An inspiring blog article, Irit. And a well deserved tribute to Don. Mazel tov on the wonderful work that you have done to date–and may we all soon see this ground-breaking book distributed far and wide.
If you are in Toronto on January 24th, do come to the booklaunch of this important new book (OISE, 252 Bloor West, Nexus Lounge, 12th Floor) The event, which will be at 5:e0 will include speeches by activists who are part of the dialogue, including by me, by psychiatric drug critic Julie Wood. and by Chilean activist Tatiana Castillo. Correspondingly, there will be a stunning reenactment of part of one of dialogues in the book–as it happens between Robert Whitaker and me. Also included with be antipsychiatry updates, including about the stunning emergence of an antipsychiatry lending library. A moment of consciousness-raising and a not-to-be-missed event.
I am sorry about what happened to you, Nita. What most of the other commentators on these blogs are ovelooking is the huge number of children removed because the parents are considered inadequate, when so very many times what is at the base of the parents being considering inadquate is either mentally or racism, or classism or some combination of the three. Absolutely we need direly to protect children from abusive parents, but to assume that no harm is done by these government agencies and that they are always just protectors when they remove children is to ignore a huge part of reality, and for the most part, a highly mentalist and racist part.
Radical leftists in Germany right now actually do oppose psychiary. By contrast, in the US and Canada and in Englan, most unfortunately, are staunch supportrs of psychiatry.
Arjan, etc, I support people’s right to end their lives. At the same time, the very last people I would like to see as in any way involved in this are psychiatrists.
Yes, Pacific-Dawn, I have always been aware that we agree on a great deal, including that neither of us accept any psych diagnosis at all as legitimate. Our difference, as I see it, lies mainly in how we think of or treat neiighbouring movements who have position that we see as problematic.
there is so much both that I agree with here, Pacific-Dawn as well as what I disagree with, that it is way too much for me to comment on everything, though I do appreciate you contribution. So I am limiting myself to one correction only. While Hirshfeld is famous for sponsoring gay rights, no, it did not begin with him. The person who invented the word “homosexual” is a more likely candidate to think of as the first gay rights advocate, and from Germany also, he signitificantly predates Hirshfeld. (and yes he introduced it as a positive term). the inventor is Unlrichs Kerbeney and he published a book in 1863 (which is before Hirshfeld was born)
You’re taking the quote out of context. By “master”, Lorde meant the white slave master and by tools, she meant the tools by which her erected slaveryl
the word “autism”, let me suggest, Joey, is very different than the word “homosexual” and that difference is such that it is not only reclaimable, it does not even need to be reclaimed. The word “homosexual” was not invented by a psychiatrist and had a long independent existence. By contrast, when you try to reclaim the word “autism”, the problem facing you is this is a word that did not exist until a psychiatrist invented it, and as such, it is is pretty close to owned by psychiatry. The word and its meaning was invented by Bleuler. In this regard, it should be noted, Bleuler is the very same psychiatrist who invented the word schizophrenia–a word that has plagued society ever since. I should also add that he was a eugenicist. This, alas, is the baggage that the word autism brings with it. Something, I think that it is important to consider as you reflect on what tactics to use in the highly important struggle in which you are engaged
Joey, while I don’t think the people in the antipsychiatry movement have been sensitive at all to people in the radical neurdiverisity movement and the radical autism movement, and I think it is important that this change for we should be allies, there is nonetheless a problem however, coming from the other side. When you simply use the word autism, for instance,what you are ignoring is that it is a disorder in the DSM. That is a problem here for you at that point look like you are buying into psychiatry. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would make sense finding . another term to use to describe what you are experiencing. To quote Audre Lorde here, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
In case people were not aware of this, one of the things that I was trying to do in this article, was to find ways to bring together from people various movements that critique psychiatry . Of the movements that organize against psychiatry, I am a member only of one–antipsychiatry. Which among other things means that I personally oppose all psychiatric diagnoses without exception.
I have written about almost all the activist things that you mentioned here, and I am first and foremost an in-your-face activist. What I am telling you here is that besides that you are not understanding neurodiversity theoeists here, and your are very definately not hearing what I am saying; Additionally, you really don’t seem to get where i’m coming from Moreover you are mixing applies and oranges. I don’t like the recovery movement eiher, As for the mental health movement, It is obviously part of the utterly unacceptable hegemonic paradigm.
I think that this conversation has gone about as far as it can go for my sense is that it is going in circles. So please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to future posts of yours. No offence whatever intended.We are obviously both radicals who don’t like liberalism. And I wish you well.
There are all sorts of ways to resist. But telling people that they are not resisting when they markedly are, let me suggest, is not one of them. theorizing is one way to resist. Calling people out on their bullying is another. Both have their place.
Actually, as a member of the LGBTQ community, I can assure you that yes, we do advocate sexual diversity. Nor does that any way stop us from condemning violations of us. Maybe really looking into what different movements do more thoroughly would serve you here.
I think PacificDawn, that you have really misunderstood what neurodiversity theorists are doing. They are not pleading for anything. They are directly countering a pathology paradigm with a neurodiversity paradigm.
I wanted to say–and I alluded to it in the article but did not spell it out in detail for the article was not on neurodiversity, that there is a profound difference between the radical neurodiversity movement and the more mainstream one. That in the radical one, no one sees the differences in question as innate or as casual in any way. Moreover, no one in the neurodiversity movement would see any of the differences alluded to as the least bit “pathologoical”–an issue that came up i a few responses to this blog. As I have come to understand it, Why people in the movement championed the concept of diversity is precisely because it links them up with other types of diveristy–sexual diversity, for example, and racial diversity–and totally rules out the concept of pathology.
I do get your point, and i have some problems with these words myself. at the same time ‘diverse’ does not that there is anything wrong with the person. It just implies that they are not mainstream, which depending on one’s vantagepoint, could be seen as a distinct asset.
As people united against this bogus branch of medicine, Steve, you and I are in complete agreement on this, . And indeed, as you are suggesting cognitive liberty does not in any way get at this key dimension. That said I am in no way suggesting that we only tackle psychiatry through the concept of cognitive liberty. I am simply suggesting that it be an additional concept that we rally around. Understood that way, does the concept still bother you?
They have all sorts of different degrees, and yes, they do exist. As for a law degree, while there are certainly some good scholars in the area with law degrees, no, historically, that’s not where most of them have ended up
Yes, there were locked institutions operated by bussiness men that coexisted at the time of the ship of fools and they were anything but voluntary . The big difference is that comparatively few people ended up dthere.
Steve, what if we started approaching the word “neurodiverse” the way in the movement approach the word “mad”, acknowledging that for some people, it is key to their identity, moreover, to how others treat them, albeit all people are to varying degrees neurodiverse. If thought of that way, would the word still bother you?
I certainly agree the all of the psy disciplines and not jusst psychiatry–assault the person and in horrid ways. At the same time, I make a distinction between your average practitioner and counter-hegemonic practitioners.
I understand not being comfortable with the term neurodiversity . In the end, the problem that I have with it–and I have a problem too–iis that most people who use it believing in a difference that is essentialized, which yes, I find problematic. At the same time, not all do. I see the turn somewhat away from the term and toward the concept cognitive liberty as a good sign. Though it remains to be seen what will happen with this.
Mel was also a philosopher and an absolutely wonderful human being. I should add that we should be worried when a psychiatric survivor on psychiatric drugs chokes to death, given the fact that these drugs inhibit the gag reflex. Why has there not bee an investigation into Mel’s death?
Slaying the Dragon, I agree with you of course, that liberty is the larger principle, of which cognitive liberty is an offshoot. At the same time, given the highly specific targeting of thinking and threat to thinking posed, I do think it is one that deserves considerably more focus than it gets.
Understood, Oldhead especially since I am first and foremost antispychiatry . At the same time, for myself, I want to be able to engage in action with people who are not.
To varying degrees, we surely all are neurodiverse, though the degrees can be very different, which I suspect is why concepts like neurotypical are important to even those people in the neurodiversity movement who do not believe that these differences are inherent.
It was legal before they even called themselves psychiatrists. Forced treatment has always, alas, been the hallmark of what state agents do to people who they consider mad.
Cheryl Prax, is anyone responding to the UK training program to mount a protest. This seems like an opportune time to protest for it will convey to attendees of the training session a message that they will otherwise not get.
So sorry about what happened to you. Your story, streetphotobeing, raises an important point. How can a person possibly give consent for ECT when they are so zoned out on drugs that they little or not idea what they are consenting to?
We would not for a second let them abduct Connie–and they would be in major trouble if they tried. Would I recommend that someone try an action like this from “within an institution”. No of course not. That is a very different set of circumstances. Please note, by the same token, there was no attempt to abduct anyone at all in the MindFreedom Hunger Strike.
No, Truth, that’s not what is going to happen. It takes a lot more than this to make them retract. And that’s why we need to keep exposing and keep the pressure up.
Incidentally, folk, I am going to be posted a slightly edited version of this article on Rabble.ca on Monday or Tuesday. I tend to be either totally ignored or attacked when I post anything that smells of antipsychiatry on Rabble, for the Rabble readers tends to be incredibly pro-psychiatry. So if anyone has the time and the inclination and to check out the comments posted on Rabble and then put in your “two cents” your input would be greatly appreciated. A lot of the Rabble readers live in Toronto and it would be great if a few of them considered supporting this hunger strike.
Bramble, what happened is that once it was determined that case that damage was done was a viable case, the defendants (the ECT manufactured) immediately offered the plaintiffs a monetary settlement, more or less to keep a ruling against them off the books. The defendants accepted the offer of compensation. and so the case went no further. Yes, the industry will continue to spread the same old line, but what happened in that courtroom is now ammunition that we can use against them. And use it against them, we must. The onus is on us to point out exactly what happened here.
I agree, CGGreen that ECT is barbaric. I would be worried for your friend too. Generally, people who have taken ECT are a fan of it, come to dramatically change their mind in a few years.
For sure, that would be a totally unsafe thing to do on a ward. And part of acquiring what I refer to as “sane literacy” is knowing that people’s political resistance is typically interpreted by “mental health authorities” as “symptoms” of one “disorder” or another and a reason to intrude.
Terrific, Rosalie. Incidentally, with health being mainly a provincial issue, it is each of the provincial legislators (far more than the federal) whose weighing in could have an effect.
Oldhead, the claim about the 2003 hunger strike generating more positive publicity for us than anything else has is ‘Frank’s” claim, but I would have to say that I do agree with him. While I don’t have time to search for links, you might be able to find them by doing a google search for that hunger strike. Alternatively by visiting the MindFreedom site and seeing if they have posted any of the articles. That said, I do remember at the time that there were quite a number of articles written about the strike during the course of the strike, and every one I came upon was positive. So I am inclined to believe that Frank is correct about this.
