about what George Orwell cared about, which is how language can be used by authorities to oppress and tyrannize.
In 1960, a year prior to the publication of his controversial book, Szasz published an article in the American Psychologist called “The Myth of Mental Illness,” in which he makes his position clear. He begins by stating: “During certain historical periods, explanatory conceptions such as deities, witches, and microorganisms appeared not only as theories but as self-evident causes of a vast number of events. I submit that today mental illness is widely regarded in a somewhat similar fashion, that is, as the cause of innumerable diverse happenings.” The myth of mental illness, he tells us, is this: “All problems in living are attributed to physicochemical processes which in due time will be discovered by medical research.”
Critics of Szasz have routinely based their discrediting of him on their unsubstantiated declaration that science has now proved Szasz wrong, claiming that psychiatry has now found biological correlates for what they have labeled as mental illnesses. However, not only does research contradict this claim, any psychiatric patient knows that their diagnoses were not based on any brain scan, blood test, or any biological markers because, outside of mainstream psychiatry’s imaginative hypotheses, there are none that scientific research has replicated and validated.
When each of psychiatry’s biological theories gets debunked and eventually discarded by establishment psychiatry—as was recently the case with the serotonin imbalance theory of depression—establishment psychiatry proposes another biological theory. And so for psychiatry critics, it is a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.
Even though establishment psychiatry is repeatedly proven wrong on each of their biomarker theories, they are clever to continue promoting their general biological theories, which compel critics to engage in debunking them. Establishment psychiatry cares little about losing every battle as long as they win the war of focusing on an issue that distracts society from the more important one: Even if a biological marker is found for a human variation that creates tension for society, this is not evidence that such a variation is a mental illness.
Specifically, if enslaved African Americans who attempted to flee slavery—infamously diagnosed by physician Samuel Cartwright as having the mental disorder of drapetomania—had been found to have a biological marker that differentiated them from those who did not attempt to flee, would such a hypothetical biological marker have proven that fleeing slavery was a mental illness? When psychiatry, not all that long ago, was declaring homosexuality to be a mental illness, even if biological differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals had been found, would that have been proof that homosexuality was a mental illness? And today, while no biological markers have ever been found for people who have heard voices, would such a finding justify a declaration that voice hearers are mentally ill? Put another way, there obviously are biological differences between males and females, but does that fact lead to a conclusion that one of these genders is mentally ill?
The Myth of Mental Health
Szasz pointed out that living has always been an arduous process, but today the hardship for many people in affluent societies is not so much the struggle for biological survival but navigating the “stresses and strains inherent in the social intercourse of complex human personalities.” The idea of “mental illness,” Szasz tells us, obscures the reality that life is a continuous struggle for a “place in the sun,” “peace of mind,” or some other human value. Szasz concluded: “Sustained adherence to the myth of mental illness allows people to avoid facing this problem, believing that mental health, conceived as the absence of mental illness, automatically insures the making of right and safe choices in one’s conduct of life.”
How is “mental health” defined by establishment psychiatry and psychology? In large measure it is defined by adjustment, adapting, coping, and complying with the demands being placed on us, and doing so without burdensome unpleasant emotional states and disruptive behaviors.
The American Psychological Association defines mental health as “a state of mind characterized by emotional well-being, good behavioral adjustment, relative freedom from anxiety and disabling symptoms, and a capacity to establish constructive relationships and cope with the ordinary demands and stresses of life.” The American Psychiatric Association defines mental health as “effective functioning in daily activities resulting in productive activities (such as in work, school or caregiving) . . . healthy relationships [and] ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity.”
Is adjustment to societal demands without unpleasant emotional states and disruptive behaviors in fact health, or is it a state that is valued by many psychiatrists, psychologists, and those at the top of the societal hierarchy?
Is Adjustment Evidence of Mental Health?
“Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of ‘unadjusted’ individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.”
—Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)
Not only Fromm, but many renowned critical thinkers—including Jiddu Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, R.D. Laing, and others—have observed that adjustment to an irrational, insane, and dehumanizing society quite logically can result in an irrational, insane, and dehumanizing individual.
Only a profoundly uncritical thinker would celebrate adjustment in of itself without a critical analysis of what one is adjusting to, but perhaps being a profoundly uncritical thinker is the most important criterion for being a thought leader in establishment psychiatry and psychology.
Many Mad in America readers can attest to the quality of their life dramatically improving to the extent that they stopped “good behavioral adjustment” to dehumanizing environments, be it a dysfunctional family or a traumatizing psychiatric hospital.
Szasz championed freedom, dignity, and autonomy, and refused to adjust to dehumanizing institutions and environments that he had personally experienced as subverting these values. Those institutions and environments that he had personally experienced and rebelled against included not only establishment psychiatry but also totalitarian communism. While the punches thrown by establishment psychiatry at Szasz do not land, a more valid criticism of Szasz is that he, unlike Erich Fromm, did not also attack the dehumanizing nature of corporate-capitalism along with his attacking establishment psychiatry and totalitarian communism.
My experience is that most people, outside of establishment psychiatry and psychology, resonate with the idea that the “world has gone crazy,” and they have their own experiences of various spokes on the societal wheel that are irrational, insane, and dehumanizing, often absurdly so. There are countless examples of such spokes, but here are few:
In a sane society, would we have prisons-for-profit? By 2022, the Sentencing Project reported that in the United States, 27 states and the federal government incarcerated 90,873 people in private prisons, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. So, we have a society in which corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group will increase their profits if increasing number of Americans are incarcerated.
In a sane society, would medical treatment itself be the third leading cause of death? A 2016 BMJ study, along with similar evidence reported in STAT, reveals that iatrogenic deaths caused by medical error such as incorrect medications, surgical mishaps, wrong diagnoses killed more than 250,000 Americans a year, making it the third-leading cause of death (after heart disease and cancer).
In a sane society, would we have a drug called an “antidepressant” that has an FDA warning stating that it increases the likelihood of suicidality, and which studies show that more of its users report sexual dysfunction than report reduced depression?
The reality is that most of the spokes in the societal wheel have become threats to our humanity. The classic responses to threat that mental health professionals talk about are fight or flight, with some adding the third “f” of a freeze reaction. However, there is a fourth “f” that most mental health professionals omit, a reaction that is the most common reaction by most mental health professionals, which is fawning—complying or adjustment.
Establishment psychiatrists and psychologists generally view the ability to adjust to environments as “mental health,” and many of them do not question whether or not their own adjustment to their sick professional environment has rendered themselves sick. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited offers a description of the type of “well-adjusted” individuals that characterize many mainstream psychiatrists and psychologists: “They are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness . . . . living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
Is “Relative Freedom from Anxiety” Evidence of Mental Health?
“But ‘let us beware,’ says Dr. Fromm, ‘of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.’”
—Erich Fromm, quoted in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited
The phenomenon that mainstream mental health professionals commonly call symptoms of mental illness are in fact simply human reactions, often to perceived threats. Not only do mainstream mental health professionals routinely adjust/comply/conform/fawn in response to threats, but they often deny the reality that their humanity is being threatened. When other people respond to threats with fight, flight, and freeze, mainstream mental health professionals label their actions as mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, disruptive behavioral disorders, and various dissociative states; however, these states evidence, as Fromm points out, “that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.”
During certain periods of U.S. history, it is more or less easier for mainstream mental health professionals to deny the irrational, insane, and dehumanizing nature of U.S. society. Currently, we live in one of those periods when even people “talented” in psychological denial and chemical numbing are having difficulty not experiencing high levels of anxiety.
Specifically, the ICE violence frighteningly reminds many Americans of dictatorships throughout history that have terrorized its citizens; and this violence, along with prosecutorial reprisals and economic assaults, have created an extremely high level of anxiety for many people. In addition to enormous anxiety, many Americans now feel embarrassment and even shame over how the world views the United States. Americans wake up every day, unsure of anything except that their leader will do something embarrassing that creates a threat to their security; for example, claiming he had been cheated out of the Nobel Peace Prize, and then stating, in the manner of a petulant young child, that because he didn’t get the prize, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” The idea of petulant young child in charge of a nuclear arsenal is quite a threat.
