Actually psychiatry works hand-in-glove with the ruling class and political/military establishment, the aren’t just “doing as the Romans do.”
There are some good reasons to contribute to MIA if one has bucks to spare.
One of them would not be a belief that MIA will promote the demise and ultimate abolition of psychiatry.
MIA is opposed to abolitionism and in fact perpetuates the idea that emotional turmoil is a primarily a problem with the individual rather than the toxic system we live under.
Do you have a public email or other possible ways of contacting you Birdsong? You might want to be in touch with others who share your anti-psychiatry perspectives.
Thanks for the info.
It always helps to convey an understanding to these creeps that the eyes of many are upon them.
What was the alleged basis for this? Did anyone attend the hearing?
There are already abolitionist groupings and activities. MIA is not an anti-psychiatry organization so you won’t find them here is all.
Psychiatry cannot be opposed in a “mainstream” manner; the two are opposites.
All this focus on “psychiatry” is a bit old fashioned. Today, the vast majority of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by general practitioners.
They are still prescribed based on psychiatric ideology and a belief in “mental illness.” And it is exactly this mentality that needs to be exposed and defeated.
It should be noted however that Mr. Oaks has made it very clear since the (temporary) defeat of the original movement that his ensuing efforts have NOT been anti-psychiatry, but an attempt to forge “unity” among disparate and opposing sectors of opinion loosely related to some sort of dissatisfaction with psychiatry as it currently exists.
I should add that the Szaszes and Breggins have always been an infinitesimal speck in the shrink population.
Damn. This is supposed to be an anti-psychiatry movement and yet focusing on psychiatry is “old fashioned”?
The mental patients liberation movement was and remains ANTI-PSYCHIATRY. Except we don’t say “mental patient” any more, we say survivor.
And we never spoke of shrinks as “allies.” Though some, like Peter Breggin and Thomas Szasz, clearly were in many ways.
Those who believe in “mental illness” and practice psychiatry are NOT anti-psychiatry; this includes all shrinks unless they are among the few involved in exposing the psychiatric system. These people can NEVER speak for us.
Psychiatry must be exposed as a tool of social control rather than medicine.
A safer more humane world must be brought into existence via revolution. Psychiatry works to preserve the unjust corporate-dominated system under which we live.
Well…l guess as long as you dissent to the “right” things in the “right” way.
The term “consumer” is bullshit anyway, unless you’re referring to the consumption of misinformation and neurotoxins.
I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to unite psychiatric survivors with psych. consumers.
Good to see people making these connections.
Though psych survivors might help the “consumers” see through the hype and ultimately become survivors.
Why not one of you too, Someone?
Arguments based on emotion are not really arguments.
Plus an oppressor by definition has a power advantage in the “discussion.”
Yes, absolutely.
I saw no personal attacks on David Oaks, simply rebuttals of what could easily be construed as attacks by David on those who see psychiatry as their enemy.
David is one of many survivors of psychiatry who have been leading the struggle against psychiatric oppression on many levels for many years, not all of whom do so in a high-profile, personality based manner. His views are respected as worthy of consideration, just as are those of others. Here he seems to consider those his disagrees with as “haters,” and this is what people are responding to.
Smooshing together counseling and psychiatry is pretty clearly confusing the issues as far as I’m concerned. Psychiatry claims to be medicine, hence it’s fraud.
There are truly anti-psychiatry survivors out here folks, I might ask one of them to post here about where the anti-psychiatry “underground” stands at the moment and maybe how to get in touch. Do any of the anti-psych people here have email adds the ydon’t mind posting here just to simplify things?
And this is what is meant by “sleeping with the enemy.” And psychosurgery is slightly less harmful than bashing someone’s head in with a rock. At least in some cases.
You make me feel superfluous Birdsong but YES!
Yes, your enemy is someone who works to undermine or destroy you — “deliberately” or not. Such as causing you to self-identify as “other” (or “patient”).
I would like to know from any student of Gandhi, if Gandhi ever referred to the opposition as ‘enemy’ and if Dr. Martin Luther King ever referred to proponents of Jim Crow as the enemy?
So would you use India as an example of human progress?
And it actually took Black rebellions in cities throughout the country before even modest gains were achieved on an economic level — though the marches were inspirational MLK had lost a lot of support at the end of his life.
Anyway if he saw people as his political enemy he would probably not have used that term to avoid stirring up hatred and confusion.
I second that emotion. Thanks Bradford.
Looks like I peeked into this little tiff a little late.
Tell it Birdsong!
For the purpose of analysis the term “enemy” is appropriate politically whether or not one likes or dislikes the personality in question.
So if the purpose is to abolish psychiatry, the goal of “reforming mental health” is antithetical and the term “enemy” is appropriate to describe politically those who want to save psychiatry, and not abolish it based on its inherent fraudulence, which cannot be “reformed.”
So-called social media should never be used to discuss personal issues of any sort, unless those involved want the entire world as their audience, and I never use it period.
However, for those who nonetheless choose to proceed with anti-psychiatry education and organizing in this manner I can go along with the basic premise of this article.
Richard Stallman of the Internet Hall of Fame suggests organizations use ONLY THE HOME PAGE of Facebook etc., and only to direct people to an actual website they control, which I think is an EXCELLENT idea.
Do we have any evidence he is an expert(beyond any other doctor) on ECT or other electrical treatments?
If he’s not an “expert” why is he promoting it?
Why should such clear contradictions and hypocrisy not be exposed?
Quoting Michael Cornwall further down in this discussion:
David Healy is a world renowned advocate for and practitioner of brain damaging shock treatment. He claims that- “ECT is the most effective treatment for severe depressive disorder.”
Like I said above “dissent” legitimizes psychiatry as the established reality towards which one may hold critical opinions — but not to the extent of abolishing it as an unmistakable evil.
By treating psychiatry as needing “reform” but not abolition MIA perpetuates the psychiatric mindset.
Of course there’s a lot more $ in the “critical psychiatry” field than in the struggle for abolition.
Unfortunately simply criticizing psychiatry is a strategy of weakness. That psychiatry needs to be abolished should be seen as a given, and the focus should be on HOW to accomplish this, not on whether or why,
They will throw their own under the bus if suits their interests.
I do not expect Healy to be an electrical engineer on top of an expert on drug harms.
This reminds me of a certain Supreme Court justice who won’t venture a definition of the word “woman” because she is not a biologist.
Glad people are picking up on the elephant in the room. Here’s another: Franz Fanon practiced electroshock on his oppressed “patients.”
Presenting the “pros & cons” of fascist surveillance as a debatable topic only serves to legitimize totalitarianism in the eyes of those who are unable to think.
But it’s a great excuse for those who know better to cling to their “mental health” careers.
This is the same David Healy who raves about the value of electroshock???
You hit it on the head Charlotte. “Mental health” is just as much an illusion as is “mental illness.”
The toxic reaction to COVID — lockdowns, masks, “vaccines,” etc. — was promulgated by neoliberalism, as well as by former leftists.
Is reordering one’s bodily chemistry to disguise or suppress feelings of unhappiness an improvement or a self-imposed disability?
What are “improvements”?
Aftab admonished, “Anyone not attuned to the emerging intersection of psychiatric critique & far-right politics is not paying attention. We’ve already seen previews of this relationship when it comes to gender critical ideology & anti-vaccine sentiment;
As long time leftist Russeell Brand mockingly said last year after joining the anti-forced VAXX forces: “Hey look I’m ‘right wing’ now.”
Any leftist who has stood still politically over the past few years is now called “right wing” for attacking Big Pharm and forced drugging, or for defending feminism from misogynist attacks by “transgender” activists. And we will be called “right wing” for attacking psychiatric slavery.
Orwell would have a lot to say about this.
I find the idea that all “mental illness” is simply voluntary disliked behavior doesn’t hold water.
If that’s what you got from this blog it reaffirms my statement that people should learn about Szasz directly, not via “interpreters.”
“Mental illness” does NOT EXIST period. The mind is an abstraction and is not subject to physical qualities such as “disease” (or color, or texture). This is a semantic con job.
If you are truly done with psychiatry you should have no need to argue with it, any more than an abused woman needs to argue with an abuser. Move on.