Not to worry, Oldhead, besides that this was Connie’s idea and passion, and choice, this is very much a “controlled” hunger strike. And we will be checking with Connie throughout the few days she is intending to strike (for it will be a “limited strike”), whether she wants to continue or not. Thanks for the encouragement and the endorsement.
I am against hate speech as well (e.g., the diatribes against Jews, Blacks, and people deemed “mentally ill”) But I hardly buy into this neurological argument in any way.
My own sense. There is room for trauma based perspective but not remotely room for it to be delivered by psychiatry. People interested this might want to read an article that I wrote on teaching a trauma course. See https://breggin.com/bonnie-burstow/
Terrific article, Bob. And much thanks for penning it. That said, I cannot say that this development surprises me. What confuses me rather is that anyone is actually surprised by it.
Then the thing to do, Oldhead, is don’t post stuff confronting Richard out there in responses to MIA blogs that puts the rest of us who were privy to these old exchanges in a double bind.
I have no difficulty figuring out what either of you mean. It’s more than I think you already know from a long history of trying to come to terms with the differences between you and Richard exactly what Richard means and so I don’t know why you keep putting the question out to him. And I just felt the need to say that.
Oldhead, my sense is that deep down, you know some of the conundrums that Richard has over identity politics. I have seen you in discussions with him over the formation of an antipscychiatry organization when you argued for less rights for people in the organization if they were not psychiatric survivors, and Richard was uneasy with that. That surely is a type of identity politics that goes beyond the prioritizing of the goals of a specific movement–and that is an example of the type of identity politics that not everyone is happy with. I am somewhat at a loss for understanding why you keep pushing Richard for a definition when the disagreements between the two of you have come up often and have been pretty clear. Beyond that, many people, though especially Richard, have been clear that they would prefer to be part of an antipsychiatry organization where things like class analysis, gender analysis, etc. has a role to play. I am somewhat between the two of you on some of these issues; nonetheless I very much get Richard’s concerns.
I don’t define identity politics in a way that makes large issues and other struggles unimportant. That, I see as identity politics at its worst and identity politics does not have to work that way (though, I suspect it is what Richard thinks of when he thinks of identify politics). Rather I define identity politics as organizing based on a common identity. I see room for that. I likewise see room for more broad based coalitions of people. Annd when it comes to antipsychiatry per se, I think that broad based coalitions are the only way to go.
Personally, I see identity politics as critical (hence the importance of women only groups, of Black groups, of psychiatric survivor groups and other such identity based liberation groups). What the philosopher Jean-Paul Satre called “Us-it” formations or Liberation struggles are legitimate and by nature are identity based. I also think coalition politics are essential, where different types of groups work together. That said, I likewise value and am a part of groups that are simply not identity-based, that are based simply on common analysis, common principles, common committments. All of these have value. And while I may be wrong here, I don’t think that Richard would disagree with this. What he disagrees with, if I am reading him right, is the priority given to identity politics. That is, the sense that in the final analysis being from the same oppressed identity should be the sine qua non of political movements. As for myself, I see psychiatric survivor groups as necessarily identity politics based and antipsychiatry groups as necessarily not identity politics based. Can these morph into each other? they can–but the strengths are different and so care needs to be taken here. Two different groups that formed to combated fascism when it began asserting itself in the in the late 1980s are instructive here. One , which was definitely identity based (and I belonged to it) was Jewish Feminist Antifascist League). To belong to the group, you had to be a Jewish woman. The other was AntiRacst Action or ARA (with whom I often worked but to which I did not belong) and it was not identity based. You didn’t have to have any particular identity to be a member of ARA; you just had to share the analysis and the committment. Nor were there different classes of membership. Nor was there any sense that if you did not come from a racialized identity, you were to have less of a say–for again, the group was not identity-based, though of course, everyone recognized the importance of checking in with the people’s whose oppressions were relevant. Both ARA and JFAFL (Jewish Feminist Antifascist League) had jobs to do. And both got along enormously well together and indeed often worked together. Fortunately, this was a time during history when a great many of us saw the value of different types of politics. It followed a time in the early 1980 when identity politics seemed to overshadow everything else, my own sense is to the detriment of social justice causes.
A few comments here that may or may not be helpful to others in this conversation. For the most part (and there surely were moments that were different), I saw the US psychiatric survivor moment in the 1980s and 1990’s as not exactly antipsychiatry–though there is no question that now and then antipsychiatry entered into its principles. By contrast, I saw a very real antipsychiatry movement during this same period in Canada , and this was not a movement based on being a psychiatric survivor, though psychiatric survivors were always central to it. Re the left, what I see in North America right now is a left wing that is overwhelmingly, though thankfully not exclusively, pro-psychiatry (and yes I think even more so than the right is) By contrast, there are countries like Germany, for example, where the left is strongly antipsychiatry. (And we see signs of this in Chile too). My own sense is that we have to stop looking at what happens or has happened in the US as normative and instead come to understandings and to possible models and ways forward by thinking globally.
Re the disagreement between Oldhead and Richard, I don’t know if this is helpful, but let me just say that in Canada we tend to draw a distinction between the antipsychiatry movement and the psychiatric survivor movement (which we see as overlapping but not identifical) and as a result seldom get into these types of arguments.
As for my own politics, is is not identical to anyone else’s here, though it bears some resemblance to both Richard and Oldhead. I am a leftwing anarchist who sees the importance of a class analysis. At the same time, I have always worked with people across the political spectrum. Also for me, it depends on how sophisticated the right wing analysis is. For example, though my valued friend and ally Dr. Peter Breggin is right wing and I am left wing, we work well and often together for we value what each other brings to the table and because Peter’s right wing politics includes and does not stop him from taking in the reality of oppression. Politics is very complicated when you touch into the antipsychiatry area or even the critical psychiatry area–and this, I have long appreciated.
You wrote the following “Bonnie’s so called early life is linked to Don Weitz rather than her own success. In current time period, she is linked to scientology,” This part is YOUR saying it and it is totally problematic. Don and I have both had successes from early on. And while linked to Don, I have at no time being associated with scientology–and it is after that that you go on to make reference to the things the Houghton Post says. This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening in Mad in America. And no amount of rationalizing makes it okay.
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in other things I am doing in the Indigenous area that tries to establish links with antipsychiatry, I have created and am running a mini-conference at OISE/UT this Friday called “PsychOut Extended: The Psychiatrization of Indigenous People as a Continuation of Genocide.” We are expecting hundreds to turn up and it may help spark an important conversation about psychiatry in the Indigenous community. The keynote speaker, incidentally is Dr. Roland Chrisjohn–an Indigenous scholar, a Marxist, and while on a very different place on the left-right spectrum–an old time ally and friend of Thomas Szasz.
But I AM linked with Don Weitz. I am NOT linked to Scientology. Moreover, you insinuated that my being linked with Don somehow nullified the things which I have done. All of this, I find offensive.
The fact that I am slandered in the Houghton Post (as was Peter Breggin) is no reason to slander me here. It is not acceptable. I have absolutely no connection with Scientology and never have had. Other in other venues slander antipsychiatry activists as well as critical theorists by stating such connections in the hope to discredit their message I expect more from a Mad in America venue. Also when it comes to early work, I should be out, that yes, I worked in the 1980s with Don Weitz on the Phoenix Rising Collecive and in the 1980’s Don was in Ontario Coalition to Stop Electroshock, of which I was the co-chair along with shock survivor Shirley Johnson. Exactly what any of this is a bad things is an utter mystery to me. We all of us wrote articles against psychiatry. We all of us mounted active opposition to electroshock.
Disagreement with positions is one thing. And I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with slander and slanderous innuendo. The fact that Scientology praised the Scholarship has absolutely whatever nothing to do with me. They praise everything antipsychiatry and even most stuff that is critical psychiatry.
Peter Breggin stop writinging for Houghton Post because of the appalling inaccurate things said about him. By contrast, we expect to be safe writing in Mad in America.
Someone in this exchange made the totally erroneous claim that I am linked to Scientology. I need to pout out that is both wrong and slanderous, I have never had any dealing whatever with Scientology. How horrible for anyone to be expressing wrongful slurs like this in Mad in America!
Even on purely pragmatic level–and I have other reasons besides pragmatism here–we need allies to get rid of psychiatry. And you don’t get allies unless you care and show in your actions that you care about other oppressions besides that one with which you are most concerned.
leave one oppression in tact, it will serve to reinvent the others. Attack one oppression without looking at how you are impact or not impacting other oppressions in my opinion is sadly misguided.
Concerned carer: What you are saying would be a bit like saying we need slavery so that we can have the critiques of slavery. I have used an extreme example, so as to point out the flaw in this kind of thinking. We absolutely only need to have critical psychiatrists and researcher because we have psychiatry. Would we still need other critical researchers. Of course, but that is a very different question.
We haven’t been making strides on ECT in the public vnue . We are planning a much more ambitious series of actions in Toronto in Toronto 2019, including a hunger strike. The issue is winning back the media on the issue. And this new action is promising.
Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry, there is no graduate program in antipsychiatry. What there is an institute that is called “Ontario Institute for Studies in Education” (Oise for short) and in this institute are scholars that nclude a critique of psychiatry and in the case of my program (Adult Education and Community Development) it includes as one among many focuses, not only antipsychiatry theory but antipsychiatry activism. There is also an antipsychiatry scholarship–that one that I have endowed–for thesis students at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education doing antipsychiatry research. Only students who are at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education can apply for the scholarship. People interested in apply to Adult Education and Community Development at OISE should go to the OISE website (http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/Home/index.html)
and search on the application process from there
I have a thesis support group for my masters and doctoral thesis students. About half my thesis students do thesea in the anti or critical psychiatry area. And they are among the brightest students at the institute, with fellow students in fact to a large degree looking up to them.
I incorporate antipsychiatry into every single course I teach. I integrate it just as one integrates issues of sexism and racism. That said, perhaps the courses where it has most impact is a counterhegemonic course that I teach on trauma, also a course on activism in alliance with disenfranchized populations.
All good ideas, Julie, but far beyond what I am capable of pulling off in what is left in my life. Possible ideas for younger faculty somewhere to entertain.
Thanks for you comment.
For sure, making universities easier place for psych survivors to attend is critical. A good place to begin is getting rid of “mandatory leave” which plagues psych survivors in half the the universities around the world.
Much thanks, madmom. When I started out on this mission, I was told not to bother, that Big Pharma, which contributes billions to the universities would stop this. As you could see, much as they might of wanted to, that is not how this story played out.
Much thanks, Fred. Yes, to pull this off, my determination and focus was unrelenting. Keeping focused, strategic keeping our eye on the ball, that’s what we need to do. And when we do that and we do it long and skillfully, the victories will come.
Thanks for your comment, Fried. And thank for all your work over the years.