All of this is to say that nowadays, establishment psychiatry’s idea of “mental health” as meaning freedom from high-levels of anxiety is especially insane.
What Then Besides the Mental Health Ideology?
“I want to feel something strongly.”
“When the individual feels, the community reels,” Lenina pronounced.
“Well, why shouldn’t it reel a bit?”
“Bernard!”
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Mainstream psychiatry and psychology offer an ideology that fits some people, but not many others who don’t believe that health equals: “good behavioral adjustment,” “freedom from anxiety” and “effective functioning in daily activities resulting in productive activities (such as in work, school or caregiving), and the “ability to adapt to change.”
This mental health ideology may fit people who prioritize an absence of uncomfortable emotions, even to the point of chemically numbing them, and who prioritize adjustment, even to the point of denying dehumanizing aspects of their environment.
However, the mental health ideology does not fit people who prioritize justice, freedom, art, being fully human, and loving all of life, because such people recognize that these priorities are not possible without uncomfortable emotions and without rebellion against dehumanizing environments.
The following are some of the key values that make it difficult to accept the mental health ideology:
- Valuing critical thinking about what environment one is being asked to adjust to, and if it is dehumanizing, then valuing maladjustment.
- Valuing all of our human emotionality, including what mainstream psychiatry and psychology labels as symptoms of mental illness—such as overwhelming anxiety, anger, boredom and sadness.
- Valuing the fuel of anxiety, anger, boredom and sadness as vital energy for fighting for justice, creating art, having empathy and compassion, and being fully human.
- Valuing the necessity of an unsettling altered state as a prelude to valuable transformations, including letting go of an ego attachment that is interfering with a true connection with one’s own being and to life.
- Valuing love—rather than biological-chemical-electrical-psychological manipulations—when trying to help others who are so overwhelmed by their emotionality that their reactions lack wisdom and result in destructive or self-destructive behaviors.
To be human means that at various times in our lives we will have overwhelming emotional reactions that sometimes result in disruptive behaviors. The mental illness/mental health ideology is a narrative that treats these states in the manner of cancer, which means eradicating and eliminating them as quickly as possible.
In contrast, a very different ideology sees our overwhelming emotional reactions not as evidence of pathology to be eradicated and eliminated as quickly as possible, but instead as energy sources which, with wisdom and love, can result in meaningful insights, beneficial transformations, and valuable contributions.
In a pluralistic society, people have the right to their own opinion, philosophy, religion, and ideology, which means that people have the right to adopt the mental illness/mental health ideology, but they also have the right to reject that ideology in favor of another that they find more interesting, satisfying, and joyful.
What an excellent commentary! It took me many years to discover the lies of biochemical mental illness and I was quite angry when these lies and more were uncovered. Thanks to Robert Whittaker, Laura Delano and now Dr. Levine – and of course Thomas Szasz – my eyes have been fully opened. As someone who teaches the next gen of therapists, I’m in a position to educate or at least expose students to these “outsider” opinions. I love it! As a rebel in the substance use/disorder profession, these concepts of mental illness/wellness discussed here are right up my alley. Thank you!
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Hi dee-dee
As a person also coming from the “substance use/disorder” profession I was also in a position to teach and expose people to the False Narratives surrounding the Labels. I sure hope you are also teaching people that “substance use” and “addiction” and other “disorders” are also Labels and not teaching people that “they have” “substance use disorder (Label) or “addiction” (Label).
As a 25 year Drug User with 20 years of Drug Free under my belt it amazes me how prevalent it is that “treatments” are still teaching “disease” and “disorder” when Drug Use is a Behavior not a “disease” or “disorder.” Instead of teaching (not treating) people that Drug Use is just another Behavior (albeit a real “bad one”) just like other Problematic Behaviors and that doesn’t make Drug Use any less of a problem or negate the incredible number of Negative Consequences & Problems that Using Drugs leads to. (Not “addiction” or “substance use disorder” makes me Use Drugs or causes Negative Consequences & Problems or these Negative Consequences & Problems are “symptoms” of “substance use disorder” and “addiction”) when the truth is that we practice Using Drugs and that leads to Negative Consequences & Problems.
Over all the years of working with people and teaching people its just crazy how most of the people I was teaching (not treating because you can’t treat behavior change you can only teach it) got it and could see it and that they never really believed in all the “addiction” Bullshit but that was all they were being taught and told at previous “treatments.” But yet somehow most of the “professionals” can’t seem to see it and get it so they just keep “treating” people about how they have “chronic relapsing brain diseases” called “substance use disorder” and “addiction” that cannot be “cured” but can be managed with lifelong “treatments” by “professionals” When millions of people have stopped Using Drugs without “professional treatment” (so apparently some magical miracle of a disappearing “disease”) Its also funny that this mysterious “disease” never “relapses” when we are Drug Free but only “relapses” when we Use Drugs.
Keep up the good fight!
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I agree, we do live in an insane, or upside down and backwards, society. I think it was in 2005 that I painted the American flag as upside down and backwards. On it I painted a calla lily, which looks a bit like an empty cornucopia, which is meant to represent the absurdity of living in a society controlled by a Ponzi scheme of a slave making monetary system, which is at the top of that Ponzi scheme – the cornucopia is empty, just as our monetary system is unsalvageable – thus, of course, the need for “the great reset.”
I tend to agree, Bruce, those who have adapted to an insane society, are in reality the craziest of all. Thank you, as always, for your “meaningful insights,” respect for “beneficial transformations, and valuable contributions.”
I also agree that a move to a “pluralistic society, [where] people have the right to their own opinion, philosophy, religion, and ideology, which means that people have the right to adopt the mental illness/mental health ideology, but they also have the right to reject that ideology in favor of another that they find more interesting, satisfying, and joyful.” But ending forced and coerced psychiatric/psychological drugging and insane attempts at control, would be a requirement of moving towards a pluralistic society.
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Personally i disagree with Szasz & agree with psychiatry that mental health & mental illness is real.
My own argument is that we should be collectively focused on creating a far better society / system & mental health treatment for everyone.
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A few questions regarding your post:
What exactly is the basis of your disagreement with Szasz, Levine, and other critics of the conventional biomedical psychiatric paradigm? And why do you believe that everyone needs mental health treatment, and what should it consist of? What are your criteria for judging its efficacy and safety?
If you want your argument to be taken seriously, you should be able to answer these very elementary questions.
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Uh-oh. Somebody may have opened a can of intellectual whoop-ass here. When I saw this comment, I thought, “Oh boy. I wonder if joel stern will see this.” Obviously and thankfully so. Other suspects that immediately come to mind are Birdsong, Jasmine, Steve, and someone else. GULP!
While I agree with a focus on a better society/system, I rest assured that the balance of the comment will be met with thoughtful, well-reasoned, “right on” replies. I’m gonna pop a bowl of popcorn.
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This is the way i see it all – We exist at biological, psychological & emotional, sociological & environmental / relational, & soul / spiritual / transpersonal levels – individualized, integrated whole person – mind / body / soul / spirit & environment.
i think that things can go wrong at any or all of those levels & that we need medicine & science, & healing modalities to address what does go wrong.
All the argument & debate seems to me to be about etiology / nature of different illnesses / conditions & best ways of responding to & treating them all.
i see a place for a judicious use of front end services for people in severe crisis & also for an integration of a Universal integral model & comprehensive healing alternatives; like Open Dialogue, Depth Psychology & Healing Homes, etc. i am a Reformist.
i’m diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia – i am helped by a medication & psychotherapy, as well as welfare support for housing & meals / food; i need the diagnosis as a validation of legitimate illness for help & support within this current society / system. i went through some 8 years of severe psychosis & 17 years in addiction / alcoholism – i am now 25 years sober – i do see it all as a dual diagnosis. i am not well enough to work.
i do see my own condition as a very serious illness, as i do also with a percentage of others.
To reiterate – this is what i support as in as simple language as possible –
Integrate a judicious use of front end services / biomedical / clinical psychiatry with open dialogue / depth psychology / healing homes – with comprehensive integrated / integral health / welfare / social care services & systems.
With a shift away from neoliberal Capitalism more towards a Global Socialist / Green Model & Approach & Global Regenerative Culture
https://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/thread/17334/vision?page=1
Thank you for reading.
