Mr. Stern, I assume that your question about schizophrenia being more common now than before is addressed to No-One since it was No-One who made this claim.
You reject the very concept of mental illness. Thomas Szasz says that schizophrenia is just a word (p. 44 of his book Schizophrenia). I would like to ask you how you would describe the following events of my life, which all happened before I left America in 1968: running around naked shouting messages coming from God, like Isaiah in Jerusalem, visual hallucinations, voices, delusions of grandeur, mystical rapture, a persecution complex. I still have the razor blade scars on my wrist from a suicide attempt. Then there were fifteen months of incarceration in insane asylums, heavey doses of Thorazine and Stellazine, my parents being told that they should sell their house so that they could pay for my presumably life-long confinement. For you and for Szasz my schizophrenia was just a word and not a real mental illness. I assume that you are an American because so many Americans seem to be incapable of sympathy for those who have suffered. Your idea that mental illness is just an invention of evil psychiatrists reminds me of neo-Nazis who claim that the Holocaust never happened.
I tend to use the word “schizophrenia” as being synonymous with the word “psychotic” unless there is an indication that the illness was bipolar. If an “emotional collapse” was not psychotic, then it obviously was not schizophrenic or bipolar. The German philosopher Paul Tillich was hospitalized twice during the First World War for shell shock, in 1916 and 1918. He himself described his psychosis as being schizophrenia.
I do not believe anything that so-called scientists say about schizophrenia or other mental illnesses for several reasons. The first is their assumption that a mental illness is an illness of the body, or soma, while I believe that it is an illness of the soul, or psyche. Psychiatrists can change the chemicals in the body but there are no chemicals in the soul to change or replace. A psychiatrist who denies the reality of the psyche or soul is just as useless as a dentist who denies the existence of teeth. Since this website is called Mad in America, I assumed, falsely it seems, that participants here have read Robert Whitaker’s books Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, which document the horrors of the bad science that you cite.
The cases of homosexual repression and schizophrenia that I comment on were from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I agree that there is now less cause for sexual repression and that schizophrenia is more common in America now than before. However, my article was about Sigmund Freud’s theory that homosexual repression causes schizophrenia, as seen in the cases of Daniel Paul Schreber and Friedrich Nietzsche and others. If schizophrenia is on the rise in America today, it is because America is a very sick society. Its violence, cruelty, materialism, hatred and general confusion provoke all types of mental illness. I suggest that you learn the difference between “then” and “than” and the difference between “phenomenon” and “phenomena.”
Mr. Stern, I assume that your question about schizophrenia being more common now than before is addressed to No-One since it was No-One who made this claim.
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You reject the very concept of mental illness. Thomas Szasz says that schizophrenia is just a word (p. 44 of his book Schizophrenia). I would like to ask you how you would describe the following events of my life, which all happened before I left America in 1968: running around naked shouting messages coming from God, like Isaiah in Jerusalem, visual hallucinations, voices, delusions of grandeur, mystical rapture, a persecution complex. I still have the razor blade scars on my wrist from a suicide attempt. Then there were fifteen months of incarceration in insane asylums, heavey doses of Thorazine and Stellazine, my parents being told that they should sell their house so that they could pay for my presumably life-long confinement. For you and for Szasz my schizophrenia was just a word and not a real mental illness. I assume that you are an American because so many Americans seem to be incapable of sympathy for those who have suffered. Your idea that mental illness is just an invention of evil psychiatrists reminds me of neo-Nazis who claim that the Holocaust never happened.
Report comment
I tend to use the word “schizophrenia” as being synonymous with the word “psychotic” unless there is an indication that the illness was bipolar. If an “emotional collapse” was not psychotic, then it obviously was not schizophrenic or bipolar. The German philosopher Paul Tillich was hospitalized twice during the First World War for shell shock, in 1916 and 1918. He himself described his psychosis as being schizophrenia.
Report comment
I do not believe anything that so-called scientists say about schizophrenia or other mental illnesses for several reasons. The first is their assumption that a mental illness is an illness of the body, or soma, while I believe that it is an illness of the soul, or psyche. Psychiatrists can change the chemicals in the body but there are no chemicals in the soul to change or replace. A psychiatrist who denies the reality of the psyche or soul is just as useless as a dentist who denies the existence of teeth. Since this website is called Mad in America, I assumed, falsely it seems, that participants here have read Robert Whitaker’s books Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, which document the horrors of the bad science that you cite.
Report comment
The cases of homosexual repression and schizophrenia that I comment on were from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I agree that there is now less cause for sexual repression and that schizophrenia is more common in America now than before. However, my article was about Sigmund Freud’s theory that homosexual repression causes schizophrenia, as seen in the cases of Daniel Paul Schreber and Friedrich Nietzsche and others. If schizophrenia is on the rise in America today, it is because America is a very sick society. Its violence, cruelty, materialism, hatred and general confusion provoke all types of mental illness. I suggest that you learn the difference between “then” and “than” and the difference between “phenomenon” and “phenomena.”
Report comment