Our anti-shock demo this year one day before Mother’s Day will be a stellar. While I won’t be letting the cat out of the bag just yet, our anti-shock protest the following year in May of 2019 will be absolutely astounding and will garner press far and wide. Stay tuned!
Many of us around the world on May 12 will demonstrating against electroshock, demanding its abolition. This is an international day of protest against electroshock, with a clear feminist focus what with the statistics of two to three times as many women get ECT as men. If there is nothing going on in your city, do consider putting together a demo. In a number of the cities, what we will be chanting (and all the better if any press turning up asks you what it means) is:
Much thanks for your comments, Amy. It is always nice to hear from people who have read the novel and who have reflected deep and long on what it has to offer. It is precisely in readers like you that the hope liesl
Rachel777: The acronym is Centre for Addictions and Mental Health. What do they get from it? It is an industry, centred on pseudo-researcj,and what they get is more more research money.
A heads up re The Other Mrs. Smith and the role that it can play, Right now in cities around the world (e.g., Cork, Ireland, Toronto, Canada, Montreal Canada), people are gearing up for annual feminist demonstration against electroshock, held on May 12 (e.g, in many parts of the world, the day before Mother’s Day) In Canada, in light of the sexist as well as ageist facts about ECT, the event has long been called “Stop Shocking Our Mothers and Grandmothers”. This year in Ontario and perhaps also Quebec , the primary chant at the demos will be “We are the Other Mrs. Smith! Stop Shock Now.@ It is our hope that the media will ask us about this and thereby reinforce the synergy that we are trying to create. If you are at any demonstration in the days leading up to Mother’s Day, do join us in the chant.
Much thanks, BCharris, and much thanks, Gabi Taylor. I honestly think this novel has the potential to move a lot of people and do some heavy lifting for us, though of course, only if it is widely read. Any help that MIA readers can give getting it in into their local libraries and spreading the word about the novel would be greatly appreciated and my sense is would be time well spent. This novel–The Other Mrs. Smith– truly helps people “get” the horror of ECT in a visceral way–what ECT does to people and it could lead to a public outcry against shock–something that we desperately need. If you haven’t dipped into it yet, I encourage you to do so and suspect you won’t regret it for among other things, strange though this may seem, besides being informative and moving, it is a well written book and with all its rich characters and twists and turns, it is highly enjoyable. As one of the commentators on Amazon put it, ” Make a cup of tea, get your favorite blanket, curl up, and enjoy – it’s that good.”
All excellent points, Au Valencia. To reinforce some of them, in speaking about the autistic movement, we are speaking about a movement–and movements take stands. And not for a second have I ever seen advocates take the stand that they are a separatist movement. And While obviously not the same as antipsychiatry, the overlaps between the autistic movement and the antipsychiatry movement are enormous. Personally, I am grateful to advocates like Nick Walker for recognizing this and asserting connections. Additionally, there is absolutely nothing in the original article that gives anyone reason to be believe that we are dealing with a “disorder”. Note the huge growth in the number of people diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum (which was given as evidence) can be understood in ways not unlike the huge growth of the number of people diagnosed as mentally ill–the point is that we have industries here in whose interest this growth lies and we have no pressing reason to attribute that growth to anything other than that. Correspondingly, if I might add a new point, while again of course there are differences–admittedly huge differences–in the antipsychiatry/critical psychiatry movment, we face similar objections from some quarters that some people (e.g., those labeled schizophrenic) actually have a disorder. However, behind this claim lays no facts. In neither case, I would add, would anyone for a second say that the people in question are not suffering and proferring help is not in order.
Now I totally empathize with someone who feels that they are being silenced or their personal experiences are being ignored. ANd while it is hardly for me to say, maybe this the question that the community needs to grapple with. At the same time, one’s experience is about experience. And that is a very different matter than “causation” and by the same token, a very different matter than whether or not something is a disease. For interpretations like this are not intrinsically part of “experience”.
As an outsider here, that is, as someone who is not autistic, there may of course be important considerations that I am not understanding. ANd if so, please enlighten me.
Actually, how iI would put t, Mi, not that we are failure. It that we haven’t come close to succeeding yet;
That said, for sure psychiatry was absolute horrific under Communist regimes. The capitalistic financialization and moneyed interest that we see today, however, make this in some way a whole new ball game–more formidable and deadly that ever.
Yes, of course, the capitalist foundation has become ever more evident and something that urgently needs to be addressed. And what a terrific song! much thanks, for this and for your ongoing contributions
CAPA and several other organizations in Canada will be demonstrating againt ECT the day before Mother’s Day as we have for decades. This year one of our chants will be “We are the other Mrs. Smith! Stop shock now!
Here is a point that I need to make which reaffirms my point about actually doing something.I asked that people in Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault to consider granting me a birthday wish to talk to at least one person that day on why shock should be abolished. Ten people wrote to me to say that they had done just that. I made similar request in this string on MIA. I got no response to it. Now I do get the difference. This is not an activist group. It is a website. At the same time, I am worried about how far we can get when we are largely restricted to talking and people rarely pick anything up and up.
All going on at the same time, law suits, various works of art, especially theatre of the oppressed, the leads the audience to act, spirited demos that bring in allies from other movements, law suit, consciousness-raising events, lobbying legislatures. What it would mean to organize together is to know what others are doing and actively promote it and otherwise consciousness-raise around it. The problem is not knowing what has to be done. The problem is people taking it as a priority and making a point of following through and actually acting.
A belated happy birthday, Julie. Just to be clear, I am always happy to wish you a happy birthday for we can celebrate at any time the day that you were born. And like everyone who cares about justice, you are a blessing to the world.
Hey there, allies. It is my 73 birthday today. For anyone so inclined–and of course, no one has to be–here is the best present that anyone could give me. Talk to two people today who are not one of the Mad in America devotees about why it is critical to abolish shock. Why I say not one of Mad i America devotees is that that is too easy and won’t get us very far. We really do have to go beyond the “usual suspects” and talk to folk other than those who are already converted.
Julie, yes, agreed people do what they think they can get away with with impunity. this particular issue that you bring up strikes me as reason to lay more charges. We might also make public a shame list as in a list like: The shameful act of subjecting people to electroshock, here is the list of psychiatrists in ___ that engaged in that this month: _____________ ________________
__________________
I can surely understand everyone being discouraged as for sure, we have gotten nowhere on this issue for a long long time. And although I continue to plan them, I agree that demonstrations won’t do it. My sense is that we need multiple strategies all going on simultaneously.
Would love to hear from some artists out there. If you are an artist, do share some thought on how you might invoke “aha” about ECT through the use of your art. Would love to see you weigh in on this question.
Indeed, it is, Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry. It is is totally a system of deception and coercion even when technically people have given “consent”.
All of psychiatry hurts everyone, and they are quite happy to hurt everyone, irrespective of gender race, sexuality but no I would not agree there is “equality”. Research decisively shows that sexism, racism, heterosexism etc, plays out as well and it does so formidably.
Hi again, Julie. The problem of burning books, including the atrocity of a book like the DSM, is that would symbolically link people in the moment to the people involved in the Nazi book burning. I see no problem our burning another symbol of psychiatry or medicine, but book-burning i do not see as helping our cause. That said, yes, i did burn my bra (but in the 1960s, not the 1970s)
Film, is a great dea, Fred. But we need films of the new novels that are out there, ones that that are not sexist and so reflect the current sentiment. As wonderful as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was, nurse Hatchet will at least in part a reflection of sexism. Where we really need to put our anger against the industry and the people in the industry who spread the propaganda, who order shock, and who own and distribute shock machines.
You don’t sound wishy-washy, “Yeah I Survived”. You sound practical and totally realistic. Everyone has to figure out for themselves what would make sense for them to read, when. Know that I appreciate your words and respect the choices that you make. As for “not knowing” yes, of course, that is the existential dilemma and the perplexity in which ECT survivors are placed.
Thanks so much for the comment. I am so sorry about what happened to you. And I welcome you as a fellow fighter in the fight to expose ECT. If you come to read the novel, do let me know what you think of it.
I appreciate your sensitivity here, but the situation is more complex than you think. The position you are taking was once Peter Breggin’s position (decades ago), even though he knew ECT was enormously brain-damaging? What he thought is that you just have the truth out about ECT and then respect people’s choice. What he eventually came to realize is that psychiatry will never tell the truth about ECT, will always flagrantly misrepresent. As a consequence, while people may consent, truly informed consent is not possible–which led him to my position of ECT abolition. One other thing that is important here: “Treatments” that “work” by doing nothing else but damaging the brain are not medical treatments. And so medical people should not be allowed to offer them. Now does anyone ever feel better (however temporarily) from them? Yes. For the same reason that someone would temporarily feel better if you hit them over the head with a two-by-four. As closed head injury, it stimulates the very temporary release of endorphins–heroine like substances. By no one would think that hitting people over the head with a two-by-four should be seen as an acceptable medical treatment. I should add that running also causes the release of endorphins.
Much thanks for these comments, Julie. Yes, I surely hear something similar to what you have said from other shock survivors. And yes, indeed, shock survivors writing is absolutely critical. In its own way, such writing helps us start to repair the world.
To weight in just quickly on this, for sure racism is traumatizing and the lack of awareness and skills by counsellors is a problem, nor is it one that i think will go away. What is likewise important, Oldhead is absolutely right, you need to get rid of racism, and that as distinct from counselling should be the top priority. To act otherwise is to individualize what is systemic.
Everyone is different. Many ECT survivors have read my book, and sine even have even written blurbs for it. and many can’t. Everyone has to figure out what and what does not work for them.
Yes, while Susan has made some very cogent points as always, “reconstructing” psychiatry should hardly been the goal. this is not revolutionary and this is not radical. This is liberalism.
Scott, I applaud your critique of the medical model.At the same time, I am deeply concerned by your celebration of the new FDA trial and the movement to give people who suffer from trauma what is in essence is a few doses of doctor-delivered Ecstasy. While I take in that the hope is that just a few doses will do (and we all know what will happen if they don’t imminently produce the long-term “effect” being sought) here again drugs that interfere with totally normal neurotransmitter levels are involved and being presented as “medical” treatment.
Let me suggest that this is but a new (read: additional) entry point into the medical model–and not something to celebrate.
We can hardly defeat a paradigm by slipping into it.
Freud did some ingenuous things for sure. At the same time, he pioneered a form of talk therapy that did not involve dialogue and mitigated against dialogue. Moreover, he was very clearly an empire builder. Additionally to claim a break with psychiatry as “medicine” is a simplification and as such, misleading. Several times he states that eventually biological markers would probably discovered for what he was developing psychoanalytically.
While for sure, Freud may be credited with inventing talk therapy, he hardly just listened–he psychoanalyzed! And using very bizarre theories at that. Nor did he have an relationship with his clients, for he was committed to being a “blank screen”. And his writings were not just unfair to women but were hopeless misogynous. Calling him antipsychiatry is an incredible stretch.