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Marc, you claim that things can “go wrong” on any of the multiple levels that supposedly comprise the human being.
However, determining what is dysfunctional or appropriate in a given person’s thinking, emotions, and conduct is a purely arbitrary, culture-bound matter that cannot be reliably diagnosed and treated by the medical modalities you call for. That is the core fallacy underlying all psychiatric dogma purporting to establish a universally applicable definition of normality. This is an illogical and futile endeavor.
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The issue i feel is behavior & functioning. Harm to self & others, & loss of functioning.
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“Normality” is a construct of statistical fiction, which makes much of what is called “science”, pseudoscience.
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Marc, I’m sorry for your trouble and for my insensitive remark earlier. I think you’re in the right place. I hope you’ll try to take a look at the world through the lenses offered here.
For what it’s worth, I believe these folks are “on the right side of history.”
Once you see it—the extent of the harms done by the common bio-medical model—not only does rejecting this failed model make sense, it’s empowering. This screwed up world has screwed us up plenty; it’s not you, it’s “us”.
Incidentally, the bio-medical model was rejected by the WHO and UN for good reason. The US pulled out of the WHO probably in part because this pesky anti-bio-medical stance is bad for (Big Pharma) business.
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i was extreme antipsychiatry / pharma for over 20 years.
i changed my mind on it all – people do suffer to varying degrees & in various ways with mental illnesses. i no longer agree with the mental illness denial, & for all it’s faults & shortcomings i think it’s far better to have some kind of mental health system & services.
OK – you all say that people can be better helped & we can create a far better society / system – But where is it all? i just mainly see a vast amount of argument & division & disagreement & a World that looks increasingly Apocalyptic.
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Marc, not talking about things is not the solution. You’re basically saying things are so bad we should just stop talking about them. Same with psychiatry, you’re saying there is no point discussing change because we don’t agree. A lot of people here actually do agree. Basically when you use those arguments, you’re just asking people not to discuss anything because you have it all worked out. That’s not discussion , that’s shutting down discussion and ideas. You’re just saying I’m ok with it, while denying the reality of people who do experience severe harm in the psychiatric system.
And those people have worked out that it is the model psychiatry is using to explain human behaviour which is causing that harm. That’s worth discussing I think. Just defending the model because it works for you is asking the rest of us to pretend we haven’t experienced any harm – which is a lie – and is the lie that psychiatry depends on to keep causing harm with impunity and with the same unaccountability it has now. Silence is very convenient to any unaccountable power and you’re basically saying don’t talk about it because it’s divisive and we can’t do anything about it. That’s just denial of reality disguised as pragmatism.
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Marc, I think the better society/system must precede better help. A better way of living might reduce the need for help, too. As mentioned previously, the WHO and UN have urged a move away from the biomedical model of mental distress. Their recent guidance emphasizes structural and social cultural determinants of suffering — economic inequality, education, housing, community conditions, etc.
In other words: much mental distress could well be a reasonable response to unreasonable cultural, social, and community conditions.
And yet much of critical psychiatry remains focused on reforming psychiatry itself — improving or abolishing diagnostic frameworks, reducing coercion, questioning or rebuking medication practices, challenging the dominance of pharmaceutical narratives. And these are important efforts. The intent isn’t to diminish them.
But they aren’t focused on root cause. So, we can’t expect them to eliminate sources of mental distress. Psychiatry, whether biomedical or critical, is a “downstream” system. People go to psych professionals only after they’ve had some kind of trouble. While psych treatments may indeed cause harm, they aren’t often the original source of mental distress. Iatrogenic treatments certainly cause harm, but psych professionals typically respond to distress only after it has emerged.
But “improving” the psych industry doesn’t fundamentally (or at all) alter the social architecture generating the distress. Distress is a reaction. Our dysfunctional systems of governance are themselves powerful sources of distress, directly or indirectly.
If loneliness, economic stress, fragmentation of community, hyper-competition, and chronic insecurity are primary drivers of mental suffering, then improving psychiatric practice doesn’t improve the conditions under which mental distress flourishes. It simply makes a person better suited to survive in those conditions.
We are trying to humanize the results while leaving the systemic conditions untouched. What are the economic, cultural, and social systems and structures producing this level of distress in the first place?
If mental suffering is frequently a natural human response to unnatural, dysfunctional social arrangements, then the real intervention is not primarily clinical — it is structural.
The answer isn’t in better “diagnoses and treatments”, but in better ways of living. If changing the psych industry seems like a daunting task, certainly changing the basic systems causing the troubles treated by the psych industry seems much more difficult. We currently depend on these dysfunctional structures and systems, even though they are killing us and driving us into mental distress. (Those paying attention might be more distressed than others?)
It might be easier to fundamentally change if the dysfunctional systems are abandoned in favor of a better way of living, starting on a small scale. A scale at which love is an effective governor. Psychiatry may need reform, but only after reform of our loveless social architecture.
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Humanity has been debating & arguing over the aetilolgy of health & social issues since the beginning of time. Focus fluctuates between biological, psychological, sociological, spiritual & integral areas & theories.
A comprehensive integral approach makes sense to me & transforming both the society /civilization & health & social care systems.
Integrate a judicious use of front end services / biomedical / clinical psychiatry with open dialogue / depth psychology / healing homes – with comprehensive integrated / integral health / welfare / social care services & systems.
With a shift away from neoliberal Capitalism more towards a Global Socialist / Green Model & Approach & Global Regenerative Culture
But any vision of alternatives needs agreement to work towards – it needs funding & resources.
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Marc, what’s your definition of “mental health” and why should people believe it?
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i think that there is genuine sanity & insanity & a spectrum in-between – i would think that genuine mental health is how well adjusted someone is to the totality of actual truth & reality.
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There is no universal consensus on the nature of reality.
A fundamentalist Christian will define reality in far different terms than a Siberian shaman or a Huna priest, hence their concepts of “adustment” will be at variance.
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But who gets to determine what “genuine sanity” is? And who’s to define what counts as real?
Every framework — including psychiatry’s — is an interpretation, not a neutral description of the world.
Treating one’s own subjectivity as objective truth leaves a huge gap in your reasoning.
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Truth & Reality is what is – we can of course debate a lot about & have a lot of different perspectives on what is.
Logic & Reason – Maths & Science – provable experiment does go a long way to describing a Factual & Objective / Observable & provable Reality.
You could say & believe that the Earth is Flat, & it’s also hollow & populated by Aliens, & that diseases don’t exist, etc – But it wouldn’t match observable reality, & would be unprovable.
Delusions are false beliefs that people strongly hold even when there’s proof they’re wrong.
There are different types of delusions, like bizarre ones that are impossible and non-bizarre ones that could actually happen.
A delusion is a strongly-held or fixed false belief that conflicts with reality. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) defines delusions as fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence.
i think that some things are harder to ascertain about the nature of reality & psychosis – i believe that we are within a primary 12+ density / 24+ dimensional Reality & that the Earth is within some kind of Dark Occult Alien Matrix Control System – within a 70 / 120 thousand years incarnational Battle between Light & Dark Aliens & Spiritual Forces; for control of the Earth & the Souls of Humanity – headed to an imminent Apocalyptic Reckoning with Global Fascism / WW3 & Catastrophic Global Ecological & Civilizational Collapse – a Mass die off of all Life & then transitioning into a New Golden Age.
i once believed at different times that my Mother had turned me into a Cat – that i was Lucifer – the Devil – God – the Antichrist – Jesus – the Reincarnation of St Paul – that people i knew were really robots, all sorts. Problems come in when it puts my life & other people’s lives in danger, when in florid / catatonic psychosis off medication.
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Believe in the scientific nature of the DSM would qualify as a delusion under the definition you are using.
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Marc, haven’t you heard? There are NO biological markers for the so-called “mental disorders”.
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Steve – the main diagnostic categories / criteria / nosology – of the psychoses / neuroses & personality disorders have always been observed & treated in a percentage of people throughout human history / civilization. i can understand logical & reasonable discussions on the causes / nature / prognosis & best treatment approaches of these experiences & conditions – But to outright deny that these conditions don’t exist & / or are not illness, or that nothing can go wrong with our brains / biology or that psychiatry / pharma is no help to people in severe psychological crisis – seem to be going a bit too far to my thinking & logic.