Something cannot be “rehumanized” that was never human to begin with. So the theme of this blog is a non-starter.
We know essentially what to replace it with. But true revolution is dangerous so people make rationalizations for “gradual change,” which of course never happens, and often things get worse since that “gradual” change is essentially more of the same but better disguised.
Sure, no prob.
I imagine you also realize that to perpetuate the idea of “community mental health” validates the system which creates the collective trauma we all share at some level. Not that you created that contradiction, you’re just trying to deal with it. Still we should never try to “adjust” to a criminal system or encourage others to.
The Las Vegas mass shooter was strung out on Valium/diazepam.
Known as Truman Show Syndrome, my first psychotic episode consisted of me believing wholeheartedly that I was being watched by cameras everywhere and that I was the star of a reality show about my life. Everyone — friends, family, and strangers alike — was “in on it” and only interacting with me to get their 15 minutes of fame.
I had a phase like that when I was doing lots of acid. This was decades before the Truman Show though.
Don’t call it “psychosis,” it’s a meaningless term. If you can’t handle the synchronicity don’t smoke the stronger stuff, it can be disorienting.
The mind, like the soul, is an abstract, non-physical entity and cannot be “ill,” any more than someone with “spring fever” is ill. Check out Dr. Thomas Szasz at http://www.szasz.com
We forget to tell people they are welcome and sacred. Instead, we tell people not to be ashamed of struggle while the entirety of the system shames them by perpetuating analogies that compare broken bones to a “broken” brain or labeling us as “abnormal” and “ill.”
Yes, then they act like it’s YOUR responsibility to “overcome” the “stigma” associated with the demeaning labels they put on you.
There is no excuse for the toxic social and political realities we are expected to endure, and no solution to the pain thereby generated, other than overcoming (overthrowing?) the system itself.
Thanks.
Many so-called “anti-psychiatry” articles written by liberal professionals and academics miss the point and serve to promote a “professional anti-psychiatry” mentality.
Enough New Age jargon please. Fuck psychiatry!
The so-called “Alternatives Conference” has always been a tool of the psychiatric establishment.
Why get your Szaszian education from a middleman? Check out Szasz himself.
The nature of a totalitarian system is that it is impervious to transformational change, and allows only cosmetic changes, which are trumpeted as major breakthroughs. The “mental health” apparatus is such a totalitarian system. In the above article we’re basically talking about rearranging the deck chairs on the psychiatric Titanic, which needs to find its iceberg asap.
And WTF?:
Don’t let other issues distract the process, like mandates for masks, requirements for Covid vaccinations, etc. ?
Someone who purports to oppose the mh system would even isuggest that anti-MH activists should support such forced totalitarian nonsense???
To-tal-i-tar-i-an. Get to know the word folks, you’ll be needing it more and more.
I didn’t know that was Szasz’s own term, all the more telling that it was!
I suggest people simply go to Szasz.com if they want to understand Szasz. Dr. Szasz can explain his theories better than any of those who purport to do so for him.
We don’t need “critics” of psychiatry. We don’t need more “models.” We need anti-psychiatry activists.
Speak of the devil — I believe Frank B was the poster who originally used the term “weasel word” to describe the term “mental disorder” as an attempt to blur the lines around the term “mental illness.”
However mental disorder (not illness) is entirely possible and entirely rational when the processes involved are defined correctly.
Nope. Both terms are equally impossible, because, again, the mind is not a thing, it is a concept. Show me where Szasz said anything of the sort. (Quotes would help.)
“Mental disorder” has been previously described here as a “weasel word” used to skew the discussion.
Absolutely the mind is not a physical thing. But then what are you referring to when you use the term “it”? This is the question which Szasz could not answer…
Non-physical abstractions also are described by the pronoun “it.” This is a question Szasz never needed to ask as the answer is obvious.
Your concern seems to be less with the specifics of Szaszian theory than with pushing your own. However, Szasz didn’t need a “theory of mind,” or to emulate psychiatry in any way; His mission was to thoroughly deconstruct the notion of “mental illness,” which is the basis for the existence of psychiatry as a field of pseudo-medicine. And it was accomplished, even though some “supporters” of Szasz don’t get what he was saying.
Advancement of psychiatry is necessary because it would simply be reinvented if it did not exist.
Doesn’t say much for your respect for the ability of humans to evolve and learn from our mistakes.
PS The brain is the switchboard for the mind, designed to channel information from a non-physical framework to a physical one. Of course to grasp this first requires one to shed his/her assumptions about many things.
The fact hat you put “mind” in quotes indicates that you understand somewhere that it is an abstraction, and cannot have physical characteristics.
The brain helps process the contents of the mind in a material framework; it does not equate to the mind or create the messages the mind conveys. If the brain is damaged this function can be altered or inhibited, but this is physical, not “mental” damage, which is a contradiction in terms.
Avoid all psychiatry completely. Let it wither and die choking on its inherent contradictions, and do something productive with your life.
However MIA has backed off repeatedly from exposing and confronting this sort of thing head on, and MIA’s refusal to embrace anti-psychiatry is partially based in fear of being accused of supporting Scientology. But if a Scientologist calls water wet does that mean we should deny it?
Say what? Some sellout group comes to its foregone conclusion and that’s a “wake up call”? Why weren’t these “advocates” taking action against PSYCHIATRY?
You don’t get Szasz at all apparently.
There is no such thing as a “mental disorder” because the mind is not a thing, period. It is not subject to physical laws and does not take on physical characteristics such as “order” or “disease.”
To claim that Szasz — a practicing psychoanalyst — did not acknowledge the existence of stress is equally specious.
“Mental illness” is an exercise in semantic obfuscation. Further, to assume that there are medical “cures” for the stress created by a toxic capitalist culture is an exercise in totalitarian thought. (How about the Oppression Model?)
The only proper place for psychiatry to “advance” is into the dustbin of history.
Good comments in general Joshua.
Totalitarianism is the essence of “mental health.” Unwanted behavior is attacked as “unhealthy,” which helps mask the political nature of the process.
States of being and behaviors are still not diseases in any objective sense. Any “impairment” is sociological (however “real”) and thus abstract. Physical damage resulting from destructive behavior or psychiatric neurotoxins can properly be called disease or illness, however.
In his recent article, journalist Robert Whitaker has argued that psychiatry, as an institution, committed fraud with its promotion of the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders.
What the author neglects to point out, and is at the crux of Szasz’s teaching, is that psychiatry does not simply “commit” fraud, it is fraudulent in its very essence, i.e. the notion of “mental illness” itself.
As for the three posited questions:
(1) “Biological psychiatry” is simply a pharma-serving extension of the original fraud of psychiatry, i.e. the notion that the metaphor “mntal illness” is identical to an objective disease. (Szasz mentions “spring fever” in the same sense.) Logically speaking, if “mental illness” is impossible and absurd, any purported “treatments” for a non-existent disease are just as absurd, no matter how “scientific.”
(2) What psychiatry’s “ideology” might be depends on the beholder I suppose. However if it were to take to heart the lessons of Szasz it would dissolve itself as a branch of medicine, if not entirely, since the term very term “psychiatry” implies the existence of “mental disease.” I don’t pay much attention to the “practice” of psychiatry other than to note its essential fraudulence in principle, and I doubt changing psychiatric practice or ideology was a main goal of Szasz, as opposed to critiquing the entire context.
(3) The only way to end psychiatric fraud is to discredit the entire foundation upon which the institution rests. Human interaction must no longer be considered a “specialty.”
Mental health is a fascist concept.
If you are mad all the time you shouldn’t be a parent till you get your shit together.
The “Pillar” is not “crumbling” except for those who stupidly chose to embrace it in the first place. For those in the real world it never existed.
First you need to define a “class” that would be acknowledged as such by a judge, such as “those people who have been harmed by misleading claims that emotional distress is caused by chemical imbalances and that drugs can correct these imbalances.” Then you would need to find people who would be acknowledged as spokespeople for that class.
Psychiatry will adapt to serve the interests of whatever group is in power. That would be the neolibs right now, but this is not exclusive.
Yeah, good luck with getting anti-psych PSAs on corporate media, which is controlled by Pharma. This is the sort of thing people always seem to buy into, i.e. that the system will assist in bringing itself down, but those in power have had their bases covered for a long time.