A wonderful article, Peter. Yes, indeed, they are treating the brains of “patients” like something cancerous. the problem is that psychiatrists have a vested interest in thinking how they do. Correspondingly, while there may be exceptions, and while for sure, they hate the brains of others, it is not all clear that they hate their own brains.
Yes, Oldhead, the internet surely is helpful. And most students surely are colonized. That said, my sense is that we need to consciousness-raise and organize using absolutely every avenue at our disposal.
I wish I could state that it is safe to come out at university as someone who experiences things differently, Madmom, but mostly it is not precisely because academics, unfortunately, has the exact same prejudices as everyone else. That said, there are nooks and crannies where it is safe. There are faculty and programs for example where people are more accepting and have a critique of psychiatry (the graduate program in which I teach is one of them). You end up having to know where they are, though. Getting good at figuring out where it is safe to share and where it is not, that is invaluable skill that one needs to acquire.
very good point, Julie. That said, the laws prohibiting discrimination on disability are arguably helpful, for they included “perceived disability” and not just “disability”
Sorry this happened to you, Julie. And yes, it is among other things a catch-all category by which people can be given the boot. And yes, I think launching law suits, it seems to be, is important in fighting against this.
My sense is, we can only be effective if we organize. We really need not only individual but organizations taken a united stand. Eg., human rights groups etc. Which really means serious networging.
Very nice article, Emily. And thanks for sharing. To add a complementary perspective on the issue, Borderline Personality Disorder is a diagnosis overwhelmingly given to women. And why? Because women generally are more emotional (read more in touch with their emotions) than men, and it is men with power (e.g., psychiatrists) who name what is and what is not “normal”. And who else gets this diagnosis? Men who are similarly more emotional (read: like the disparaged gender). In other words, we are also looking at sexism here.
Of course, you should remain yourself, Emily. Besides that you are terrific, who else but you could you be authentically?
Because, Truth, far far more people read fiction than read autobiographical accounts of damage done. Note the enormous effect of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. And there is a history of the average person being and profoundly moved by fiction. For good or ill, this is simply a truth about fiction-I am am trying to leverage our special attachment to fiction.
I would dearly love to see it turned into a movie and think it would make gravitating movie. If anyone knows any directors, please feel free to pitch it.
Nicely done, Peter, as always. The question of course that faces us is how do we change the popular narrative? Because while unearthing the science is critical, were that enough, we would have prevailed against the pscyhopharmaceutical complex long ago.
In the 80s, I was chair of a group in Canada called Resistance Against Psychiatry. Don Weitz was in the group also. Among other things, we declared allegiance with all prisoners and on Prisoner Justice Day, we demonstrated at both psychiatric prisons and “regular prisons”. Ontario Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault also took this stand. One difficulty we ran into, however, was prejudice from both constituencies against the other. Some psychiatric inmates were uneasy about being identified with “regular” prisoners, for they were worried that these were “bad people” and association with them would hurt the reputations of psychiatric survivors. Correspondingly, some prisoners in the justice system were worried about what would happen to their reputation being allied with people they saw as “crazy”. Herein, as I see it, is part of the struggle and the education that we need to do. That said, I do think it is time to again seek unity between the two movements– prison abolition and psychiatry abolition, the human rights re prisons and the human rights for re psych institutions (which when you come down to it, are prisons themselves)
There is a presumptuousness in therapy that is for sure highly problematic.And many have been hurt by people who call themselves therapists–just as you say, not just you but all sorts of others. That said, Julie, how do you account for the radical therapists who operate enormously differently than what you suggest? What is important to take in is that while psychiatry is baseless in the first place, and while individual school of therapy may have questionable claims, therapy over all is making no claims beyond the significance of engagement with another and self-reflection.
As for the bit about money, what this leave out are the four or five decades of feminist therapists who, beyond the fact that they located problems in the social, not the individual, consistently used a sliding scale, in many cases agreeing to see people for just over minimum wage
That said, I surely do get why people who have been harmed by presumptuous, unaware, and self-entitled therapists–and indeed, that is very common indeed, and across the whole spectrum of therapy –think of therapy as a scam.
That said, your asking about this, Oldhead, has gotten me thinking. When people put “social” and “therapy” together, they are usually in some way designating a mode of “therapy” which includes the social, thereby leading us to believe that it is more astute, less psychologistic. It might be worth looking at the the various phenomena thusly named more closely , however, to try to ascertain whether or not going in the direction tends to open the door to greater intrusion.
I am reminded hear, Steve, that the oldest active psych survivor in CAPA (Don Weitz) has written to me saying that he was to put on the agenda of the September meeting of CAPA holding a demonstration against the of solitary in both the psych system and the prison system
Julie, a box does not come up when I go to answer your last question (its a complication of their web system). That said, to answer your question, no, making imprisonment fake medicine cannot be traced to any one person. Nor does this description itself exactly square with the history. Moving a certain segment of the prison population from prisons to hospital was the work of many centuries, with eventually the mad doctors (originally called “alienists” ) in charge. A reminder in this respect that in the western scene, doctors were since the middle ages were one the groups in competition over what might be called “the madness turf”.
thanks, Steve. That said, it is the courage of the 31 men who brought a law suit who deserve the credit for this victory. Yes, I absolutely agree with you this verdict can surely be used to support the challenge to solitary confinement in prison–and I look forward to that happening. So yes, I am cheering also.
Re the archived photos, yes, the public has access but the authorities made their selection carefully so as to make it look like very different, in fact good and caring work was happening with the men additionslly duly empowered.. Try this link to get an idea what I mean: https://historyexhibit.waypointcentre.ca/exhibits/show/treatment/or-program
Yes, of course we do. That is part of what I argue for. That said, it is important to take in that people seen as mad were locked up centuries before the medical folk take over. The oppression of locking up, in other words, greatly precedes psychiatry. What they added was “treating” and making it all look medical
Your thoughts are interesting, but I cannot really respond as for the most part, I do not see any special relevance to what I am writing. Nor do I in any way believe that “gestalt” can undo psychiatry. I am far more a materialist than that. That said, good luck with your work.
thanks, Slaying_ the _Dragon_of_Psychiatry. Let me just suggest here that the fact that all these area are problem and while indeed, law intrinsically underpins psychiatry, does not mean that these other systems cannot be also leveraged to get at psychiatry–something that we need to do a whole lot better at.
That said, The _cat, for sure the taxpayer for sure will foot the bill for the defendant “the government of Ontario,” but I doubt that they us taxpayer will foot any part of the bill for either of the two psychiatrists.
I understand your sentiment. Rather than comment on it, let me just say, that wasn’t the nature of the suit they lodged. The survivors who launched the suit did not launch a criminal suit. They launched a civil suit.
As for punishing the tax payers, legally speaking, tax payers are not held responsible for the actions of officials, though governments are–hence one of the defendants in this suit was the government of Ontario, which likewise was found guilty.
absolutely, Frank. What makes this ruling special, though, is the wording that goes with it, opening the door to “standard practice” to be considered torture, and as such, “actionable”.
Absolutely, Julie, we must report. At the same time, reporting what is not known about is just the tip of the iceberg–these practices were not just known about, the were world famous and lauded, just like ECT today is world famous and lauded! We now have a verdict we can use. Part of the attrition model of psychiatry abolition to focus on what will erode the system and surely successful law suits against “standard practice” are optimal. I think we have just be handed a weapon. We should be suing the asses off professional who engage in standard practice that court might judge to be torture–and have been given the go-ahead to do so. Please note here the justice explicitly ruled that torture is torture irrespective of whether or not it is accepted “mental health practices”
For whatever the reasons (and I am well aware that some of those reasons may be racist) thank God that children of POC are as it were, winning out of by being spared what euphemistically goes by the name of “standard care”.
It is good that you are vocally against the use of ECT. So congratulations on that. And yes not giving it is important but not remotely enough. I think that the problem is far more extensive them not having other tools. What my research reveals about the average psychiatrist is that they actually don’t use ECT themselves, have some sense of the harm it causes, but unlike you, do not have the honesty to actually critique ECT. Indeed, about 6 months ago, a Toronto psychiatrist was consulted by one of his patients about ECT because here niece had decided to have ECT herself and the “treatment” was scheduled to begin in one day’s time. The psychiatrist in a panic called me up and asked if I could speak with the family–because she had asked him his opinion on ECT–and he didn’t dare give it. While it is good that he reached out, imagine not answering your patient because you are worried about being penalized by the profession for doing to. If you will excuse my saying so, speaking of gutlessness! This guy was past retirement age and at this point had little to lose–and nonetheless, he ducked the question. Yes I know that there is a price to pay for going against the profession by saying ECT is harmful, but if every psychiatrist who knows that it is highly problematic and arguably unacceptable would only admit to what they know, we might have gotten rid of this appalling “treatment” decades ago! As for interns, as Breggin and I have been both wrote, moreover, they are made to get their hands dirty early on by being forced to give ECT, thereby rendering them complicit.
Ah, the problem is that most of the organizations that think of themselves as vanguard are not remotely vanguard, but indeed remain attached to the system and as such perpetuate the system.
Whenever we pull back from the conclusions that our own analysis shows is warranted,we in the long run endanger everything for which we are fighting, whatever great strides we appear to be making along the way. .
You have to know the context in which that person thinks what they think. When you understand the context, you understand what they are up against, what they mean by what they say. Calling something either a brain disorder (which it is not) or a mental illness (which is nonsensical) eliminates the context that will help you understand what what the person is dealing with and instead substitutes an arbitrary label that you apply which is mistakenly called treated as causal.
That’s correct, but they’ve managed it now for over 100 years and have had a huge resurgence every time it looked like we had them beat–so we need to have our wits about us
registered, I am not sure why you are saying these things. It is not that you are not correct about how the majority of people have or will respond. You most certainly are. However, to not speak truth because the majority of people will begin by dismissing what you say and because you know how they will dismiss you has never been the way that progress is made on huge issues. There is a process here, and the process involves speaking the truth and speaking it relentlessly irrespective of how people respond. to quote Gandhi on this one, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you –and then you win.”
I realize that it looks this way, Oldhead, and so I very much see why you ask what you did My own sloppiness here. No, I don’t agree that the attrition model is not longer “realistic or possible”. I think it is as vital as it ever was–and incidentally it is a model which came into being only about ten years ago and in part precisely because of the developments which Richard suggests. What I agree with rather is the concluding paragraph. That said, I should add, as a leftist and as someone with an intersectional analysis which very much includes class, I also agree that ignoring the monied interests involved would be a serious mistake. As such, correspondingly, when I write at length about the attrition model in book chapters (the only place where I can develop it at length) I prioritize such ways of eroding psychiatry as law suits, hardly something that gets rid of capitalism, but something that uses the leverage within the system in a way that could seriously detract from the huge profits made and in so doing, do its own job in eroding psychiatry.