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I don’t deny that people have these experiences. The idea that they can be “diagnosed” as “disorders,” as if everyone who hallucinates or is depressed or feels anxiety has the same problem with the same solution is what is delusional. It’s like saying a person’s knee hurts because he has “knee pain disorder.” Sure, people have sore knees all the time, but it’s not a disease, it’s an indicator of some other event causing the pain. In psychiatry, nobody gives a crap what the cause is, as long as you “meet the criteria.”
Just to emphasize the point, I was able to create two people who qualify as having “major depressive disorder” who had only one “symptom” in common. Same for “ADHD.” And for schizophrenia, I was able to mock up two people who both would qualify for the “diagnosis” while have ZERO “symptoms” in common. It is SURELY delusional to think that we can group people together in this haphazard, subjective and unreliable manner and think we have established some kind of SCIENTIFIC understanding of what is going on. In other words, yes, people do develop psychotic symptoms, and yes, there are drugs that seem to help some people reduce their psychotic symptoms. But my statement was that the idea the DSM was a “SCIENTIFIC” manual of “diagnosis” is delusional. Where is the science in a “diagnosis” when two people having it have exactly nothing in common?
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Birdsong & Steve & all the other mental illness denial / Antipsychiatrists here – Everyone is aware of the limitations of the current mental health systems. For all the current problems & issues in society – i don’t think it means that we should reject science / medicine / psychiatry & abolish the entire mental health systems.
i personally do see a basis to psychiatry – yes it’s not perfect & it needs a lot of reform – as does the wider society / system. However to deny that mental illnesses exist & to say that biology is not involved is itself Delusional.
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You are talking about something different than what I am saying, Marc! And it feels a little disrespectful to call me a “mental illness denial(ist),” since I have already acknowledged more than once that these phenomena that are called “mental illnesses” do in fact exist. Also, denying the scientific validity of the DSM is NOT at all a rejection of science OR medicine! It is actually a completely scientific viewpoint to assume. (I have an undergrad degree in Chemistry, BTW, so I know a thing or two about what is and isn’t scientific.) Science would ask the DSM publishers, “How do you distinguish those who ‘have major depression’ from those who do not ‘have it.’ Science would expect an accurate and reliable answer to that question before ANY research could be done on this “entity” called “major depression.” Since this distinction is not something the DSM can make, we are no longer in the realm of science when we claim someone has “major depression.” We are in the ream of opinions and biases and assumptions. That is the realm in which psychiatry comfortably works. There is no possibility of actual scientific knowledge, just viewpoints and opinions. This doesn’t mean that people don’t get chronically depressed or that they don’t deserve help. It doesn’t even mean that antidepressants aren’t helpful to some people. It means the IDEA that “major depression” exists as a scientifically verifiable entity is a fantasy.
I would appreciate it in the future if you could make sure you are not attributing statements or beliefs to me that I have not stated, or in this case, that I have already stated to the contrary. Your own biases are not helpful in having a rational discussion about these issues, any more than those you accuse “antipsychiatry” people of carrying.
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Marc, putting aside the meaningless labels you’re slinging, I think you are struggling to accept that other people just have a different opinion to you. All of your arguments are forms of apologism – “yes it’s not perfect, but…what can we do?”
“It’s not perfect” is another logical fallacy – you’ve just concealed and dismissed a hell of a lot important issues with that statement.
How is it not perfect? Why is it not perfect? What effect is that having on people while we wait for reforms that never come, or that immediately revert back to same basic model of mistreatment?
As Steve said, no one is denying suffering, or science.
Psychiatric “science” does not stand up. Psychiatric scientism is actually just marketing. Its claims to truth contradict the scientific model in using constructs that are unfalsifiable.
I disagree with psychiatry on the basis that its fundamental premises are wrong. And that those fundamental premises are harmful. Logically, the solution to that is abolition, regardless of all the dust and distractions thrown up by defenders of psychiatry.
The fundamental premise that there will be, in the future, some discovered biological basis to things called “mental illness” is wrong – unproven and unfalsifiable.
The fundamental premise that some behaviours can be classified as “illness” and others as “not illness” is wrong – attempts at nosology continuously fail to meet basic scientific requirements of validity and reliability.
The fundamental premise that the system will eventually reform itself is wrong – see – a history of routinely denying the reality of patient experiences and systematically co-opting criticism with lip service, superficial reforms.
The rest is all wishful thinking and marketing, smoke and mirrors.
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& i think that all sides in the anti / critical / pro / alternative psychiatry debate, & all perspectives / opinions from all biological, psychogenic, environmental, spiritual & environmental & integral areas; are probably being misrepresented in ways.
In these days of Global Austerity / War / Fascism / Ecological & Civilizational Collapse i would rather accept my diagnosis / medication & what little help is available from the wider society / system & mental health services as the lesser of evils.
i agree with the book PsychoPolitics By Peter Sedgwick & his defense of psychiatry & critique of antipsychiatry. At least psychiatry & the mental health systems have done something about recognizing & treating my severe illness.
Case of agreeing to disagree with Antipsychiatry & all it’s proponents.
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Well, that seems to make any further discussion pointless, as you have already decided that those YOU decide are proponents of “antipsychiatry” are automatically wrong. I won’t be commenting further, as you seem unreceptive to any nuanced conversation on the topic.
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None of this conversation is nuanced Steve – we are on an Extreme Antipsychiatry / mental illness denial site.
Freya – of course there is a biology to mental illnesses.
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You apparently did not bother to actually read my comments. It appears to me that you have settled on your own viewpoint and are completely closed off to hearing anything that questions that viewpoint.
I find this kind of comment extremely offensive. There have been many attempts in this and other threads at nuanced discussion of the reality of what is called “mental illnesses” and the potential utility of psych drugs for those who find the helpful, while questioning the scientific validity of the DSM process based on very specific and rational arguments. If you don’t want to participate in that kind of discussion, what are you trying to accomplish by coming here and insulting the intelligence of those who are making a good-faith effort to respond to you?
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i have read your comments Steve, i simply don’t agree with them – sorry that you find that offensive but that isn’t my problem – it’s yours – & i have read all the different opinions & arguments all this area goes into. To my understanding SMI is very real, & extreme Antipsychiatry / mental illness denial has done a great disservice to the plight of more severe cases.
Logically biology is involved in mental illness.
i’m very much helped by psychiatry, psychology & pharma, as are millions of other people.
Yes argue for far more comprehensive integral approaches – But i don’t see what trying to abolish psychiatry & denying that mental illness exists is going to achieve? & it won’t work anyway.
i wanted to access to far more comprehensive integral approaches – i wanted access to open dialogue, depth psychology & healing homes – approaches proven to help a lot of people in psychosis – why can’t groups like this one come to a compromise & work on creating far better approaches to all health & social issues in society – instead of all these ideological, polarised, polemical arguments?
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You did not properly read and understand my comments at all if you imagine that I denied “serious mental illness” is real. Or that I ever said biology is not involved in mental illness (I never commented once on that topic). My arguments were neither ideological nor polemical. They are logical and scientific. The offensive part is NOT that you don’t agree with me – it’s that you attribute things to me that I never actually SAID, and in fact I often said the exact opposite of what you claim.
Please explain to me how “schizophrenia” can be a scientifically legitimate category for study when any two people so “diagnosed” may have ZERO symptoms in common? Your unwillingness and/or inability to answer that question is not excused by you accusing me of being “antipsychiatry.” And that argument has NOTHING to do with medication or biological factors. It has to do with scientific definition of a group psychiatrists claim to have identified. How is it possible to define such a group including people who have nothing in common? What is polemical or ideological about THAT SPECIFIC POINT?
This quote by you is, in fact, the one that is “polemical and ideological:” extreme Antipsychiatry / mental illness denial has done a great disservice to the plight of more severe cases.” Where’s the science in THAT statement, Marc?
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Marc, There is biology in every human behaviour, feeling and reaction.
Again, as per many other comments here, that is not proof of mental illness, or proof of anything at all.