After the past two years are you saying the “left” does NOT embrace Pharma?
The relevance was the analogy of so-called leftists opposing the right to refuse “vaccination” to “leftists” who turn a blind eye to psychiatric oppression.
There are psychiatric survivors and psychiatric victims, nothing more. Though the survivors are also victims.
You mean National Pentagon Radio?
The only real alternative to the DSM is NO DSM.
Phil H’s website is no longer up.
Right, what in God’s name is a “mental health activist”? Someone who promotes “mental health”? “Mental health” is the enemy.
Removed for moderation.
Not contesting the Mother Teresa stuff, but I think you get my general idea.
Steve is correct.
And the issue of “side” effects is only beginning to emerge.
Re: Chomsky — It’s as if Mother Teresa at the end of her life called for branding children with the sign of the cross — that would stain HER legacy no matter what, right? Same here.
It actually IS a left-right issue, except all the “leftists” are right wing too.
And except for those who refuse the (totally failed) COVID “vaccine.” (Unfortunately there are still some victims of psychiatry who think there’s a difference depending on which drug you are being forcibly injected with. Psychiatrists are wrong, Fauci is a hero. Puke.
Hail Pharma!
I must note that Chomsky essentially called for the un-VAXXed to be cast into the hinterlands away from “civilized” society to fend for themselves, he’s a disgrace to his own name, and has permanently stained his legacy. Talk about totalitarianism. Hypocrite codger.
That’s not something that can be answered in the abstract, it depends on the particular circumstances out of which the movement, or particular “wave” of the ongoing movement, arises. There has always been and continues to be an “underground” anti-psychiatry consciousness among psychiatric victims, and the most articulate and revolutionary voices of any given era have the collective moral and strategic responsibility to determine the nature of that era’s form of resistance. I know that’s pretty abstract in itself, but before pursuing any goal the goal needs to be thoroughly understood, as well as strategically and analytically sound. Otherwise you’re in danger of working against your own interests without even realizing it.
There’s nothing wrong with reformist tactics such as lawsuits as long as they are understood as such and not presented as something that will achieve “systemic” change, i.e. the abolition of psychiatry. No system will voluntarily overthrow itself, and if lawsuits could have that effect they would be outlawed. Currently the danger of winning a lawsuit or two would be that “victory” being used as a pretext for claiming, “see the system works, psychiatry can clean its own house,” and making people believe that they “won” and there’s no need to struggle AGAINST PSYCHIATRY anymore.
P.S. Remember that victims of psychiatry should put their sights not just on “resisting,” but on overcoming.
Re: Above — check out
Tucker Carlson: You Are Not Supposed To Notice That Psychiatric Drugs Are Driving Young American Men Insane ?
There are no “psychiatric rights.” If you are being psychiatrized your humanity is being violated and those who pretend that “rights” can be obtained via legalities are being misleading, and are perpetuating psychiatry’s false raison d’etre.
We have all known for years that the basic reasoning behind psychiatric drugging is fraudulent and that these drugs are given for “illnesses” that do not exist. MIA was founded upon this understanding, yet years later people keep beating this dead horse as THE problem when THE problem is the existence of psychiatry, period.
The anti-psychiatry movement is currently moribund because people are led to believe illusions such as that lawsuits can stop psychiatry. This is catering to people’s naivete and is like thinking that lawsuits can stop capitalism (you might call it corporate greed). Only organized resistance — not for those who like to feel comfy — can effectively confront a neutralize psychiatric oppression.
I should add that it’s a sign that the Left is dead (at least for now) when the person most responsible for disseminating anti-SSRI info these days is Tucker Carlson.
More redundancy masquerading as enlightened social justice.
The basic fraud of psychiatry is its claim to be a branch of medicine; drugs are merely fraud-within-a-fraud. The fraud of psychiatric neurotoxins/”medications” is that they exist period, and that psychiatric drugs are being prescribed for non-diseases.
The idea that there is anything “anti-psychiatry” contained in this article is seriously flawed as well. The function of such a lawsuit would be merely for psychiatric victims to squawk and complain about psychiatry in an effort to “improve” it, rather than organizing to abolish it.
That’s because they want to blame them on the very existence of guns, no doubt.
Activism needs to be directed effectively. Activism in our case which is not directed towards abolishing psychiatry, and seeks to “improve” psychiatry, is counterproductive.
I think Don Weitz would shudder at Phoenix being resurrected as anything less than an anti-psychiatry publication. The point is not to change laws to improve the lot of psychiatric prisoners, or look for “alternative treatments,” but to eliminate psychiatry altogether. If the “new” Phoenix continues in the self-absorbed manner of the current lot of “mad activists” it will be demeaning to what it and Don Weitz and so many others stood for for so long. Psychiatry in the end is a tool of capitalist conformity and corporate greed, and all should disabuse themselves of the notion that it is simply “bad medicine.”
Glad we seem to be pretty much on the same page.
It’s one thing to expose psychiatry with an eye on eliminating it, however, and another with the intent of making it “better.” If the purpose of psychiatry is control, making it “better” is to expand that control.
It is a mistake to believe that simply exposing something evil will lead to its demise, which is part of the problem with MIA and similar projects, which have been exposing stuff right and left for ages now, with no discernible progress towards eliminating any of it. This is because they have always refused to take a clear stand against psychiatry or even forced “treatment.” Remember the quote attributed to Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Good reading your comments.
But we have known all this for years. I don’t know why people keep beating the same dead horse. Perpetual complaining, rather than fighting to eliminate psychiatry, or at least walking away from it altogether, is a symptom of dependency and emotional addiction, not liberation. Everything that needed “exposing” was exposed long ago; to do so repeatedly constitutes little more than redundancy.
The “state mental health code” IS a violation in & of itself. Whether it is further violated is inconsequential.
Psychiatry is not bad medicine, it’s fake medicine.
Promoting “alternatives” to psychiatry ignores that the purpose of psychiatry is control, not help. The idea that one needs to be “cured” of his/her human responses to a totalitarian world is the essence of the mind control psychiatry enforces among the populace.
Psychiatry needs to go, there is nothing more to “research.” To attempt to “improve” psychiatry is to perpetuate it. And now that the “scientific” COVID lockdowns are over psychiatry is poised to “treat” the “trauma” of the victims — so look out everybody.
Just say no!
ALL psychiatry is based on “medical” justifications. Try becoming a shrink without a medical degree.
Capitalism is the exploitation of the many by the tiny few, and America has certainly fulfilled this. But again, almost no one here can even define capitalism and, pending that time, these sorts of conversations are useless and diversionary.
I was citing you as an exception to the rule. 🙂
Capitalism is the currently predominant form of exploitation, not the only form historically. Though in terms of mass oppression I would say ancient Greece would pale compared to corporate monopoly capitalism.
Despite the general inability of people at MIA (and everywhere) to intelligently discuss Marxism, you nonetheless raise some interesting thoughts, such as your speculation on Marx’s personality and home life. However in the end such considerations must always be secondary to the analysis he produced (which is why Capital is still up there close to the Bible as one of the most widely read books).
One also must avoid mistaking revisionism for “new interpretations,” not that the latter are always revisionist. In the end the aim of Marxism as a science is not achieving “socialist” society but a classless society with no state whatsoever. So any evaluation of how it is “interpreted” should keep that in mind.
As the above comment demonstrates, people at MIA for the most part are not well versed in Marxism is and not particularly qualified to discuss it here. Since everyone means something different when they use the term, this should be considered a form of “advanced study”; talking about “capitalism” off the cuff can only spread confusion, and tends to divert the more specific matter at hand.
What’s important to understand is that psychiatry will adapt to ANY oppressive governmental system if it is allowed to. Since the only existing form of government right now is capitalism I think we should focus on psychiatry, the rest is sort of redundant.
Also to enforce the values and narratives of capitalism, and define those who are NOT down with the system as flawed.
I have no doubt many people claiming mental illness are faking it.
All “mental illness” is fake. Please go to szasz.com.
Capitalism is not simply rich people exploiting the poor, it involves the nature of work and production, and the alienation of people’s personal aspirations from the wage labor they perform as a means of survival.
Any ideas as to why Breggin has disappeared from the pages of MIA?