Robert, first let me say again how much I appreciate not only your work but your incredible honesty and openness. at the same time, let me suggest that people who call themselves antipsychiatry proceed initially from the very same position as you do–that what history and science has shown is that psychiatry cannot be reformed and it harms people. The only difference is that we call for getting rid of it. If you are convinced at this point that it cannot be reformed and necessarily harms, why would you call for reform (as is the case with critical psychiatry) To put this another way, why would you call for the reform of an institution that you now believe cannot be reformed? Isn’t the strictly critical psychiatry position something that no longer fits your beliefs?
yes, Robert, I can see what you get from identifying as critical psychiatry rather than antipsychiatry. At the same time, I think that there are things that you lose–the clarity that this is an area that cannot and must not continue, that we are not looking at something that has the chance of being made acceptable,
Organizing and working with others on the basis of the one understanding of antipsychiatry that kept antipsychiatry alive and well and not diluted, that is my democratic right, also my responsibility. If you Oldhead, choose to operate otherwise, that is your choice.
and thank you, Robert, for all your hard work. That said, I have an obvious question. I agree of course that psychiatry cannot be reformed–but why do you go from there to “critical psychiatry” instead of “antipsychiatry”, when critical psychiatry largely rests of the basis that reform is possible?
Nicely done, as always, Phil. And yes, the fact that the very existence of psychiatry is based on lies is precisely what cannot be reformed–and why this direction is ultimately a no-starter.
Szasz’s strength–and he was a giant here–was deconstructing the concept of mental illness and attacking the idiotic use of languaage. IN this he was a leader unparalleled. also of course he did not practice psychiatry and taught his deconstruction to others. did he understand other oppresssions and their relationship to psychatry? A bit here and there but in no consistent way, and some of his pronouncements were horrifying. For example, there was a video he made many decades where he quite rightly objected to homeless people being thrown in the psychiatric system–then to my amazement he added, that they shoul be thrown in the prison system instead for they are violating vagrancy laws. So while brilliant and an enormously important leader this area, perhaps even the most important, Szasz was as it were a mixed bag, both exceptionally enlightened and unenlightened at the same time.
Oldhead,my guess is that Richard is addressing this to you because of your dismissal of how essential it is that antipsychiatry be defined in term of abolition of psychiatry–and not just abolition of forced psychiatry. Nor is this just a matter of words
Re the difference between abolish, end, eliminate, while you keep bringing this up as if frank agreed to the committment to “ending” as part of the definition of antipsychiatry, but the point is that he hasn’t, leastwise not in anything which i have read. Hence, this is far more that a semantic issue.
I don’t know how to shed light here, but Judi was concerned that if a total antipsychiatry position was taken and was successful, it would leave people in the lurch who were in serious emotional distress. Now I agree with her and always have that antipsychiatry needs to take cognizance of of the difficult straights in which people find themselves and needs for example to make sure that people who have been coping by the use of psychiatric drugs will still have them at their disposal. Judi and I actually had two meetings in toronto not long after she made the statement that Oldhead is referring to. The first was just between the two of us, and it was precisely on who she had in mind when she critiqued antipsychiatry folk and how to understand her disagreement, though we quickly drifted into discussing feminism. The second was a meeting precisely on the paucity of feminist analysis in the movement and on this she met with three of us Toronto antipsychiatry Toronto women On the first issue, which actually, we both saw as a far less urgent issue, we never came to any resolution, though my sense is that the two of us walked away with more mutual understanding, also with increased respect for one another. On the second, the agreement was more or less total, but the feminist initiative that we were hoping would materialize out of the discussion never exactly happened. Would we have gone further on either of these issues had she visited Toronto again? I would like to think so, but that necessarily remains an unknown.
or in fact instead of being a problem, it is precisely what preserved antipsychiatry at a time when the survivor movement, as Lapon wrote, was going liberal.
The issue is not you personally, Oldhead but the compromised definition of antipsychiatry that a few people have and your insistence that they are still antipsychiatry. During the long period when you stopped being involved, antipsychiatry was kept alive precisely by those of us (most in Canada, a few in the US like Chabasinski) insisting on a total abolitionist definition. Most everyone else watered things done, in part in order not to alienate people, in part out of liberal inclinations And before you know it, antipsychiatry was on a serious decline pretty well everywhere except Canada. Those of us who took abolition as a bottom line kept antipsychiatry alive and active over those decades precisely by insisting on the bottom line of abolitionism and never allowing the concept to get watered down. Now of course, people are free to define things as they wish. I am likewise free to only be part of grouping which hold fast to abolitionism and to encourage that understanding of antipsychiatry.
saying that someone who is not for abolishing psychiatry is not antipsychiatry is not being dogmatic. Everyone bands together on the basis in part of definition. There has to be a basis of unity that distinguishes who you band together with tht basis directly related to what your ulltimate goal. By insisting on the goal, Canadian antipschiatry activists kept antipsychiatry alive and active for decadeswith help from Americans like Lapon and Chabasinski in the US a, while it largely collapses in most of the world including most of the US. It collapsed for a a variety of reasons but one of which was a definition that did not define the ultimate goal, one which watered down the meaning. Antipsychiatry was kept alive by people very much keeping to the bottom line that you are recommending being open about. For myself personally, i didn’t do that in the late 80s –and I am not about to do that now. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you had gone on to other issues for most of those decades and just returned in the last several years and so maybe you are not the familiar with these dynamics–but that does not make them an iota less critical. I invite you, Oldhead,to take that seriously and not to just assume that you missed nothing during that time and that people who are taking a different attitude than you are simply being “dogmatic”.
actually Judi was not only talking about people like Laing, though that for sure was her main reference, she was also talking about the Phoenix Rising. Not that we did not see eye-to-eye on all sorts of issues, including the need for greater feminist analysis.
Actually, I have an interesting anecdote about Szasz here. When he was in England, he met with people from Asylum Magazine. they wanted to have his autograph but had no piece of paper to put it on. So they give him a copy of Asylum (which has a nickname “toward a democratic psychiatry.” He took up his pen about to sign, then stopped, saying, “I cannot sign this–it has the word “psychiatry on it!”
Actually, I have an interesting anecdote about Szasz here. When he was in England, he met with people from Asylum Magazine. they wanted to have his autograph but had no piece of paper to put it on. So they give him a copy of Asylum (which has a nickname “toward a democratic psychiatry.” He took up his pen about to sign, then stopped, saying, “I cannot sign this–it has the word “psychiatry on it!”
Julie, what Szasz set in motion here caused problem from people who are antipsychiatry ever since. That said, one of our most eminent Toronto ECT survivors made it very that if her choice was between Scientology and psychiatry, she would take her chances “with the shrinks”. Not a decision she came to lightly.
actually, Julie, here is where Szasz went badly astray. Alas, Szasz formed an alliance with Scientology, which is what gave birth to CCHR–an alliance which has been used against antipsychiatry ever since.
Yes, Judi, who without question was otherwise absolutely wonderful, always dismissed antipsychiatry this way, clearly ignoring such vital antipsychiatry warriors as psychiatric survivors Lenny Lapon and Don Weitz as well as the vast majority of people who wrote for leading survivor magazines like Phoenix Rising. Clearly her movement was not antipsychiatry (which is one the reasons that I have carefully distinguished between the survivor movement and the antipsychiatry movement– saying that they interpenetrate but are not the same–and clearly this was not one of her areas of expertise.
Yes, Oldhead, that is indeed what democracy is all about. At the same time part of democracy is that people be allowed to say that they think an argument is going in circles without being accused of being mean, anti-democratic or authoritarian.
It also has to be perfectly acceptable that while making concessions on all sort of matters, some of us have bottom lines. Clearly mine –and I have always been crystal clear about this–is abolition.
Ron, given the entire profession is based on myths and misrepresentations, we are clearly talking a about a profession here–not bad apples. No doubt in every case of atrocity, there are officials involved who to act more humanely and who deeply regret what their colleagues do –which is great–but that does not change the verdict that we need to make about the profession. Herein lies the difference between a systemic argument and individualization and liberalism.
To be clear, Frank, the attrition model of psychiatry abolition would of course prioritize getting rid of force; the ultimate goal, nonetheless would be psychiatry abolition more generally (and no, not by force). In this regard, you might (or might not) want to look at what I have written about the attrition model elsewhere (see for example,https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/attrition-model-psychiatry-abolition/
A question: If an attrition model of psychiatry abolition were adopted, could you live with this as opposed to restricting abolition to what you are calling “consensual psychiatry”?
So it might seem, Frank but when we push on this matter to find out what you mean–and others have done so repeatedly– strange and at least seemingly inapplicable concepts like freedom of speech keep popping up. Which suggest that there is far more to this difference than semantics and it does seem to present an obstacle. In your words–just saying.
Not foolish at all, Julie. While changes that we fight for often dont materialize in our lifetime, of course we all want them to. Now personally, as someone who is remarkably, unwell, I was expecting to go to my grave with seeing a resurgence in antipsychiatry. Nonetheless, like many others I plowed on, year after year, like earthworm, preparing the ground for change. Then lo and behold, we saw ourselves in the midst of a resurgence–and so you never know!
Hi there, people, I noticed the word “14 years of activism in the area” has crept in. Possibly, a typo that kept being repeated and perhaps even initially of my doing. To stop any confusion, the antipsychiatry work done by abolitionist (activists and survivors) has been going strong at least in Canada since 1979, with a huge boost coming in the early 80s. I myself joined the movement in 1979 but only became extremely active in 1981–then never looked back.
One other thing, since posting this article, a number of people have emailed me indicating that they want to join CAPA. As long as you appreciate that CAPA is an abolitionist group, of course, we are happy to accommodate. Unfortunately the CAPA email is on the blink right now, but I can easily add you to the CAPA email list if you email me asking, which two of you have done in the last few days. You will find my email address listed on the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education website.
Oldhead, I agree with you that the fact that we have all these people arguing about the meaning of antipsychiatry is a sign of progress. I would add that in part, this is what 14 years of activism in this area has finally resulted in, as opposed to your describing the product of those years as constituting “zero progress”. That said, we are not simply arguing about words. We are arguing basic principles–bottom lines And while semantics is surely involved here, it is not just a matter of semantics. Also it is hardly just bullshit. It makes a huge difference whether people declare themselves opposed to coercive psychiatry only or whether they declare themselves opposed to psychiatry period. Moreover, people surely have a right to have their own bottom lines and to organize and group together on the basis of these. And clearly psychiatry abolition is a bottom line for a huge number of us.
I wouldnt say we had no victories, Oldhead, just temporary and qualified victories. For example for a long time we got rid of lobotomies–and both a major fight and major achievement it was.