Your statements are not arguments, they are repetitions of the same point without change. Unlike everyone else here, you believe you can force your opinions on others with pointless name-calling, pointless repetition, and rage. I call that extreme.
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Steve – i was like you for over 20 years – & you may well believe that extreme anti psychiatry / mental illness denial makes sense; but it really doesn’t.
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Again, you didn’t bother to read what I said. You were nothing like me, not ever. Because I’m a scientist, and you are committed to your own ideology, just as much as those you accuse of the same.
Don’t bother responding. There is no further discussion to be had here.
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“The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie” Mark Twain.
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Another really good one. Thanks for this. Loved the quotes from Fromm.
“Only a profoundly uncritical thinker would celebrate adjustment in of itself without a critical analysis of what one is adjusting to, but perhaps being a profoundly uncritical thinker is the most important criterion for being a thought leader in establishment psychiatry and psychology.”
If we applied that same analysis beyond psychiatry—to establishment political, economic, social, and religious systems—we might have a very different conversation about “adjustment”, “real world”, and “thought leaders”.
Incidentally, here’s a fun little tune by a once-local? (Colorado) artist—Ben Hanna—that’s all about this theme:
https://youtu.be/rwc0yEEw_Do?si=DJW6nJUPW024A8Yw
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To Dan, Marc, Ben Hanna, myself, and anyone else who has ever been, or will be told that they’re having some “adjustment problems:” “Think!” (“Think about you’re thinking while you’re thinking, with an aim to improving your thinking.”)
Here’s a link about Thinking: “Why Critical Thinking Isn’t Widely Taught.”
https://youtu.be/mz6aRfxKSd4?si=vAosm3_FeDao-7-n
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Gee, thanks Bill.
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An excellent commentary that made points I had not previously encountered, and I think about this stuff a lot. The quest for biological markers delineating differences in folks with particular diagnoses is irrelevant no matter what. Even if such differences were found, which they have not been, this would not be proof that the diagnoses of “mental illness” were valid. Differences are just differences. And who says that adapting aligns with mental health? In today’s profoundly dysfunctional world, adapting may be the worst thing for our self-respect. Now off I go to get Dr Levine’s latest book.
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I have always noted that “genetic diversity is the key to species survival!” We need all these different “types” and truncating their personalities to “fit in” to an arbitrary set of expectations is incredibly destructive! I always laugh when they say shit like, “Edison had ‘ADHD!'” And somehow he turned out OK without any “treatment,” didn’t he?
People are different from each other. Big freakin’ deal. Let’s embrace our diversity instead of punishing anyone who doesn’t toe the “company line!”
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By any chance, might MiA consider putting a like button under comments? Since sometimes people get busy, so would rather just like comments, rather than commenting on all the good comments.
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COMMENTING AS MODERATOR: It’s been suggested, and gotten very mixed reviews. Something good to take up with Bob Whitaker himself!
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I wish I could just like this.
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I agree with your take on diversity. And it’s not like we have a choice. Born helplessly unique (and diverse by nature), yet expected to conform to norms of dysfunctional human society.
If Edison “had ADHD,” I wonder what labels of today would have been loaded onto Edgar Allen Poe. Alphabet soup, anyone? To which he might reply, “I don’t suffer from mental illness, I enjoy every minute of it” (—commonly misattributed to Poe).
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Dan, your comment reminded me of Nicholas Tesla, the supremely gifted prescient inventor who would no doubt be labeled an eccentric, obsessive-compulsive, asexual, perhaps autistic schizoid by conventional psychiatry.
I also recall Marcel Proust’s observation (I’m paraphrasing here) that “everything that is great was created by neurotics.”
Which leads me to conclude that those who are socially “maladjusted” can sometimes engender the greatest achievements in art, literature, science, and other fields.
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Quite the guy, Nicholas Tesla. I like a quote from him that I think is underrated (and understated): “Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it.” It wasn’t only electricity that Tesla understood deeply.
Yet people can’t eat without money, they can’t sleep without it, they can’t have any fun without it, they aren’t happy without it, and they won’t work without it. The belief in the value of money—a mere social agreement treated as natural fact—affects all aspects of life.
It’s almost like what some would call addictive behavior. Collective co-dependence? Collective “insanity”?
If we effectively addressed the money “addiction,” many problems stemming from that one might subside—including a whole lot of mental distress.
“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”— Kurt Vonnegut
I think it’s deeper and worse than that. We’re hooked on money; can’t even imagine life without it.
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Careful with your wording. Genes or “genetic diversity” are only a small portion of what makes us who we are. It seems a tad reductionist to frame it that way.
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I agree completely, Jeroen! The reason I say what I said is not to suggest that we are our bodies or our genes, but to directly and unarguably debunk the idea that “If we prove genetic differences, we have proven a biological disease state.” Psychiatry is constantly trying to make that argument and spends billions trying to “prove” some kind of “genetic difference” in some one of their fictional “disorders.” I like to point out that this effort is futile, as proving “genetic difference” only proves that bodies differ from one another genetically. Which is patently obvious, but has exactly NOTHING to do with “mental illnesses.”
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I see. It seemed to sound a bit “darwinian”. In a more traditional sense. You mention “species survival”, so it came across as some kind of primitive random adaption. A bit like developing better camouflage to trick predators.
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“The quest for biological markers delineating differences in folks with particular diagnoses is irrelevant no matter what. Even if such differences were found, which they have not been, this would not be proof that the diagnoses of ‘mental illness’ were valid.”
Agreed, mostly. Were a biological marker identified that consistently correlated to some “disorder,” not only does this correlation not establish causality, but the whole exercise seeks to locate “the problem” within the individual, which imparts an idea of personal responsibility for “the problem.”
The question of what caused the differences isn’t even asked if the biological difference itself is viewed as being the cause. Then, the answer is to treat that biological cause.
Meanwhile, the harm imparted systemically by a dysfunctional society—an actual cause of biological developments and differences in the brain—are accepted as “normal” operating conditions. So the systemic causes go untreated in favor of treating the symptoms (systemic results) within an individual as if they are causes. What could possibly go wrong?
Who is responsible for what they were exposed to in the developing years of life, the conditions, circumstances, and events beyond their control, say, the first six years of lived experience (at which point a person’s personality is thought to be largely developed)?
Who is responsible for the involuntary release of stress-response chemistry and its impact on the brain at various stages of development?
A person is considered responsible for a problem only if, or to the degree, the problem arises or results from the decisions and actions of that person. It’s not fair to assign responsibility without agency. It causes distress in a person when assigned responsibility for what they aren’t responsible. It’s not fair, and it’s psychologically harmful.
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There is a historical reason for why psychologists and psychiatrists care so much about “behavioral adjustment”. Most people don’t know this, but “mental health” used to be called “mental hygiene” throughout the early twentieth century. Mental hygiene was psychiatry’s first real attempt to prevent so-called mental illness in the public before it required commitment to a mental institution (up until that point, psychiatrists had focused almost exclusively on confining people in asylums). Their new patient was the “maladjusted person”, someone who failed to adapt to the demands of life. This category included all manner of people — shy, anxious, rebellious, introverted, and so on. To combat maladjustment, they tried to educate people (and especially children) about how to be “well-adjusted”.
At some point down the line, though, mental hygiene became mental health. Not much has changed besides the name. The mental health professions continue to blabber on about adjustment and “treat” the masses of people who would’ve previously been called maladjusted (nowadays we derogatorily label them as “obsessive-compulsive”, “social anxiety disorder”, “borderline personality” and the like). In other words, institutions like the American Psychological Association claim to be at the vanguard of science and still endorse archaic concepts and ideas that are well over a hundred years old. They’ve maintained this charade despite the fact that, as Mr. Levine points out in this article, those creaky old ideas are pernicious and fail to hold up under even the mildest scrutiny.
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Well said. When “adjustment” is the goal, society as a whole gets a pass and we as individuals have to adapt or be labeled and denigrated. Even for grieving too long!
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Insane is such a mean word. I prefer mentally creative.
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Excellent point!
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You have made me laugh twice now with your comments. I’d like them, but sadly can’t.