We know what’s happening in the system, we don’t need it exposed but ENDED.
Let’s keep personalities out of this, too many important discussions here are diverted into personal stuff.
Labeling someone “mentally ill” is brutalizing them semantically.
Until you can define “communism” and “marxism” please stop using them, your comments might make more sense.
“Psychopathy” is a psychiatric term so it is useless as a way of defining psychiatry, which is a ruse itself. Easier to say that “mental illness” doesn’t exist at all and psychiatry is a scam.
I think there can be an honest debate as to whether there can be a “diagnosis” of either ADHD or ADD.
I can’t believe you of all people would say this. Don’t you realize this is tantamount to saying that “mental illness” can exist, when the entire anti-psychiatry movement is based on the understanding that “mental illness” is an illogical and literally impossible concept? Putting any psychiatric label on anyone is an oppressive act; there are no exceptions.
I highly suggest going to http://www.szasz.com and checking out what Szasz had to teach us about this stuff — from the horse’s mouth, not someone else’s interpretation.
I remember someone here comparing the tasks imposed on schoolchildren to “low grade clerical work.”
MIA is definitely an excellent resource for “beginning the journey.” However it tends to repeatedly highlight the myriad issues with so-called “mental health care” without coming out and saying the obvious, that psychiatry needs to go. This to me is the actual beginning of the journey — recognizing that the conversation should not focus on whether to eliminate psychiatry but how.
You may be inappropriately happy — better check with your shrink. 🙂
Yes. And Breggin is no longer to be found on MIA. Any guesses as to why?
Why would anything substantially change? Psychiatry is not in business to satisfy its victims but to control them and isolate them from society.
Same comment as above — good post till the last sentence. Destroying psychiatry would be better by far.
You were going good till the last sentence, which is ridiculous.
Define “communism.”
Glad you put “ADHD” in quotes, as inconvenient thought and behavior is not a disease (or “condition”). In most cases so labeled it is a reaction to the stultifying nature of the indoctrination labeled “education.”
Touche.
“We” don’t lock people up — the system that your colleagues (at least) serve, either overtly or through silence, locks people up using psychiatric “justifications.”
Now that you understand that there is no “philosophical basis for psychiatry” (other than control) you might consider returning your “credentials,” like the Vietnam vets who threw their medals back. This would probably have a greater effect than anything you write (although the fact that you have alienated your colleagues is a positive).
How far away are you from totally dismissing and exposing the fraudulent precepts and oppressive practices of psychiatry?
There are no”capitalist vs. Marxist arguments” taking place here, just people talking to themselves in the guise of conversation — I would venture a guess that no two people here mean the same thing by “communism” or “capitalism,” or “marxism.” It’s much easier to avoid serious discussion by simply aligning with an “ism” than articulating principles in a methodical manner. Then again, nothing new there.
Got a concrete current example?
Who said anything about giving it professional status?
I think capitalism can work on a very localized scale
The natural progression of capitalism is akin to big fish eating little fish, and so on. The end point is always corporate monopoly capitalism, unless history holds an even more vicious mutation in store.
What happened to Lieberman?
So you call Szasz a neoliberal? I’ll bet a nickel Szasz would NOT have supported forced lockdowns and forced injections.
If Szasz is a neoliberal what is Bill Gates? The Clintons?
Amazing how people can argue so passionately about things they never bother to define.
Lots of people all along have pointed out the high rates of suicide associated with lockdowns and the attendant abuses. Talk of such has mostly been suppressed by those who profit from hysteria.
As Mad in America readers know full well, mainstream psychiatry has been nonproductive and counterproductive for millions of people, and its assumptions are routinely illogical and not based on genuine science…what’s increasingly troubling for me is that mainstream mental health professionals have made the field so boring that freethinkers and critical thinkers outside of the MIA orbit won’t even bother to read an article or pick up a book with “Psychiatry” in the title.
PLEASE stop saying “mainstream psychiatry” — ALL psychiatry is by definition oppressive and needs to go.
There’s no need for anyone to pick up a book with “psychiatry” in the title unless it has an “anti” preceding it — as with capitalism the question should not be whether to abolish it but how.
Great post. Hopefully there will be a rebirth of serious Marxist analysis, the ultimate purpose of which is learning how to correctly fight for and achieve a classless society (not merely a “socialist” society). Right now class consciousness is virtually nonexistent, at least in the U.S. and North America, and the oppressors now include lots of privileged people who love to pontificate about and demean working class “deplorables” who don’t buy their pseudo-enlightened rhetoric.
If something is actively destructive, such as psychiatry, it also helps to actively oppose it. Astrology and phrenology are not actively destructive, even if one doesn’t ascribe to them. That’s the difference.
Do they support lockdowns and mandates?
Marxism is not “practiced” any more than astronomy is “practiced”; it is a field of inquiry.
Neither China nor Russia are “communist” states for starterss; there is no such thing, even in principle, as a communist state, and in practice the only remotely socialist state currently is Cuba.
Add “leftist” to “Marxist” as one of those terms everyone has an opinion about but is loathe to define.
In theory leftists and liberals are diametrically opposed, however they joined forces over the covid madness — it might be more accurate to say that for the most part leftists — most likely including some of those who identify themselves here as such — became liberals; at any rate both have joined the camp of totalitarianism. There may be some exceptions, if so please enlighten me.
The “Left” (anarcho-syndicalists? social/civil libertarians? marxists? trotskyites? social democrats with their by-definition-pretty-credible political organizing? Unionizers? Noam Chomsky?) includes many of the OGs when it comes to standing against coercive medical practices and monopolistic trade interests
Yes, correct — and most have thoroughly betrayed their (alleged) principles by embracing the COVID narrative, whether out of opportunism or sheer cowardice. At any rate they can never be trusted again, they have become shills for the Big Pharm they supposedly despise. We have to start all over.
It will be getting worse so don’t think it’s your job to battle the whirlwind — we haven’t even begun to experience the push to mass psychiatrize everybody for “COVID-related trauma,” etc.
Psychiatry will adapt to the existing power structure, whatever it may be.
People need to stop tossing around words they can’t even properly define (and this applies to all “sides”). And we need to get away from isms and say what we mean.
Marxism in my view is not an ideology, but a tool for analyzing class struggle. (All of which is beyond the purview of website which uses the term “Mad” to describe those it is presumably in business to advocate for.) Anyway, there can be authoritarian Marxists just like there can be authoritarian psychologists, it depends on the individual, or the individual school of Marxism.
Much of this theoretical talk is rapidly becoming obsolete, as there is currently no credible socialist or communist grouping that the people will (or should) trust in the wake of the entire so-called Left (from liberals on up) totally screwing the people with their support for lockdowns, school & business closures, child abuse, unscientific mandates, Big Pharm, Big Tech, ad infinitum. If there is to be a revolution in our lifetimes it will have to be totally rebuilt, as the current “leaders” have clearly proven themselves to be otherwise.
“Corporate capitalism” is like “biological psychiatry” in that there is no “better” form of capitalism, or “better” form of psychiatry.
AND while we’re on the subject, the issue is not “mainstream” psychiatry, but ALL psychiatry, which is without exception based on the illogical, absurd, and Neanderthal concept of “mental illness.”
As has been pointed out on numerous occasions in the pages of MIA, Szasz was by any standard definition anti-psychiatry; his primary objection to the term was that he didn’t want to be confused with leftist psychiatrists like David Cooper, who labeled their particular brand of psychiatry “antipsychiatry.”
As for Szasz being an anti-psychiatry activist, it could be argued that anyone who recognizes that psychiatry is organized medical fraud and opposes forced psychiatric intervention is”anti-psychiatry,” as force is at the center of psychiatry’s existence. And Szasz openly and actively opposed such force.
Torrey on the other hand is comparable to such opportunistic political turncoats as David Horowitz.
As soon as it was announced (years before covid) that FB would be censoring anti-vaccine info I knew that anti-psychiatry info would be next.
Censorship has already gone too far, but it’s only beginning.
Actually psychiatry works hand-in-glove with the ruling class and political/military establishment, the aren’t just “doing as the Romans do.”
There are some good reasons to contribute to MIA if one has bucks to spare.
One of them would not be a belief that MIA will promote the demise and ultimate abolition of psychiatry.