Yes, I would agree with Steve here. Medical substances can sometimes be of assistance to people in emotional distress, and so one would not want to rule out medical people as among those who could be helpful. For this, however, Ron, for we do not need the bogus medical specialty called psychiatry. To credit psychiatry as acceptable because they sometimes provide the help that any good doctor would or should is to totally miss the point.
Let me suggest that there is a difference between vision and strategy that needs to be made. Uprising is absolutely correct that eliminating force is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to eliminate psychiatry. At the same time, I think that eliminating the use of force would go a long long way toward eliminating psychiatry for force in intrinsic to psychiatry. And is even that the whole story? Not really. As Oldhead says, psychiatry is about force. However, it is also about the rise and dominance of medicine.
Yes, Oldhead, you are absolutely right. The Wikipedia definition represents the hegemonic definition, in this case the definition by the professionals.
I would agree with Oldhead that what others have to say is irrelevant. As moral people, we should be acting in terms of what is ethical–not in terms of whether or not others disparage yusfor it. At the same time, I do not agree, Oldhead, with saying that abolition is not the bottom line. While the definitions of abolition are not exhaustive (and few definitions of any term are) people who are aboltitionists have pretty well spelt out what they mean by it, including myself in this article, clarifying that stripping psychiatry of the power which it has, cutting the special relationship with the state, and eliminating it as a recognized field of medicine would in itself constitute abolition. Again, others would have some differences with this definititon–and I knew of few words in any language anywhere where you would not find people differing on the definition–my sense is that most abolitionists would largely agree with this definition. Which is the end as good as you can get when you dealing with language. As for the issue of not using the word, of course someone can be a antipsychiatry without using the word “abolition”. If they persistently find themselves uneasy with others using the word and keep on wanting to modify it, on the other hand, then no, I do think they are antipsychiatry, although they may want to be and although they may have an otherwise strong critique.
Oldhead, while I understand your point about the AMA and its like and indeed appreciate you visionary anarchism here, and while I too have a broader critique of medicine ,there are very few people who want to get rid of psychiatry who also want to deregulate medicine, and as such, in any way tying antipsychiatry to such a agenda, let me suggest, would be a profound mistake. My sense here is that an antipsychiatry agenda needs to be cognizant of, relate to, and look for the openings that exists in the here-and-now.
Ron, there are a number of problems with what you are saying. the fact that people use the word “antipsychiatry” as a term of disparagement is epistemologically and ethically irrelevant. Positions should not be determined by how people by whether or not people attack you for them. As for the fact that some psychiatrist sdo good work–yes, that has been acknowledged by me in this article and in others. But the good work they do is not medical in nature and in spite of the fact, not because of the fact that they are psychiatric.
As for what stops me from recognizing the weakness of the abolitionist positions–the simple fact that weaknesses that you refer to are weaknesses in the position of the theorists who reject the abolitionist position–not weaknesses in the abolitionist position itself. IN other words, what stops me is logic.
I am critical of it as well. At the same time, feminists have always used the words differently–being very clear that they are using the word metaphorically and that it is to be understood as a metaphor only .
Which is not to say that I am recommending feminist therapy. Again, the emphasis on professionals seems to me mistaken. Moreover,There are, alas, lots of feminist therapists that have harmed survivors in one way or another. Only that it needs to be thought of differently.
Yes, lies that make you feel that are in trouble if you don’t take some “treatment” or other, added to pressure from others–of course these are subtle forms of coercion. And take away what is legally called coercion only and this will still wreak havoc in people’s lives. To tell ourselves otherwise is to let down all the millions of people profoundly damaged by what is euphemistically called “consensual psychiatry”.
Abolishing forced treatment is a wonderful things to do and should be prioritized, but no, that would not be abolishing psychiatry just the use of blatant forced in administering it.
Frank, if psychiatry does not exist as a medical profession, then for all intents and purposes, you have abolished it. If people want to pay others for a certain type of philosophy or whatever who are not recognized doctors and not pretending to be, but that once would have been seen as psychiatrists, that is s a different question and no one who is calling themselves antipsychiatry is trying to stop that.
that said, while I am not meaning to offend you, I worry about how much time so many of us have spent going around in circles with you on this question, for despite what I see as good intentions on everyone’s part, it does not seem to be productive. Which I have to say worries me.
Julie, the likelihood is that whoever is supposed to be checking that account just isn’t doing it. That keeps happening. No, you don’t have to be a toronto resident,though the meetings are held in Toronto. If you want to Skype in to a meeting, let us know ahead of time (email me at my University of Toronto address) and that will do it. We are off for the summer, but I could surely add you to our email list now. Just go to the Ontario Institute at University of Toronto website http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/Home/index.html
And if you email me now, I can get you on our email list.
and look up my email address at the bottom of the pages where it says gateway to faculty and the email me
There was no discussion of Healey at all. There were three issues really, neither of which would have won the day without the others: 1) academic freedom; 2) the fact that universities don’t like saying no time a free gift of money; and 3) the fact that I am a faculty member. Pushing all of these together and repeatedly is what won the day.
Steve, much thanks for your comments. Re Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, we haven’t really voted for years. And while we could not accommodate a bunch of people skyping in, now and again, someone who is member wishes to Skype in to attend a meeting lets us know in advanceand one of our Toronto members accommodates. The long and the short is that if you if wanted to join and could make the time to skype into 2 meetings, there is no problem with you joining. Now as if happens, we take the summer off every year rom May or June onward (as in no meetings), and so we are off right now but we will be back to official meetings in September and will be having monthly meetings from then on until May or June of the following year. If you want to join, email me at my University of Toronto address and you will be added to the list; and even now, you could start getting our emails
I am not “anti-therapy” and do think it can be very useful, On the other hand, I am against therapy that pathologizes, that depoliticizes, that is involuntary, also even kind empathic therapy that turns itself the centre of the person’s existence. The point is that there are all sort of ways for people to deal with their issues–not one. And don’t think we need more therapists in the world but less. Less professionals in general, and more people helping one another. Less professionals and more real community.
Frank, the attrition model of psychiatry abolition does look at first steps that move in the direction of abolition as a way to proceed. Getting rid of force, getting rid of ECT would both be seen as reasonable first steps
I always find it hard to know, Frank, whether the issues between us are just semantical or more than that. Please note that I never defined “abolition” in this article or any where else as meaning “wising it off the face of the earth”. Nor did I suggest that a person could not consult “a shrink” only that the “shrink” would not be given the authority of being a medical person, for psychiatry would be delegitimizes as such and not longer qualify as medical.
Kindred Spirit, much thanks for your thoughts here. Re the issue of being called a “radical”, while people may see it as an insult, I very much accept the term profoundly see myself as a radical. the “roots” of the word radical are mportant here, for it literally means “roots”. To be a “radical”, ergo, is to go the the roots of the matter. And really, what else is worth doing?
Yes, indeed, Frank. It would be nice to see more such news. Maybe now that there has been a single inroad, others who are in a position to do so can use it as leverage for getting such a thing going at their university. Or possible a change that is a bit different but that this provides leverage for?
A very good question, Steve, and perhaps I shouldn’t be creating using this slashed word (anti/critical), though I do from time to time. Here is why I do. For sure I think critical psychiatry is a highly problematic, simple reformist, and as such, not the way to go. At the same time, I am aware that there are discoveries made by critical psychiatry thinkers that antipsychiatry thinkers fully agree with, while in no way agreeing with the reformist position. I use the “slashed” word every so often to suggest the inclusion of those discoveries. Can you think of another way to do so that does not get one into huge explanations at every turn? So far I cannot, but as I said, I very much get why you are raising the issue.
What about other antipsychiatry people who are on this forum and are reading this exchange? How would you deal with this question elegantly without having to go through a major explanation each time the issue came up? For it surely does come up repeatedly.
Thanks, Robert, for the update and for your work. That said, Oldhead is absolutely right. This is reformism pure and simple and while it will avail people in the short run –and so I would not speak against it–in the long run, it will not lead to a fundamental shift.
Thanks for asking, Bippyone. My novel “The Other Mrs Smith” is likely to come out in either the late fall or very early winter. I am exciting by the prospect of it coming out for I think it is an important piece of consciousness raising, as indeed art can be.. It is something that I promised a friend who is a shock survivor in Toronto –the now deceased Carla MacKague, that one way or another I would perserver with until it got out. And while she did not live to see it, in my very last phone call with her, –and we only got to talk for a couple minutes for she was too sick to stay longer on phone –I got to tell her that it was in the bag, as it were.
Anyway, do stay tune for it could be coming out as early as October, depending how quickly the publisher moves.
Antip:To be clear, cursing with a “mental health professional” present would of course be highly unwise. So would cursing in any other place where it is likely to land one in trouble. Knowing what is possible where, what is safe and what is unsafe and when and where is a type of acquired literacy that is indispensable. As for books, I have written a large many.
I am not sure whether or not CAPA is the only active antipsychiatry group going –but active, we surely are. May guess is that there are a few others. I have a hunch that there is one in France. And for sure, there are lots on individuals throughout the world. Maybe if we started a network, we would soon find groups coming out from the woodwork. There is a CAPA meeting this Sunday. Do you want me to float the idea around about CAPA of taking the first step to facilitating the formation of a network of antipsychiatry groups and individuals? And if so, what do you think that first small step should look like? We are absurdly busy right now –but it is something that we could possibly more seriously look at, say, come May.
Not meaning to offend you, EliseMaia, and I don’t know if this helps, but as I think about what people are subjected to, there are some obscenities so profound –and I count ECT among them –that a response that is totally polite feels inadequate. Ergo, resolution language which gives voice to that.
There are a lot of books that deal well with the science and show that all of it is faulty. My recommendation Harper, would be to read some of these and you may glean a better idea of why people are responding as they are.
I belong to and am chair of n antipsychiatry group in Toronto Canada called “Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, which has been active for a very long time. If others also belong to antipsychiatry organization, we could put on the agenda of our different groups having a international network that we could all join. Where are others on this issue? Have you local groups that are antipsychiatry? Could you form one if you have not one already? Could you take the initiative for them to join a network? Having at very least a network with some basic principles, is, I would think, very doable.
There was no one there, Frank, who was committed to keeping up the momentum. Single demonstrations do very little. You need an organized campaign. And accounts in a very important way for why all initiatives have failed.
yes, I recall her doing that, which is why I stayed away from the various comments about her in the last little while. So sorry about what happened to you, Truth. And yes, Oldhead, we need to speak back to celebrities becoming “poster children” for the “mental health” message.