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I find myself wondering about the way the State where I live is having public officers who are suffering from PTSD diagnosed with “adjustment disorder” to minimise their liability to them. Simply a matter of identifying which psychiatrists will write such reports for a fee, and then holding the threat of failure in the Courts over the head of the person seeking compensation.
It’s not the job, it’s your failure to adjust to the situations you came across whilst in the employ of the State.
Is it me, or does this sound like classic victim blaming? Would I have expected anything less from psychiatry?
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I think most of the people who become “mental health professionals” not only have mastered the art of fawning but also harbor a strange desire to lord over the vulnerable.
Odd combination until you realize that most seem not only unwilling, but also unable to see just how much their ego is attached to what they claim to be to doing.
Not uncommon for people who have an unquenchable need to believe they have all the answers.
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I think if a person in an authoritarian system engages in “fawning” toward someone above them in the hierarchy, it’s common that they expect those lower in the hierarchy to grant them the same deference.
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I think wise to avoid anyone who sees themselves at or near the top of psychiatry’s label-centric, drug-happy food chain hierarchy.
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Steve, why beat around the bush? I think it’s fair to say that seeking power over vulnerable people is a sick response to a sick society.
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It seems to me individuals treated collectively en masse makes each person vulnerable to abuse by our systems. The best our systems output aren’t worth the distress and anguish they produce for individuals just as reliably.
Our systems of concentrated, centralized, hierarchical power are designed to deliver it to those who most believe they deserve it, and to those most willing to operate within abstraction to wield it.
This structure itself denies freedom to all governed by it. And causes lots of unfairness and distress. Systemically.
Those in leadership roles, captured by the very abstractions of the real world that elevated them, lose connection to “real people.” They view people according to an abstraction created by the lens through which others are viewed.
At scale, leadership requires abstraction. Those at the top of political hierarchies view people as masses in need of governing. Presidents, governors, legislators cannot know millions personally. They “know people” as voters with issues. Their constituents are known merely by abstracted information about them: numbers, statistics, demographics that don’t really represent anyone.
Economically, CEOs and owners view employees en masse, as workers subservient to the company mission. The people working are hired labor, units of productivity. Natural resources are commodities, viewed not for what they are, but for their (abstract) monetary value. A gallon of water isn’t a gallon of water, it’s $2.87 (retail).
Religiously, church leaders and officers know congregations of people en masse as sinners in need of guidance and salvation.
To a psych professional, you’re a case of something, some abstraction of symptoms and diagnoses that are what you aren’t.
Abstraction is unavoidable at scale. But abstraction distances us from lived experience. Our systems reward fluency in abstraction over direct human connection, elevating those who can best prioritize systems of abstraction over people.
We can view the “will to power” over others as a sickness without evoking clinical illness, but maybe it’s more being “lost” than “sick”.
They say it’s lonely at the top. Finding others as willing to succumb to abstraction, and as capable of looking away from the toll it takes on humanity and the natural world, is apparently not easy.
It seems their elevated positions deny them the ability to connect with others as human beings due to their abstract perceptions and convictions, valuing the abstractions over others’ lived experience.
Based on their understanding of the “real world” of abstraction, they know best how others should be living or working or behaving; being “at the top,” they know what others’ lived experience should consist of and they feel confident dictating it.
Our systems are designed to elevate those most fluent in abstraction to leadership positions, even though they may be the sickest or most lost among us.
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Dan Nelson, i like you analysis. I think it’s part of the logic of systems to value and reward control, so it’s likely if you conform to the needs of systems you have an ability to be impermeable to others and prefer control over connection?
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Dan, I’m well aware of how the wider world functions. I’m speaking about the psychological impulse — the individual choice to dominate the vulnerable, the appetite for power in the first place. That impulse is shaped by systems much closer to home.
And for what it’s worth, both you and Steve seem to have drifted into theory rather than engaging the psychological reality I’m pointing to.
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Thanks Freya. I’m not sure if this (short) essay begins to answer your question or not.
It’s a problem with scalability of connection.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eXYKwHpCGdK-qVcniwXHnS9aniazuLR4/view?usp=drivesdk
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Thanks again, Freya. I agree with you that psychology is deeply affected and shaped by institutional structures.
For example, still focusing on economic institutions and systems, economic status impacts a person’s life—perhaps especially a developing person.
A poor kid might attend public school, for example. The kid who’s among the poorest in their class will have a different lived experience than those not considered poor.
The poor kid can’t afford the nice clothes and nice gadgets and tickets to the show everyone is going to see. Systemically excluded, the kid can’t afford the ante of social inclusion and acceptance.
This exclusion fueled by economic hardship is nevertheless exclusion. While those in attendance form relationships and bonds, the poor kid is left out of those, too. He becomes “other” to those bonding as “us.”
The poor kid might never get to know the lived experience of being accepted by peers. Probably not good for a developing brain.
What worldview can we expect someone with this lived experience to embrace? One might begin to think the world is a cold, hard, rejecting place if that’s the only world they’ve been exposed to, the one they developed in and adapted for. Can we blame them?
It seems to me that the economic system absolutely impacts this kid’s lived experience, social development, and even development of the brain itself.
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Dan, I think this is so important and supported by research into effects of childhood adversity, but obviously adversities at any age as well. Children in families with poverty and stress are more exposed to trauma. There are material realities – economic reality being primary in this culture – that limit choices and affect human behaviour from birth imo. Most people in the criminal and mental health systems are disproportionally affected by trauma, poverty and other social exclusionary factors like race. Even extreme, narcissistic behaviour is believed to be a reaction to trauma. It’s hard not to end up in nature/nurture debates like biological v social determinants, but social determinants seem to be at least as critical to individual psychology as any other factors, tho I suspect it’s too complex an interrelationship to be covered by any simple model.
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Hi Birdsong. That impulse to dominate the vulnerable and appetite for power in the first place seems to be systemically rewarded in the world, not of course just in the psych industry. If it were effectively addressed within the societal systems encouraging and rewarding it, the psych industries might be addressing a different set of problems to work on. Please see my more extended comment posted in response to Marc’s thread.
I’m thinking it’s the wider world functions that needs to be fixed first. Ergo, the social theory speak.
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Dan, you’re still speaking at the level of abstractions. I’m naming the psychological architecture that produces those abstractions. Every theory is downstream of the family system. If we can’t name the micro-dynamics that name a worldview, the macro-analysis is just displacement.
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Dan, thanks for sharing that essay – I completely agree. When a power-based (perhaps?) sick system scales up, then human to human connection and reciprocity becomes more and more difficult. And the system will automatically reward and support behaviour which supports the system – individualism, competition, and power-seeking. While discouraging connection, community and reciprocity. In the extractive, transactional logic of the system vulnerability and connection are pathologised as weakness, rather than understood as a fundamental reality of existence. We’re encouraged to call normal human reactions and differences symptoms of biological brain glitches – to be repaired by technocrats – rather than recognise them as meaningful responses to systematic dehumanisation.
I agree with Birdsong that choosing power over connection is a sick response to a sick system. But I also find it really helpful to understand just how sick the system is, because we are systematically taught to blame ourselves by almost every psy-technology there is.
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Birdsong, I don’t disagree that the psychological impulses formed close to home matter. But those dynamics don’t develop in a vacuum. They emerge under conditions established not by nature, but by social agreements that were made long ago and have since become our established way of life.
Because these arrangements are so old, we tend to treat them as if they are the natural conditions under which and for which our brains evolved.
Our brains evolved to navigate small, relational worlds. Yet we now live inside layers of abstraction — economic, institutional, and cultural structures — that shape daily life in ways our psychology didn’t evolve to manage. Family dynamics would be entirely different if they developed under, and adapted to, different conditions.
So I’m suggesting the causality may run the other direction. The abstractions and institutions of a society help generate the psychological conditions within families.
These abstractions of the “real world” are producers of the psychological architecture (and much mental distress), not products of it.
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Dan, I disagree 100%. Family systems came first, not the other way around.
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Dan, I agree – systemic ideas take the focus off individual psychologies, individuals have only so much power and choice, and choice is not evenly available to everyone.
Micro and macro systems support and sustain each other and shape each other. The patriarchal nuclear family unit is a product of culture and history, it’s not universal. One theory is that it formed in the Industrial Revolution due to need for mobile labor forces to move to cities and support factories.