MIA is opposed to abolitionism and in fact perpetuates the idea that emotional turmoil is a primarily a problem with the individual rather than the toxic system we live under.
Do you have a public email or other possible ways of contacting you Birdsong? You might want to be in touch with others who share your anti-psychiatry perspectives.
Thanks for the info.
It always helps to convey an understanding to these creeps that the eyes of many are upon them.
What was the alleged basis for this? Did anyone attend the hearing?
There are already abolitionist groupings and activities. MIA is not an anti-psychiatry organization so you won’t find them here is all.
Psychiatry cannot be opposed in a “mainstream” manner; the two are opposites.
All this focus on “psychiatry” is a bit old fashioned. Today, the vast majority of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by general practitioners.
They are still prescribed based on psychiatric ideology and a belief in “mental illness.” And it is exactly this mentality that needs to be exposed and defeated.
It should be noted however that Mr. Oaks has made it very clear since the (temporary) defeat of the original movement that his ensuing efforts have NOT been anti-psychiatry, but an attempt to forge “unity” among disparate and opposing sectors of opinion loosely related to some sort of dissatisfaction with psychiatry as it currently exists.
I should add that the Szaszes and Breggins have always been an infinitesimal speck in the shrink population.
Damn. This is supposed to be an anti-psychiatry movement and yet focusing on psychiatry is “old fashioned”?
The mental patients liberation movement was and remains ANTI-PSYCHIATRY. Except we don’t say “mental patient” any more, we say survivor.
And we never spoke of shrinks as “allies.” Though some, like Peter Breggin and Thomas Szasz, clearly were in many ways.
Those who believe in “mental illness” and practice psychiatry are NOT anti-psychiatry; this includes all shrinks unless they are among the few involved in exposing the psychiatric system. These people can NEVER speak for us.
Psychiatry must be exposed as a tool of social control rather than medicine.
A safer more humane world must be brought into existence via revolution. Psychiatry works to preserve the unjust corporate-dominated system under which we live.
Well…l guess as long as you dissent to the “right” things in the “right” way.
The term “consumer” is bullshit anyway, unless you’re referring to the consumption of misinformation and neurotoxins.
I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to unite psychiatric survivors with psych. consumers.
Good to see people making these connections.
Though psych survivors might help the “consumers” see through the hype and ultimately become survivors.
Why not one of you too, Someone?
Arguments based on emotion are not really arguments.
Plus an oppressor by definition has a power advantage in the “discussion.”
Yes, absolutely.
I saw no personal attacks on David Oaks, simply rebuttals of what could easily be construed as attacks by David on those who see psychiatry as their enemy.
David is one of many survivors of psychiatry who have been leading the struggle against psychiatric oppression on many levels for many years, not all of whom do so in a high-profile, personality based manner. His views are respected as worthy of consideration, just as are those of others. Here he seems to consider those his disagrees with as “haters,” and this is what people are responding to.
Smooshing together counseling and psychiatry is pretty clearly confusing the issues as far as I’m concerned. Psychiatry claims to be medicine, hence it’s fraud.
There are truly anti-psychiatry survivors out here folks, I might ask one of them to post here about where the anti-psychiatry “underground” stands at the moment and maybe how to get in touch. Do any of the anti-psych people here have email adds the ydon’t mind posting here just to simplify things?
And this is what is meant by “sleeping with the enemy.” And psychosurgery is slightly less harmful than bashing someone’s head in with a rock. At least in some cases.
You make me feel superfluous Birdsong but YES!
Yes, your enemy is someone who works to undermine or destroy you — “deliberately” or not. Such as causing you to self-identify as “other” (or “patient”).
I would like to know from any student of Gandhi, if Gandhi ever referred to the opposition as ‘enemy’ and if Dr. Martin Luther King ever referred to proponents of Jim Crow as the enemy?
So would you use India as an example of human progress?
And it actually took Black rebellions in cities throughout the country before even modest gains were achieved on an economic level — though the marches were inspirational MLK had lost a lot of support at the end of his life.
Anyway if he saw people as his political enemy he would probably not have used that term to avoid stirring up hatred and confusion.
I second that emotion. Thanks Bradford.
Looks like I peeked into this little tiff a little late.
Tell it Birdsong!
For the purpose of analysis the term “enemy” is appropriate politically whether or not one likes or dislikes the personality in question.
So if the purpose is to abolish psychiatry, the goal of “reforming mental health” is antithetical and the term “enemy” is appropriate to describe politically those who want to save psychiatry, and not abolish it based on its inherent fraudulence, which cannot be “reformed.”
So-called social media should never be used to discuss personal issues of any sort, unless those involved want the entire world as their audience, and I never use it period.
However, for those who nonetheless choose to proceed with anti-psychiatry education and organizing in this manner I can go along with the basic premise of this article.
Richard Stallman of the Internet Hall of Fame suggests organizations use ONLY THE HOME PAGE of Facebook etc., and only to direct people to an actual website they control, which I think is an EXCELLENT idea.
Do we have any evidence he is an expert(beyond any other doctor) on ECT or other electrical treatments?
If he’s not an “expert” why is he promoting it?
Why should such clear contradictions and hypocrisy not be exposed?
Quoting Michael Cornwall further down in this discussion:
David Healy is a world renowned advocate for and practitioner of brain damaging shock treatment. He claims that- “ECT is the most effective treatment for severe depressive disorder.”
Like I said above “dissent” legitimizes psychiatry as the established reality towards which one may hold critical opinions — but not to the extent of abolishing it as an unmistakable evil.
By treating psychiatry as needing “reform” but not abolition MIA perpetuates the psychiatric mindset.
Of course there’s a lot more $ in the “critical psychiatry” field than in the struggle for abolition.
Unfortunately simply criticizing psychiatry is a strategy of weakness. That psychiatry needs to be abolished should be seen as a given, and the focus should be on HOW to accomplish this, not on whether or why,
They will throw their own under the bus if suits their interests.
I do not expect Healy to be an electrical engineer on top of an expert on drug harms.
This reminds me of a certain Supreme Court justice who won’t venture a definition of the word “woman” because she is not a biologist.
Glad people are picking up on the elephant in the room. Here’s another: Franz Fanon practiced electroshock on his oppressed “patients.”
Presenting the “pros & cons” of fascist surveillance as a debatable topic only serves to legitimize totalitarianism in the eyes of those who are unable to think.
But it’s a great excuse for those who know better to cling to their “mental health” careers.
This is the same David Healy who raves about the value of electroshock???
You hit it on the head Charlotte. “Mental health” is just as much an illusion as is “mental illness.”
The toxic reaction to COVID — lockdowns, masks, “vaccines,” etc. — was promulgated by neoliberalism, as well as by former leftists.
Is reordering one’s bodily chemistry to disguise or suppress feelings of unhappiness an improvement or a self-imposed disability?
What are “improvements”?
Aftab admonished, “Anyone not attuned to the emerging intersection of psychiatric critique & far-right politics is not paying attention. We’ve already seen previews of this relationship when it comes to gender critical ideology & anti-vaccine sentiment;
As long time leftist Russeell Brand mockingly said last year after joining the anti-forced VAXX forces: “Hey look I’m ‘right wing’ now.”
Any leftist who has stood still politically over the past few years is now called “right wing” for attacking Big Pharm and forced drugging, or for defending feminism from misogynist attacks by “transgender” activists. And we will be called “right wing” for attacking psychiatric slavery.
Orwell would have a lot to say about this.
I find the idea that all “mental illness” is simply voluntary disliked behavior doesn’t hold water.
If that’s what you got from this blog it reaffirms my statement that people should learn about Szasz directly, not via “interpreters.”
“Mental illness” does NOT EXIST period. The mind is an abstraction and is not subject to physical qualities such as “disease” (or color, or texture). This is a semantic con job.
http://www.szasz.com
If you are truly done with psychiatry you should have no need to argue with it, any more than an abused woman needs to argue with an abuser. Move on.
Something cannot be “rehumanized” that was never human to begin with. So the theme of this blog is a non-starter.
We know essentially what to replace it with. But true revolution is dangerous so people make rationalizations for “gradual change,” which of course never happens, and often things get worse since that “gradual” change is essentially more of the same but better disguised.