Richard, I am glad you like the blog, and as always, it is good to hear from you, Re the contradictory nature of Gandhi, I assume that all leaders are to varying degrees contradictory, but that does not stop me from seriously considering their espoused principles. As for Gandhi, I am concerned by your statement that it is “an historical truth that during his lifetime there was not a single war he did not like, and he ended up actively helping to recruit people to fight in those wars.” I cannot but feel this is a serious exaggeration, as opposed to a “historical fact” for it flies in the face of many of the very clear stands he took when countries were under attack (not all of which I agree with, by the way, but which were nonetheless distinctly in conformity with the principles of non-violent resistance). Also, there is a sense in this post as well as some of those by others that “revolutionary” necessarily means the inclusion of violence, an equation which is not something I agree with, though I very much agree that “revolutionary” definitively means the concerted application of some kind of pressure or force (in other words, that consciousness-raising itself is not enough). Anyway, just my two cents so that you know where I am coming from. I respect that often that those of us who are radical are forced to agree to disagree on such things for we are highly unlikely to convince one another, and there in the end, a great deal that unites us.
A single world demonstration does very little, as you can see, though it was a good beginning. But a demonstration is not a prolonged strategy. You need a coordinated campaign with multiple tactics. It is not that none of us have the knowledge to bring this off. what we do no have is the people power. In essence, we need a far far bigger movement with people willing to act.
Hi again, Frank: Your point about Cooper, for sure is important. And yes, as you know, I am an anarchist. the problem with the Wikipedia pages, is beyond what you outline. Almost none of what they include is actually antipsychiatry. Moreover, it is incredibly American-centric.
Thanks for the comments, Oldhead. To be clear, I am not an evolutionist and yes I agree pressure is needed. While I value much of Marx, my idea of pressure however, stems more from Gandhi. That noted, it goes without saying that i totally agree that we need an unequivocally antipsychiatry agenda–something not clouded by reformism,
After so little attention, it is great that we all together making this happen Phil. Thank you and thank everyone else for all your hard work making these breakthroughs happen.
An interesting interview. That said, let me just weight in with the thought that it very much matters what words we use, and insofar as any of us use words like “schizophrenic” and “psychotic”, we are thereby implying their legitimacy and in the process we are upholding psychiatry. And while this issue may look minor, it is not. As Black feminist Audre Lorde so poignantly put it, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Hi there, everyone. First let me profusely thank all of the people who have come to my defence re the criticism of the scholarship that has been coming out in Canadian sources. Much appreciated. That said, let me correct a misimpression that first appeared in one of the comments on MIA and keeps getting recycled. The scholarship is not something for the medical school at University of Toronto. It is for students at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), which is the graduate faculty of education at University of Toronto. It has particularly relevance for Adult Education and Community Development (which is a social change and activist program). Correspondingly, there is not remotely a course in antipsychiatry in the medical school. Rather there is an integration of antipsychiatry into my courses at OISE, as well as a coterie of students doing theses in this area, including students who are psychiatric survivors. Hope this helps clarify.
Alex, obviously on anything that keeps the systems running, we would not be allies. We are not wanting to “improve” the system after all, but get rid of it. Where can we often ally with folk who are not antipsychiatry? By doing things together that they also want that fall within the parameters of the attrition model of abolition (see my on this in Psychiatry Disrupted). What the attrition model does is to call on antipsychiatry activists to only support reform that moves in the direction of psychiatry abolition. A concrete example, we can ally with groups that want to get rid of non-voluntary treatment, including those folk that are not remotely antipsychiatry. Why? Because albeit it is not sufficient, willynilly, it moves society in the direction of psychiatry abolition. By the same token and for the same reasons, we can ally with people who are not antipsychiatry who want to get rid of electroshock. In my chapter I go through a bunch of examples of how this can of reasoning can be used and has been used to decide what to support and what not support, what to ally over and what not.
Nice to hear someone referring to the 1982 principles, Oldhead. Those of us in Toronto, where as you know, the conference was hosted, have always been proud of these 1982 principles and antipsychiatry folk in Toronto continue to live by them. That said, while Toronto is an oasis and has continued to sport one of the few truly antipsychiatry groups around, our ability to grow has been greatly impeded. And while there are many reasons for this,yes, one is precisely the co-optation of survivors etc. by the government and also by reformist professionals who do not understand liberation or liberation movements. Also, in the 80s we had the interest of the media (I will never forget the extensive and for the most part positive coverage which they gave us when Don Weitz, Shirley Johnson and I (as reps of Coalition Against Electroshock) staged a three day sit-in in the Minister of Health’s office –but the media has now almost totally bought the biological story line, the myth of the dangerous “mental patient” and except in isolated cases has little regard for the rampant denial of human rights. In this regard,psychiatry has successfully sold the public on its message. So successful have they been, that the legal route is not what we would have hoped, for judges continue to be intransigent and so when there are legal challenges, we almost always lose.
I see little shift in the media, or in the judiciary. Where I am seeing shifts right now, however, is with survivors themselves and in academia. Survivors for decades avoided antipsychiatry like the plague, going rather with a “reformist” bent and now by contrast, what we see is more and more survivors once again actually interested in antipsychiatry. We are also in different ways seeing legitimation of the area in academia–hence the scholarship, hence my invitation to use academia in the fight against psychiatry.
So I have to say that I am once again having hope.
As for MindFreedom, please note that MindFreedom is not and has never claimed to be antipsychiatry. Nor does Mad in America. It is into reform of the system, while antipsychiatry folk are clear that the system has to be bit by bit dismantled.
That said, I am grateful for allies even when they are not antipscyhiatry. And I have no interest in fighting with them, only for being aware of when we can and where we cannot work together.
Yes, Frank, it is implicit. At the same time, it is important to make it highly explicitly. To be able to map exactly how and exactly when these other professions are doing the work of the “mental health” regime, and in particular, psychiatry.
My own guess? What you did all those years is likely on the “undermine” continuum, though inevitably it would have at the same time have been mixed with “doing the work” of psychiatric regime. Again, my invitation is to write something for you have your own kind of insider knowledge of this horrific system and you have the location from which to speak to nurses.
I am glad you are enjoying–if that is the word for it–my books. The best book which I have written and will ever write is Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–and you might find it interesting for there is a lengthy discussion of the colonization of nursing, psychology, and social work in it, with these disciplines and their colonization such that they do the work of psychiatry forming one of the chapters.
Agreed, Julie. Anything that uses diagnoses for things that are not diseases, anything that nurtures dependence, anything that increases hierarchy, anything by which others are experts on who a person is and/or should be is inherently unacceptable. As for psychiatrists who totally reject the medical model, yes they exist, and Breggin is an excellent example. At the same time, the majority of them, while often wonderful allies are critical psychiatry, not antipsychiatry, and so will only help us so far in the route that we need to tread, the changes that we need to effect. Their limitation is this regard is that they are into reformism –which as I have written elsewhere is not only not good enough but can be downright counterproductive.
Nathan: Here is my sense of the antipsychiatry activist world re the matter you raised. I have been a very active member since 1980, have worked with activists throughout the world and feel I have a reasonably broad take on the community. What unites us all is antipsychiatry –that is, psychiatry abolition. We differ on other issues. This notwithstanding, besides that I agree with you that a critique of the related areas is absolutely necessary, I have seldom come across an antipsychiatry activist who does not have a critique of psychotherapy, psychology, social work etc. For the reality is, a good part of these are highly compromised and oppressive –and as such, something we do well to be concerned over. The difference is they have a critique–and they operate on it, but they are not calling for abolition of these whereas they are calling for the total abolition of psychiatry. Getting rid of psychiatry, getting rid of compulsory treatment, and getting rid of the “mental health” system as we know it, this is the focus, the point of agreement, and the bottom line. Now some of us (myself included) go further and want to get rid of the state per se, for we see the state as something that will inevitably erode community and create problems for individuals, as well as disempower them –and indeed I see principled anarchism as having a logical relationship to antipsychiatry. At the same time I recognize that this is not something on which antipsychiatry activists are likely to agree, and so I only stress such concepts in my own writing.
It surely is. I could not agree more. Talking to professionals is hardly the optimal way to go and in the long run, this direction destroys and will continue to destroy community.
Viuu, nice to hear from you. Always good to hear from someone who recognizes the mistakes that they have made and now knows whose side they have to be on. So good for you.
That said, that actually places you in a good position to do your part to help discredit psychiatry should you opt to do so. You might want to consider speaking up. You would not be alone in this for while it is very small, there are nurses doing just that. There is even a radical journal of nursing education. Nor is it too late. As for age, I am 71, very sick, and severely disabled, and am still doing that i can–to speak out against what is happening, to take part in demonstrations, to advise, to write, to strategize, etc,, while at the same time teaching full time and being head of my program. So I would not take 67 as too late if you wanted to have an impact here.
Well put, Julie. The only thing it does not cover is the difference between antipsychiatry and critical psychiatry folk. Antipsychiatry folk like me, like Oldhead, like others, are seeking abolition not only of the obvious cooercion (which for sure is pivotal), but of the entire system
actually, almost all antipsychiatry folk are highly critical of other parts of the system and other so-called mental health professionals. The difference is that psychiatry is the major focus, and when it comes to professionals, while generally strongly opposing professional inroads, very few are calling for a total abolition of any other profession, though for sure we want to contest a good part of what they do, of the claims which they make, and naturally of the power which they wield. Personally I have been on record repeatedly stating that we do not need more psychologists, etc., in fact, we need a whole lot less. And I have consistently opposed what is called “professionalization”.
Forgive the confusion, Royalperiodot. My fault. I was actually responding to Kal. And the reasons that feelings came up was his words “I am sorry you feel that way.”
As usual, Nomad, you seriously misinterpret me. I am all in favour of legal action. I don’t believe in states, and so the “eutopia” I am talking about is in a stateless society. I never remotely use the concept of recovery. I write about political actions and am persistently engaged in them. Also I am totally opposed to coercion and coercive “treatment”. As for Foucault, besides that to both of our satisfaction, the two us worked together in the 80s, I myself did not put his picture on the blog article (although i do not object to it). Mad in America did.
that said, as responding to your comments in the past about my articles has never led to anything except what I see ever new misinterpretations–something which, I suspect, does neither of us any good: A heads-up, I won’t be responding to further comments of yours. Though of course, you are free to keep commenting, however unfairly.
Please understand that my analysis is not a “feeling” but an analysis. And as I have said already, why I brought up slavery was only to make the point that there are not always two legitimate sides to an issues. There is not with racism; there is no with slavery; there is not with murder, and there is not whether or not with blood-letting. Nor is there with psychiatry–for the paradigm is wrong and the claims do not hold water. Not that I would disclaim that there is connection in some way between slavery and psychiatry –only that this was not the point that I was making.
PaisleyToes, you might want to take a look at the very last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–for it provides a detailed answer to the question that you have raised.
The comparison with slave owning was to demonstrate one thing and one thing only–that is, it is not true that there always two legitimate sides to an issue. The issue that I am making is a logical one, Kalmd, and so it is totally irrelevant that slavery and psychiatry are not the same thing. The point is that there are not always two legitimate sides to an issue. If you want to know why I reject a side that you don’t, you would have to read my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness. –All the best.