I think psychology is deeply affected and shaped by institutional structures. Rigid and established structures have a lot more power to do the shaping of individual psychologies than vice versa – by rewarding certain behaviours and punishing others according to whether the behaviour supports the needs of the system to continue and survive.
I see the patriarchal nuclear family as another institutional structure – it does have a very central role in creating helpful or harmful models of relationship that shape individual psychology. But families exist in wider systems in which raising children is seen as private and exclusive to the isolated nuclear family. Caregiving is also economically devalued, so caregivers are structurally isolated and have no support. I think this creates so much stress on nuclear family relationships that can have deep adverse affects on individual psychology.
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Birdsong, I don’t dispute that family systems are fundamental. That inner orbit is powerful and has impact well beyond the family unit. But family dynamics develop under broader systemic, societal conditions, no?
Take something the WHO has pointed out repeatedly: economic disadvantage is a major determinant of mental distress. When a family is living under chronic financial strain, that pressure inevitably shapes the relationships within the household—conflict, stress, insecurity, and instability are common. It could lead to harmful parental stresses and maybe vicious sibling rivalries. These problems might not arise if money weren’t such an issue for the family.
In that sense, the broader economic system becomes the backdrop against which family dynamics unfold. The family system may be immediate, but the conditions shaping it are systemic and beyond the family’s control.
So while families clearly matter, the structures that produce wealth and poverty help determine the psychological terrain those families must navigate. This is just one example of “external influence” on family dynamics.
To your point about how impactful even well intended loved ones can be, an example:
Some seem to think that the further and wider they can convey their concern for their loved one’s “mental health,” the more they can absolve themselves of shame and assure others that “they know better”—their loved one us just an oddball. They might “try everything” to help.
They might express their concern to anyone who’ll listen, supplying all kinds of narratives as evidence and perhaps to affect urgency, casting themselves as not only deeply concerned, but as being responsible. Any trouble that develops subsequently is admitted into evidence for the developing court of secret public opinion.
Convinced of their righteousness, they’re equally convinced that they are being SO HELPFUL to their loved one: “Just trying to help.” Bless their responsible, concerned, little cotton socks.
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Dan, you keep shifting a psychological question into systemic theory. I’m speaking about the individual impulse to dominate the vulnerable — not the abstractions you prefer.
Psychological problems aren’t limited to income level.
If you want to engage the point I made, stay with psychology. If not, I’m not going to keep going in circles here.
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I think those who have “a strange desire to lord over the vulnerable” – as opposed to actually bringing others up – are highly insecure people. And I agree, refusing to rid themselves of their enormous egos, is the primary problem. But I understand Steve’s comment is true too.
But in the US we aren’t supposed to be living within an “authoritarian” caste system, nor should we believe in a self proclaimed “elite.”
So let’s pray the scientifically fraud based, insecure, egomaniacal mental health workers, et al, are able to rid themselves of their egos. Since I believe that will help them awaken to who they really are, ultimately help them heal, and garner insight into reality.
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Someone, wishing for the impossible is waste of time. Far wiser to steer clear of people wedded to their egos.
It may be hard to imagine, but there’s a whole world of people who don’t know much about psychiatry or even psychology and at the same time instinctively know they’re better off without it.
Let their mindset become your own. I have and it’s great!
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Birdsong, work in progress for me – getting out from under the cult brainwashing takes work – it’s so embedded -especially if we’ve been squashed by other power-based systems – like family – before psychiatry perfected the technology!
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Psychiatry and mental health are subjects I never bring up. Life’s too short to get into sqaubbles over something that’s really very personal.
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Complicity to Genocide.
https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/end-mental-health-complicity-to-genocide
Crisis Warmlines and Resources that Avoid the Police.(Please scroll to the top of this article, the top may be cut off.
https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/crisis#warmlines
Drop the Disorder- Article.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billybumbo/p/drop-the-disorder-challenging-the?r=5yjo19&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
We Should Drop the Disorder Beacause…
https://youtu.be/2Mlw_GTN17o?si=Jha_vKasOWhGEd_-
The Fight.
https://youtu.be/Ks4o2QBmS60?si=kP6lDMV2xEPtjZf3
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Supaman.
https://youtu.be/zACs7kyjCCU?si=_4geuX70f7nA0QO0
Under the Big Sky.
https://youtu.be/b3KHTuZN3oE?si=OcurVvJVzTdcsas0
Let Em Go. “No One Is Free Until We’re All Free.”
https://youtu.be/iUkgfSCjfN0?si=78S8PX7rGgoj3rzb
Warrior’s Perspective.
https://youtu.be/mu9928h4hBs?si=KuEN3jHw9dp4Xv0I
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I may have to read Szasz again but I thought his criticism of “mental illness” was also a criticism of “mental health:” it’s philosophy (or social science) but it is not natural science. “Mental health” can’t be natural science since natural science addresses the physical (material) world and “mental health” investigates the “mind” which is philosophy.
Hence I disagree with Dr. Levine when he states that “When each of psychiatry’s biological theories gets debunked…:” psychiatry is not a biological science by definition since it is a natural science that only addresses the body.
Real biology explains the myth of “mental illness” as natural human suffering.
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Regarding ” the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity.”
The physical proof of ” lacking in sanity” is the evil mankind does to the planet on a daily basis to make money.
Killing another human for land ownership in war can be argued to be like any other animal fighting for territory, but the war on the ecosystem that keeps everyone alive is insane.
Specifically the plastic everyone uses (lowest cost) that doesn’t biodegrade, the poisoning of the water supply or using water faster than it can be replaced. poisoning the air , because we have unlimited fresh air to replace it etc.
and the funny one, precious metals.
Warren Buffett’s famous “alien” analogy describes gold as an unproductive asset that would baffle an outside observer. He points out the absurdity of digging it (precious metals) up from one hole (the ground) only to bury it in another (vaults like the Federal Reserve), then paying people to guard it despite its lack of utility.
one more
“The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane” by author Hunter S. Thompson. It suggests that sanity is determined by societal power structures rather than objective, absolute truths.
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Marc & some people,thinks the rabbit in the hole or the Easter Bunny is coming? Why???
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Wow Marc & some others believe the rabbit is in the hole & the Easter Bunny is coming?
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Non-productive emotions and experiences are increasingly being funneled into professionalised emotion-containment systems, effectively closing off the once common spaces of genuine human connection and community.
Normal human reactions and emotions are now barely tolerated in our cultures unless they are framed and validated as “symptoms” of an official “disorder”- to be contained by a process of systematic emotional neglect, abandonment and dehumanisation – which is masked by the rhetoric of ‘health care’ and ‘medicine.’
Once you recognise the systematic gaslighting of mental ‘health’ industries in which neglect and abuse is reframed as care – you can’t unsee the harm being done by this lie.
I have to share this link because I get a lot of cathartic enjoyment in the compassion and humour of this podcaster. As well as clarity, understanding and de-shaming of my own experiences of gaslighting and abuse in family and psychiatric systems.
They use politics and philosophy to demystify the effects of emotion-phobic corporate capitalism on our ability to feel and connect.
On the weaponisation of forced positivity: The Loneliness Industry Podcast:
https://youtu.be/hj-G-qpmYJA
Content warning – sweary humour 😀
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Once again Dr. Levine has written an illuminating essay. Just as there can be no such thing as “mental illness,” there can be no such thing as “mental health.” As Bruce points out, the germ of Thomas Szasz’s thinking can be found in the short 1960 article with the same name as his 1961 book: “The Myth of Mental Illness.”
“The myth of mental illness,” wrote Szasz at the end of his article, “encourages us to believe in its logical corollary: that social intercourse would be harmonious, satisfying, and the secure basis of a good life were it not for the disrupting influences of mental illness, or psychopathology.”
Szasz calls this a “wishful fantasy.” Happiness can be achieved, however, “only if many men, not just a few, are willing and able to confront frankly, and tackle courageously, their ethical, personal, and social conflicts.”
Szasz’s philosophy of life aligns well with the existential philosophers who emphasized the need for both freedom and responsibility. This takes more courage and authenticity than the “mental health movement” can provide.
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Thanks for these reflections; lots to reflect on, as usual.