Sure, no prob.
I imagine you also realize that to perpetuate the idea of “community mental health” validates the system which creates the collective trauma we all share at some level. Not that you created that contradiction, you’re just trying to deal with it. Still we should never try to “adjust” to a criminal system or encourage others to.
The Las Vegas mass shooter was strung out on Valium/diazepam.
Known as Truman Show Syndrome, my first psychotic episode consisted of me believing wholeheartedly that I was being watched by cameras everywhere and that I was the star of a reality show about my life. Everyone — friends, family, and strangers alike — was “in on it” and only interacting with me to get their 15 minutes of fame.
I had a phase like that when I was doing lots of acid. This was decades before the Truman Show though.
Don’t call it “psychosis,” it’s a meaningless term. If you can’t handle the synchronicity don’t smoke the stronger stuff, it can be disorienting.
The mind, like the soul, is an abstract, non-physical entity and cannot be “ill,” any more than someone with “spring fever” is ill. Check out Dr. Thomas Szasz at http://www.szasz.com
We forget to tell people they are welcome and sacred. Instead, we tell people not to be ashamed of struggle while the entirety of the system shames them by perpetuating analogies that compare broken bones to a “broken” brain or labeling us as “abnormal” and “ill.”
Yes, then they act like it’s YOUR responsibility to “overcome” the “stigma” associated with the demeaning labels they put on you.
There is no excuse for the toxic social and political realities we are expected to endure, and no solution to the pain thereby generated, other than overcoming (overthrowing?) the system itself.
Thanks.
Many so-called “anti-psychiatry” articles written by liberal professionals and academics miss the point and serve to promote a “professional anti-psychiatry” mentality.
Enough New Age jargon please. Fuck psychiatry!
The so-called “Alternatives Conference” has always been a tool of the psychiatric establishment.
Why get your Szaszian education from a middleman? Check out Szasz himself.
Here’s the full link: http://www.szasz.com
Hear, hear! 🙂
The nature of a totalitarian system is that it is impervious to transformational change, and allows only cosmetic changes, which are trumpeted as major breakthroughs. The “mental health” apparatus is such a totalitarian system. In the above article we’re basically talking about rearranging the deck chairs on the psychiatric Titanic, which needs to find its iceberg asap.
And WTF?:
Don’t let other issues distract the process, like mandates for masks, requirements for Covid vaccinations, etc. ?
Someone who purports to oppose the mh system would even isuggest that anti-MH activists should support such forced totalitarian nonsense???
To-tal-i-tar-i-an. Get to know the word folks, you’ll be needing it more and more.
I didn’t know that was Szasz’s own term, all the more telling that it was!
I suggest people simply go to Szasz.com if they want to understand Szasz. Dr. Szasz can explain his theories better than any of those who purport to do so for him.
We don’t need “critics” of psychiatry. We don’t need more “models.” We need anti-psychiatry activists.
Speak of the devil — I believe Frank B was the poster who originally used the term “weasel word” to describe the term “mental disorder” as an attempt to blur the lines around the term “mental illness.”
However mental disorder (not illness) is entirely possible and entirely rational when the processes involved are defined correctly.
Nope. Both terms are equally impossible, because, again, the mind is not a thing, it is a concept. Show me where Szasz said anything of the sort. (Quotes would help.)
“Mental disorder” has been previously described here as a “weasel word” used to skew the discussion.
Absolutely the mind is not a physical thing. But then what are you referring to when you use the term “it”? This is the question which Szasz could not answer…
Non-physical abstractions also are described by the pronoun “it.” This is a question Szasz never needed to ask as the answer is obvious.
Your concern seems to be less with the specifics of Szaszian theory than with pushing your own. However, Szasz didn’t need a “theory of mind,” or to emulate psychiatry in any way; His mission was to thoroughly deconstruct the notion of “mental illness,” which is the basis for the existence of psychiatry as a field of pseudo-medicine. And it was accomplished, even though some “supporters” of Szasz don’t get what he was saying.
Advancement of psychiatry is necessary because it would simply be reinvented if it did not exist.
Doesn’t say much for your respect for the ability of humans to evolve and learn from our mistakes.
PS The brain is the switchboard for the mind, designed to channel information from a non-physical framework to a physical one. Of course to grasp this first requires one to shed his/her assumptions about many things.
The fact hat you put “mind” in quotes indicates that you understand somewhere that it is an abstraction, and cannot have physical characteristics.
The brain helps process the contents of the mind in a material framework; it does not equate to the mind or create the messages the mind conveys. If the brain is damaged this function can be altered or inhibited, but this is physical, not “mental” damage, which is a contradiction in terms.
Avoid all psychiatry completely. Let it wither and die choking on its inherent contradictions, and do something productive with your life.
However MIA has backed off repeatedly from exposing and confronting this sort of thing head on, and MIA’s refusal to embrace anti-psychiatry is partially based in fear of being accused of supporting Scientology. But if a Scientologist calls water wet does that mean we should deny it?
Say what? Some sellout group comes to its foregone conclusion and that’s a “wake up call”? Why weren’t these “advocates” taking action against PSYCHIATRY?
You don’t get Szasz at all apparently.
There is no such thing as a “mental disorder” because the mind is not a thing, period. It is not subject to physical laws and does not take on physical characteristics such as “order” or “disease.”
To claim that Szasz — a practicing psychoanalyst — did not acknowledge the existence of stress is equally specious.
“Mental illness” is an exercise in semantic obfuscation. Further, to assume that there are medical “cures” for the stress created by a toxic capitalist culture is an exercise in totalitarian thought. (How about the Oppression Model?)
The only proper place for psychiatry to “advance” is into the dustbin of history.
Good comments in general Joshua.
Totalitarianism is the essence of “mental health.” Unwanted behavior is attacked as “unhealthy,” which helps mask the political nature of the process.
States of being and behaviors are still not diseases in any objective sense. Any “impairment” is sociological (however “real”) and thus abstract. Physical damage resulting from destructive behavior or psychiatric neurotoxins can properly be called disease or illness, however.
In his recent article, journalist Robert Whitaker has argued that psychiatry, as an institution, committed fraud with its promotion of the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders.
What the author neglects to point out, and is at the crux of Szasz’s teaching, is that psychiatry does not simply “commit” fraud, it is fraudulent in its very essence, i.e. the notion of “mental illness” itself.
As for the three posited questions:
(1) “Biological psychiatry” is simply a pharma-serving extension of the original fraud of psychiatry, i.e. the notion that the metaphor “mntal illness” is identical to an objective disease. (Szasz mentions “spring fever” in the same sense.) Logically speaking, if “mental illness” is impossible and absurd, any purported “treatments” for a non-existent disease are just as absurd, no matter how “scientific.”
(2) What psychiatry’s “ideology” might be depends on the beholder I suppose. However if it were to take to heart the lessons of Szasz it would dissolve itself as a branch of medicine, if not entirely, since the term very term “psychiatry” implies the existence of “mental disease.” I don’t pay much attention to the “practice” of psychiatry other than to note its essential fraudulence in principle, and I doubt changing psychiatric practice or ideology was a main goal of Szasz, as opposed to critiquing the entire context.
(3) The only way to end psychiatric fraud is to discredit the entire foundation upon which the institution rests. Human interaction must no longer be considered a “specialty.”
Mental health is a fascist concept.
If you are mad all the time you shouldn’t be a parent till you get your shit together.
The “Pillar” is not “crumbling” except for those who stupidly chose to embrace it in the first place. For those in the real world it never existed.
First you need to define a “class” that would be acknowledged as such by a judge, such as “those people who have been harmed by misleading claims that emotional distress is caused by chemical imbalances and that drugs can correct these imbalances.” Then you would need to find people who would be acknowledged as spokespeople for that class.
Psychiatry will adapt to serve the interests of whatever group is in power. That would be the neolibs right now, but this is not exclusive.
Yeah, good luck with getting anti-psych PSAs on corporate media, which is controlled by Pharma. This is the sort of thing people always seem to buy into, i.e. that the system will assist in bringing itself down, but those in power have had their bases covered for a long time.
After the past two years are you saying the “left” does NOT embrace Pharma?