What hit me most was how much of it was in reference to Erich Fromm, because it took me back to earlier era of the 60s (ca. 1955-75), when more revolutionary movements were developing across society among different groups, to which I think many public intellectuals like him were responding as well as contributing. There’s been relentless repression of such revolutionary potential since then, signaled by the 1971 Powell memo or manifesto for class war, as corporate state capitalism has advanced more fascist forms of techno-totalitarianism.
Whether called capitalism or communism, modern ideology historically has been a cover for a steady ‘progress’ of industrial societies socially engineered like a megamachine, to recall your recent reference to Mumford (MIA, 1/3/26), principally determined by corporate state science serving in reality the same rationale of class rule by the few over the many. Since the global covid coup, we’ve entered a new world order by top-down industrial revolution which aims to merge us with machinery of control, as with biodigital convergence literally within the surveillance-security infrastructure of ‘smart’ grids and eventually brain-computer interface within AI hive mind, thereby reaching the logical conclusion (or final solution) of our mere utilitarian value as resources. As announced by Yuval Harari on behalf of the World Economic Forum, the history of humans having some mysterious soul is over; we’re now hackable animals. (Remembrance of a saner society seems like a distant dream.)
Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World against the background of his own elite family’s involvement in eugenics, particularly his brother Julian who was a co-inventor of transhumanism that’s today coming into its own, as under the current tech rule of the Trump administration, and who as first director of UNESCO made sure such education, science, and culture made its way round the world. Aldous warned:
“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.”
One additional note: though officially listed third, death by medicine, vastly underreported and undercounted, is arguably first far ahead of cancer and heart disease, which themselves may contain much misclassification of iatrogenesis; see, for example, Gary Null’s Death By Medicine.
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Thanks John. There’s something called “Slow Death Genocide.” Poverty can take years off your life. People who ingest psych drugs can die of complications – (“allostatic load”) of the synthetic chemicals. An American Psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, reported “wear and tear” on the inside of the body for people using psych drugs around the 4 year mark.
“The closer you live to downtown the sooner you die.”
Here’s an article about the legal system:
https://open.substack.com/pub/peterderrico/p/de-minimis-non-curat-lex?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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Slow Death Genocide. Yep, that about sums it up. I live nearly every day with the reminder of it in an area where chemtrails and climate engineering are concentrated. And thanks for the link; a very good article, and a site worth subscribing to.
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I posted a reply but don’t know if it’s been delayed or disappeared…
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John, great thought-provoking comment, thanks – final stage human as resource and Huxley quote are chillingly too real. As people are queuing up for diagnoses, it seems we are voluntarily giving over the power to classify and assign human value to unaccountable pseudo-scientific technocrats. With AI refining the process of coding human behaviour into units of production and control.
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Unite. Absolutely!
https://youtu.be/kbb2xcHjhhU?si=CLLu6kZYDnpuJYUZ
What Happened to the Tribes of Europe?
https://youtu.be/K2wGOlVDsRw?si=5kS9r42e0Yw3S69x
Ancestral Memory.
https://youtube.com/shorts/qtKQyuG0nvA?si=6XlE7a5rGM9i52rx
Protect Your Spirit.
https://youtu.be/vdN1IiTR8JA?si=o_POipK0ZfebrIEz
Calling back the Spirit.
https://youtu.be/ul5fVXH7Ur4?si=tHVe9rF-DR-Met4r
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Thanks Bill, liked the article about the legal system and was thinking about it – systems are just not designed to care about people, only to perpetuate themselves. Will be looking at other links. Returning to connection-focused ways of living seems almost impossible sometimes, tho I think just sharing ideas can make a difference.
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Thanks Freya.
Call of the Wild. music video #1.
https://youtu.be/kehTezsH2fE?si=PzLm0U9F9NQ87NMK
#2. https://youtu.be/WD8G26Q3epM?si=-NE3XRhZ7TX0zbNh
#3.
https://youtu.be/L56yWN8dMGI?si=jRdBJzXwdPjdF3Tv
#4. https://youtu.be/WZJToVmneGA?si=B9y-pHfm1q84rIhr
#5. “Ye-at-eeh.” https://youtu.be/YZQiihDC__E?si=FupuCC2BMIFbfbjz
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Outstanding piece Dr. Levine. It’s insane psychiatry expects people to ‘adjust to’ intolerable, dehumanizing or extremely difficult situations and if they don’t they are degraded as psychiatrically ‘disordered.’ I wonder how many psychiatrists are hypocrites and live double lives, i.e. not adjusting well to things in their personal lives, but yet continue with the judgmental façade to judge and label other normal humans.
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I don’t know if this belongs here, just having fun:
Experience “Crazy”
A bold new reality show!
For one month—and a grand prize of one million dollars—one lucky contestant gets to experience what it’s like to be “crazy.”
The rules are simple:
One contestant.
Thirty days.
A house with twelve roommates.
There’s just one twist: all twelve roommates have been told that you are “mentally ill”.
They don’t know you. They don’t know your history. But they’ve heard rumors.
Can you survive a month under constant suspicion? A perpetual threat?
Do you think YOU can survive for a month with twelve people in your immediate orbit treating you like a mental illness?
Can you endure gossip, whispers, and knowing glances? Subtle exclusions? Dismissive smirks that say, “we heard about you”? Arms-length affability? Can you endure being a landing pad for routine conclusion-jumping contests? Do you have scapegoat experience?
Remember:
Every reaction becomes evidence.
Every misunderstanding confirms the narrative.
Every moment of frustration becomes a “symptom.”
Every explanation and lived experience observation is dismissed as “crazy talk.”
Stay calm. Stay rational. Stay composed.
Because here’s the catch: if you have even one episode of mental distress, you lose. Then you’re “crazy” and you’ll be supplied with “professional help.”
Do you think you could do it?
Welcome to Experience “Crazy.”
Disclaimer: Should the cost of professional mental health services required after the show exceed the value of the grand prize, the producers assume no responsibility.
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Dan, too scarily similar to the real world 😀
Would def require a panel of commentating professionals to analyze the gaslighting, and 2 psychiatrists on stand-by to sign the documents as contestants are hauled off.
Maybe call it Crazymaking by numbers?
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If there is no such thing as ‘mental health’ then what is a ‘sane society’ supposed to be? When you propose to abolish the category of ‘mental health’, you must willingly forego the right to talk about sanity on a societal scale. It also doesn’t make sense to shift the illness to the ‘society’ to exonerate the ill-fitting individual either. It is obvious that ‘sanity’ is used in place of ‘mental health’ and the concept of ‘mental illness’ is hidden under an assumption of collective insanity. Their names have changed but the concepts remain more or less the same. It is true that these categories have proved to be useless but their criticism offered here is also incoherent and useless.
Szasz’s criticisms of modern psychiatry are influential on a symbolic and superficial level. That is why they are somewhat accepted by the profession itself; they look sharp but in reality they don’t hurt. I doubt many people read his books aside from their most quoted passages which make bold and striking claims; because the books don’t come together as coherent arguments or illuminating investigations, they are actually embarrassing as scholarly works. Myth of Mental Illness is a representative example; Szasz defines mental illness as a myth but he uses that term in a careless, unhistorical way. What he describes is not a ‘myth’, it might be a lie, a story or a marketing strategy. Szasz wants to abolish psychiatric practice without changing anything else, he basically sees that massively influential theory and practice as a ‘mistake’ but he doesn’t explain its function or history. Szasz represents the Reaganite wing of anti-psychiatry.
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Myth “ .2. a widely held but false belief or idea.” (Oxford languages).
Psychiatric history is a history of failed theories, barbaric “treatments” and constant reinventions. A history of changing narratives to suit the times and to fend off criticism. Psychiatric ideology is an entirely vacuous pseudo-science – a false belief system, a myth.
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ahmet, can you provide an example of a sane society?
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This chapbook describes what might be a healthier way to organize society. In doing so, it might also suggest an effective alternative to “psychiatric reform.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10W7ZzxBoJp2qeCkL8ozi-DRg8b3UJU1C/view?usp=drivesdk
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Thanks Dan, will read this!
Good question too 🙂
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Thanks, Freya. I look forward to your feedback!
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