The relevance was the analogy of so-called leftists opposing the right to refuse “vaccination” to “leftists” who turn a blind eye to psychiatric oppression.
There are psychiatric survivors and psychiatric victims, nothing more. Though the survivors are also victims.
You mean National Pentagon Radio?
The only real alternative to the DSM is NO DSM.
Phil H’s website is no longer up.
Right, what in God’s name is a “mental health activist”? Someone who promotes “mental health”? “Mental health” is the enemy.
Removed for moderation.
Not contesting the Mother Teresa stuff, but I think you get my general idea.
Steve is correct.
And the issue of “side” effects is only beginning to emerge.
Re: Chomsky — It’s as if Mother Teresa at the end of her life called for branding children with the sign of the cross — that would stain HER legacy no matter what, right? Same here.
It actually IS a left-right issue, except all the “leftists” are right wing too.
And except for those who refuse the (totally failed) COVID “vaccine.” (Unfortunately there are still some victims of psychiatry who think there’s a difference depending on which drug you are being forcibly injected with. Psychiatrists are wrong, Fauci is a hero. Puke.
Hail Pharma!
I must note that Chomsky essentially called for the un-VAXXed to be cast into the hinterlands away from “civilized” society to fend for themselves, he’s a disgrace to his own name, and has permanently stained his legacy. Talk about totalitarianism. Hypocrite codger.
That’s not something that can be answered in the abstract, it depends on the particular circumstances out of which the movement, or particular “wave” of the ongoing movement, arises. There has always been and continues to be an “underground” anti-psychiatry consciousness among psychiatric victims, and the most articulate and revolutionary voices of any given era have the collective moral and strategic responsibility to determine the nature of that era’s form of resistance. I know that’s pretty abstract in itself, but before pursuing any goal the goal needs to be thoroughly understood, as well as strategically and analytically sound. Otherwise you’re in danger of working against your own interests without even realizing it.
There’s nothing wrong with reformist tactics such as lawsuits as long as they are understood as such and not presented as something that will achieve “systemic” change, i.e. the abolition of psychiatry. No system will voluntarily overthrow itself, and if lawsuits could have that effect they would be outlawed. Currently the danger of winning a lawsuit or two would be that “victory” being used as a pretext for claiming, “see the system works, psychiatry can clean its own house,” and making people believe that they “won” and there’s no need to struggle AGAINST PSYCHIATRY anymore.
P.S. Remember that victims of psychiatry should put their sights not just on “resisting,” but on overcoming.
Re: Above — check out
Tucker Carlson: You Are Not Supposed To Notice That Psychiatric Drugs Are Driving Young American Men Insane ?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/07/06/tucker_carlson_are_you_surprised_young_american_men_are_going_nuts.html
There are no “psychiatric rights.” If you are being psychiatrized your humanity is being violated and those who pretend that “rights” can be obtained via legalities are being misleading, and are perpetuating psychiatry’s false raison d’etre.
We have all known for years that the basic reasoning behind psychiatric drugging is fraudulent and that these drugs are given for “illnesses” that do not exist. MIA was founded upon this understanding, yet years later people keep beating this dead horse as THE problem when THE problem is the existence of psychiatry, period.
The anti-psychiatry movement is currently moribund because people are led to believe illusions such as that lawsuits can stop psychiatry. This is catering to people’s naivete and is like thinking that lawsuits can stop capitalism (you might call it corporate greed). Only organized resistance — not for those who like to feel comfy — can effectively confront a neutralize psychiatric oppression.
I should add that it’s a sign that the Left is dead (at least for now) when the person most responsible for disseminating anti-SSRI info these days is Tucker Carlson.
More redundancy masquerading as enlightened social justice.
The basic fraud of psychiatry is its claim to be a branch of medicine; drugs are merely fraud-within-a-fraud. The fraud of psychiatric neurotoxins/”medications” is that they exist period, and that psychiatric drugs are being prescribed for non-diseases.
The idea that there is anything “anti-psychiatry” contained in this article is seriously flawed as well. The function of such a lawsuit would be merely for psychiatric victims to squawk and complain about psychiatry in an effort to “improve” it, rather than organizing to abolish it.
That’s because they want to blame them on the very existence of guns, no doubt.
Activism needs to be directed effectively. Activism in our case which is not directed towards abolishing psychiatry, and seeks to “improve” psychiatry, is counterproductive.
Check out this by TUCKER CARLSON:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/07/06/tucker_carlson_are_you_surprised_young_american_men_are_going_nuts.html
So you know, it’s about psych drugs and violence.
So does this make anti-SSRI people “right wing”?
Boans, is this irony you are intending here?
I think Don Weitz would shudder at Phoenix being resurrected as anything less than an anti-psychiatry publication. The point is not to change laws to improve the lot of psychiatric prisoners, or look for “alternative treatments,” but to eliminate psychiatry altogether. If the “new” Phoenix continues in the self-absorbed manner of the current lot of “mad activists” it will be demeaning to what it and Don Weitz and so many others stood for for so long. Psychiatry in the end is a tool of capitalist conformity and corporate greed, and all should disabuse themselves of the notion that it is simply “bad medicine.”
Glad we seem to be pretty much on the same page.
It’s one thing to expose psychiatry with an eye on eliminating it, however, and another with the intent of making it “better.” If the purpose of psychiatry is control, making it “better” is to expand that control.
It is a mistake to believe that simply exposing something evil will lead to its demise, which is part of the problem with MIA and similar projects, which have been exposing stuff right and left for ages now, with no discernible progress towards eliminating any of it. This is because they have always refused to take a clear stand against psychiatry or even forced “treatment.” Remember the quote attributed to Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Good reading your comments.
But we have known all this for years. I don’t know why people keep beating the same dead horse. Perpetual complaining, rather than fighting to eliminate psychiatry, or at least walking away from it altogether, is a symptom of dependency and emotional addiction, not liberation. Everything that needed “exposing” was exposed long ago; to do so repeatedly constitutes little more than redundancy.
The “state mental health code” IS a violation in & of itself. Whether it is further violated is inconsequential.
Psychiatry is not bad medicine, it’s fake medicine.
http://www.szasz.com
Promoting “alternatives” to psychiatry ignores that the purpose of psychiatry is control, not help. The idea that one needs to be “cured” of his/her human responses to a totalitarian world is the essence of the mind control psychiatry enforces among the populace.
Psychiatry needs to go, there is nothing more to “research.” To attempt to “improve” psychiatry is to perpetuate it. And now that the “scientific” COVID lockdowns are over psychiatry is poised to “treat” the “trauma” of the victims — so look out everybody.
Just say no!
ALL psychiatry is based on “medical” justifications. Try becoming a shrink without a medical degree.
Capitalism is the exploitation of the many by the tiny few, and America has certainly fulfilled this. But again, almost no one here can even define capitalism and, pending that time, these sorts of conversations are useless and diversionary.
I was citing you as an exception to the rule. 🙂
Capitalism is the currently predominant form of exploitation, not the only form historically. Though in terms of mass oppression I would say ancient Greece would pale compared to corporate monopoly capitalism.
Despite the general inability of people at MIA (and everywhere) to intelligently discuss Marxism, you nonetheless raise some interesting thoughts, such as your speculation on Marx’s personality and home life. However in the end such considerations must always be secondary to the analysis he produced (which is why Capital is still up there close to the Bible as one of the most widely read books).
One also must avoid mistaking revisionism for “new interpretations,” not that the latter are always revisionist. In the end the aim of Marxism as a science is not achieving “socialist” society but a classless society with no state whatsoever. So any evaluation of how it is “interpreted” should keep that in mind.
As the above comment demonstrates, people at MIA for the most part are not well versed in Marxism is and not particularly qualified to discuss it here. Since everyone means something different when they use the term, this should be considered a form of “advanced study”; talking about “capitalism” off the cuff can only spread confusion, and tends to divert the more specific matter at hand.
What’s important to understand is that psychiatry will adapt to ANY oppressive governmental system if it is allowed to. Since the only existing form of government right now is capitalism I think we should focus on psychiatry, the rest is sort of redundant.
Also to enforce the values and narratives of capitalism, and define those who are NOT down with the system as flawed.
I have no doubt many people claiming mental illness are faking it.
All “mental illness” is fake. Please go to szasz.com.
Capitalism is not simply rich people exploiting the poor, it involves the nature of work and production, and the alienation of people’s personal aspirations from the wage labor they perform as a means of survival.
Any ideas as to why Breggin has disappeared from the pages of MIA?
We know what’s happening in the system, we don’t need it exposed but ENDED.
Let’s keep personalities out of this, too many important discussions here are diverted into personal stuff.
Labeling someone “mentally ill” is brutalizing them semantically.
Until you can define “communism” and “marxism” please stop using them, your comments might make more sense.
“Psychopathy” is a psychiatric term so it is useless as a way of defining psychiatry, which is a ruse itself. Easier to say that “mental illness” doesn’t exist at all and psychiatry is a scam.
I think there can be an honest debate as to whether there can be a “diagnosis” of either ADHD or ADD.
I can’t believe you of all people would say this. Don’t you realize this is tantamount to saying that “mental illness” can exist, when the entire anti-psychiatry movement is based on the understanding that “mental illness” is an illogical and literally impossible concept? Putting any psychiatric label on anyone is an oppressive act; there are no exceptions.
I highly suggest going to http://www.szasz.com and checking out what Szasz had to teach us about this stuff — from the horse’s mouth, not someone else’s interpretation.
I remember someone here comparing the tasks imposed on schoolchildren to “low grade clerical work.”
MIA is definitely an excellent resource for “beginning the journey.” However it tends to repeatedly highlight the myriad issues with so-called “mental health care” without coming out and saying the obvious, that psychiatry needs to go. This to me is the actual beginning of the journey — recognizing that the conversation should not focus on whether to eliminate psychiatry but how.
You may be inappropriately happy — better check with your shrink. 🙂
Yes. And Breggin is no longer to be found on MIA. Any guesses as to why?
Why would anything substantially change? Psychiatry is not in business to satisfy its victims but to control them and isolate them from society.
Same comment as above — good post till the last sentence. Destroying psychiatry would be better by far.
You were going good till the last sentence, which is ridiculous.
Define “communism.”
Glad you put “ADHD” in quotes, as inconvenient thought and behavior is not a disease (or “condition”). In most cases so labeled it is a reaction to the stultifying nature of the indoctrination labeled “education.”
Touche.
“We” don’t lock people up — the system that your colleagues (at least) serve, either overtly or through silence, locks people up using psychiatric “justifications.”
Now that you understand that there is no “philosophical basis for psychiatry” (other than control) you might consider returning your “credentials,” like the Vietnam vets who threw their medals back. This would probably have a greater effect than anything you write (although the fact that you have alienated your colleagues is a positive).
How far away are you from totally dismissing and exposing the fraudulent precepts and oppressive practices of psychiatry?
There are no”capitalist vs. Marxist arguments” taking place here, just people talking to themselves in the guise of conversation — I would venture a guess that no two people here mean the same thing by “communism” or “capitalism,” or “marxism.” It’s much easier to avoid serious discussion by simply aligning with an “ism” than articulating principles in a methodical manner. Then again, nothing new there.
Got a concrete current example?
Who said anything about giving it professional status?
I think capitalism can work on a very localized scale
The natural progression of capitalism is akin to big fish eating little fish, and so on. The end point is always corporate monopoly capitalism, unless history holds an even more vicious mutation in store.
What happened to Lieberman?
So you call Szasz a neoliberal? I’ll bet a nickel Szasz would NOT have supported forced lockdowns and forced injections.
If Szasz is a neoliberal what is Bill Gates? The Clintons?
Amazing how people can argue so passionately about things they never bother to define.
Lots of people all along have pointed out the high rates of suicide associated with lockdowns and the attendant abuses. Talk of such has mostly been suppressed by those who profit from hysteria.
As Mad in America readers know full well, mainstream psychiatry has been nonproductive and counterproductive for millions of people, and its assumptions are routinely illogical and not based on genuine science…what’s increasingly troubling for me is that mainstream mental health professionals have made the field so boring that freethinkers and critical thinkers outside of the MIA orbit won’t even bother to read an article or pick up a book with “Psychiatry” in the title.
PLEASE stop saying “mainstream psychiatry” — ALL psychiatry is by definition oppressive and needs to go.
There’s no need for anyone to pick up a book with “psychiatry” in the title unless it has an “anti” preceding it — as with capitalism the question should not be whether to abolish it but how.
Great post. Hopefully there will be a rebirth of serious Marxist analysis, the ultimate purpose of which is learning how to correctly fight for and achieve a classless society (not merely a “socialist” society). Right now class consciousness is virtually nonexistent, at least in the U.S. and North America, and the oppressors now include lots of privileged people who love to pontificate about and demean working class “deplorables” who don’t buy their pseudo-enlightened rhetoric.
If something is actively destructive, such as psychiatry, it also helps to actively oppose it. Astrology and phrenology are not actively destructive, even if one doesn’t ascribe to them. That’s the difference.
Do they support lockdowns and mandates?
Marxism is not “practiced” any more than astronomy is “practiced”; it is a field of inquiry.
Neither China nor Russia are “communist” states for starterss; there is no such thing, even in principle, as a communist state, and in practice the only remotely socialist state currently is Cuba.
Add “leftist” to “Marxist” as one of those terms everyone has an opinion about but is loathe to define.
In theory leftists and liberals are diametrically opposed, however they joined forces over the covid madness — it might be more accurate to say that for the most part leftists — most likely including some of those who identify themselves here as such — became liberals; at any rate both have joined the camp of totalitarianism. There may be some exceptions, if so please enlighten me.
The “Left” (anarcho-syndicalists? social/civil libertarians? marxists? trotskyites? social democrats with their by-definition-pretty-credible political organizing? Unionizers? Noam Chomsky?) includes many of the OGs when it comes to standing against coercive medical practices and monopolistic trade interests
Yes, correct — and most have thoroughly betrayed their (alleged) principles by embracing the COVID narrative, whether out of opportunism or sheer cowardice. At any rate they can never be trusted again, they have become shills for the Big Pharm they supposedly despise. We have to start all over.
It will be getting worse so don’t think it’s your job to battle the whirlwind — we haven’t even begun to experience the push to mass psychiatrize everybody for “COVID-related trauma,” etc.
Psychiatry will adapt to the existing power structure, whatever it may be.
People need to stop tossing around words they can’t even properly define (and this applies to all “sides”). And we need to get away from isms and say what we mean.
Marxism in my view is not an ideology, but a tool for analyzing class struggle. (All of which is beyond the purview of website which uses the term “Mad” to describe those it is presumably in business to advocate for.) Anyway, there can be authoritarian Marxists just like there can be authoritarian psychologists, it depends on the individual, or the individual school of Marxism.
Much of this theoretical talk is rapidly becoming obsolete, as there is currently no credible socialist or communist grouping that the people will (or should) trust in the wake of the entire so-called Left (from liberals on up) totally screwing the people with their support for lockdowns, school & business closures, child abuse, unscientific mandates, Big Pharm, Big Tech, ad infinitum. If there is to be a revolution in our lifetimes it will have to be totally rebuilt, as the current “leaders” have clearly proven themselves to be otherwise.
“Corporate capitalism” is like “biological psychiatry” in that there is no “better” form of capitalism, or “better” form of psychiatry.
AND while we’re on the subject, the issue is not “mainstream” psychiatry, but ALL psychiatry, which is without exception based on the illogical, absurd, and Neanderthal concept of “mental illness.”
As has been pointed out on numerous occasions in the pages of MIA, Szasz was by any standard definition anti-psychiatry; his primary objection to the term was that he didn’t want to be confused with leftist psychiatrists like David Cooper, who labeled their particular brand of psychiatry “antipsychiatry.”
As for Szasz being an anti-psychiatry activist, it could be argued that anyone who recognizes that psychiatry is organized medical fraud and opposes forced psychiatric intervention is”anti-psychiatry,” as force is at the center of psychiatry’s existence. And Szasz openly and actively opposed such force.
Torrey on the other hand is comparable to such opportunistic political turncoats as David Horowitz.
As soon as it was announced (years before covid) that FB would be censoring anti-vaccine info I knew that anti-psychiatry info would be next.
Censorship has already gone too far, but it’s only beginning.