Kalmd: I understand your concern, but I cannot help you here–for the paradigm is simply wrong and when something is wrong, you have to get rid of it. Just as take one side only on the issue of slavery, I can take one side only on the issue of psychiatry–it is fundamentally flawed and harmful–and it has to go
Good question –and let me say I don’t think in this case that there is a single answer that fits everyone. Some people get stuck because stuff that happened in their earlier years and the triggers connected with them stop them from grappling constructively. Some because they do not get the support which they need. Some because the oppression out there is continuing to hammer at them, often relentlessly. Some because they are frighteningly isolated. Some because they have bought the line others (worse yet, generally professionals) can fix their problems.
The person that I am trying to reach may or may not have read Foucault. I don’t just have just one audience. Yes, I want to reach the academic, and in an article on using academia –and only in such an article–they are of course one of the primary audiences. More generally, I am interested in reaching everyone who is open to strategizing with me about how to bring down psychiatry.
If you are largely looking for short, my articles are not for you, and you do better to skip them. As it happens I consider nothing in my article extraneous. It is an exploration of a topic. Will my writing influence MDs? Not the most obvious target. Nor does that worry me, for change from within is not what I am seeking. Psychiatrists will not get rid of psychiatry–for their interests runs counter. By the same token, any “reform” which they do will leave the damaging processes in tact. Please note in this regard, there are two different strains of theorists that write in this venue–the critical psychiatry folk and the antipsychiatry folk. And I belong to the latter.
There is a profound difference between us. While I believe people can have dire problems in living, including enormous distress and confusion, I do not believe in “mental illness”. This, I see as a medical fiction that does not serve but rather harms the group that it is hypothetically serves. And evil is not so much the word that I would use but rather harmful and self-interested. If you want to know why, Kal, do check out my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, where the whole issue is discussed in great detail.
I agree with you human being, that academic freedom is very fragile, and no, without a huge fight, we often do not win –the thing is, though, we can fight fight –and then generally win.
Much thanks, Frank. We are all of us doing this together! And don’t look now, but we have just moved mountains. Incidentally, I a blog coming out tomorrow that will be addressing this and other aspects of the use of academia to fight psychiatry.
because to try to stop t is to admit that disability has a material side. Please note in this regard that people with a social only model of disabiity have labeled people like Breggin and I who object to electroshock because it is brain-damaging ableist. This is what we are up against.
There is a problem with the tenets of critical disability that cannot be ignored and that is–it ultimately dissolves into liberalism and as such, is not “critical” at all. To ignore materialism with respect to psvchiatry makes perfect sense since there is no material difference between the people labeled mentally ill and the people labeled “mentally healthy” (though the damage created by the drugs eventually shifts this). To ignore it where materiality does make a difference (e.g., lungs that don’t breathe) is a whole different matter. How convenient to pretend it is a social construct when our polluting of the environment is involved. By so labeling it, we don’t have to stop the polluting. How convenient for those of us in the global north to say that it is a social construct, when our pollution of the environment and the wars that we foster create the material problems experienced by people in the global south–a reality that we can then ignore. There is a likewise a problem equating what people who are labeled “mentally ill” go through with the word “disability” –an equation, note, that we forget to our detriment, originated with psychiatry itself.
Alex: To be clear, it was never my intention to imply that you were being defensive. I absolutely take your word for what happened in this particular situation. And how good that you took care of yourself in it and bravo for standing up for yourself!I was talking rather about general situations and key principles that we need to touch base with.
Re feminism per se, I do notice that in MadinAmerica, there is very little attention to feminism and when it does turn up, the reaction often strike a defensive (again, I am not commenting on you) A dynamic which tends to worry me. None of which is a comment at all on any particular person or any particular situation.
Re all being human beings together, yes of course that is exactly what we have to do. At the same time, my own position is that we will never really resolve inequities if we do not also focus in on them.
While I am perhaps not as quick to label things this way, Alex, and while there are for sure differences between us here, we are not as far apart on this issue as it might first appear. I feel very differently about jobs than I do than other things –and my guess is that if I were in your place, while I would probably have assessed the situation differently, nonetheless I would have fairly soon walked away from this job situation also as long as if I had first made an honest attempt to learn. And I would have eventually walked away from it whether it was a job situation or not. The thing would be for me to know if I really did listen and that defensiveness on my part was not part of the equation. All of which, you indeed, may well have done yourself. Two bottom lines for me in this regard: The first is that I owe to people who are oppressed in way that I am not to be a learner and see if there are things that i need to adjust irrespective of whether or not I feel I am the object of a degree of unfairness. The second is that I owe it to myself not to stay in a situation where willy-nilly, I remain suspect and disrespected.
Research suggests that Blacks are oppressed more than whites by psychiatry currently, and for the vast majority of its history, women are oppressed more than men. That said, there is a degree nonetheless, where psychiatry is an “equal opportunity oppress”. That is, it is quite happy to colonize, brain-damage, and otherwise oppress everyone, irrespective of gender, class, and colour.
There is a difference, I would agree, between revolutionary groups and simple identity groups, both of which I see as having a place in the world, but there is one which I priortize more. Marxism is a revolutionary movement, as is anarchism, as is feminism, as is environmentalism. Other things are less clear for they less consistently have a vision for the world. Both the mad movement and the antipsychiatry movement, I see in the in-between zone but veering toward revolutionary/visionary, and at their best, these are both inclusive and visionary. There is a question of timing here, at the same time and a question of emphasis. I do not see BLM as yet revolutionary but I do see it as a just, as necessary, and asprincipalled movement that I am called upon to endorse and actively support as someone who wants to see justice in this world. What is also significant is their complex intersectional analysis.
Am I suggesting that the antipsychiatry movement or the mad movement “join” BLM? I am not –any more than I am suggesting we join any other of the very important movements.What I am suggesting is that we listen to their concerns, do what we can to address their concerns, and more generally find ways for us all to be allies of each other in the fight for a better world.
To be clear, Alex, when I say it is part of the process, that is not a justification of it at all, for I am not making an ethical statement but but a practical one. I personally do not like that kind of organizing and do not find it constructive. But I know that this is where people often need to be and so have found a way of allowing people their space here. Or to put this another way, I just know that it happen, that it inevitably happens, and you do not take it personally when it happens. You just try to be a force for moving beyond this type of analysis without losing your committment and without getting entangled in useless back-and-forth on it. Had I taken it personally and as a sign of something awful every time I was told that I had no right to an opinion for example because I was not a member of the oppressed group, I would not be doing what I am today in any group, including in antipsychiatry. That, I feel, would have been truly unfortunate.
When people from oppressed groups reject those who are from the rest of the population, especially from the other side of the particular oppression binary that they are contending with, this is an expected moment in the development of any movement. I have seen it happen in absolutely every social justice movement, including in the mad movement. The thing is not to take it personally, not to employ words like “reverse sexism” or “reverse racism” but to understand for what it is and to see it as a part of a process.
Blacks indeed are more at risk of psychiatric abuse than whites, Johns And that is vital to address; and I am all it favour of it being put front and center in the movement. By the same token, and this keeps being forgotten, women are particularly at risk, and the significance of that reality has long been marginalized in the movement
what you are saying here RR is the same as what sexist men said during the heyday of feminism wheobjecting to women saying that women need human rights. Of course everyone needs right. and of course, everyone matters. But in a hegemonic society, it is always assumed that white lives matters–hence the phrase “black lives matters
I would agree that if would be a very good thing if each of you who are Americans on this website called your Senators about Murphy. In this regard, we need to more actively intervene. The point here is that though analysis is critical, and indeed indispensable, analysis without action, as radical adult educator Paulo Freire puts it, is but verbalism. By the same token, to bring this back to the topic at hand, we should through our actions (both personal and more overtly political) be supporting BLM and indeed all other liberation and social justice movements. That is one of the principal ways that we an create a better society –and issue which includes but transcends identity politics.
I don’t know if this is of help, but my sense is that to our detriment, elements of absolutely every social justice movement sell out elements of other social justice movement. Something that because a problem for us as social activists. Hence the importance both of conscientiously not reducing any any social movement to any other, and finding ways to both hold out to and negotiate between different perspectives.
Nomadic, It is not that I want to promote the family. It is that for the most part –and there are for sure dreadful experiences to the contrary–I would prioritize the family over the institution. Not that I want to prioritize either for what I most believe in is small communities where everyone has a say and everyone attends to the needs of each other and especially of children and seniors and those in need of support. And note that the purpose of institutional ethnography (my methodology) is to trace precisely how institutions wreak harm in individual lives –to trace, significantly, not to compare or evaluate.
Do I believe in the ideology of the family? As a feminist (and as such, as someone who sees it as part of capitalist patriarchy), and as someone more generally with a radical analysis, of course not.
IN this regard, any given article or book that I write or anyone else writes is not in a vaccuum. It is written in the context of everything else I have written or will write.
I am replying to what you wrote further down in this exchange, because I could not do it there. Alex, it is good that both you are your partner are out about the fact that you were basically alone in this. I would have to add, that even where others are fully supportive, as I see it, ultimately no one “saves” anyone else. People save themselves.
Nomadic, I was trying to respond to what you posted on the 26 (or was that 27th) but could not. To answer your questions about Lisa, I don’t want to talk about her as if she were automatically suspect of maybe slipping into being responsible for child abuse, when to me, what she did is dramatically the opposite. Child abuse comes in many forms. The most well know is harming a child or being negligent. And this she not only did not do but ensured that it did not happen. Another form of child abuse, though the law does not so recognize it would be unnecessarily depriving a child of access to their parent or other who was taking care of them. This she also did not do.
That said, while I did not wish to go here for I don’t either want to do anything but celebrate Lisa’s actions, I do get why you wanted an answer to your question. And yes, I agree that question is relevant to this discussion. If Lisa’s solution did not work as in the shouting continued, and she didn’t do what then which she needed to (which likely would include but ideally would not be limited to reporting) then she would be derelict and would bear responsibility.
Again, that is not the person that I know so what I am writing at this point is very much a hypothetical.
All possible, but not what was playing out in this particular story. That said, of course I agree that letting a child be used is not acceptable. I would add at the same time, your trust in things like Child Protection Services is something that I don’t remotely share. A common pattern is the child is removed from slightly abusive home and put in a place that is far more abusive.
Of course protection services are needed. That said, to claim that the fact that a far higher percentage of kid apprehended are those re from oppressed families like working class etc. can be majorly attributed to the fact that the middle class is better able to hide what they do wrong misses a critical ingredient. Given that the determiners of what is abuse and neglect are middle class, white folk, their own classism and racism predisposes them to see “abuse” and “neglect” in how “others” raise their children.
There clearly needs to be a major campaign to educate the general public about the fact that besides that psychiatric drugs are approved for “conditions” on the basis of poorly conducted and often dishonest research that people, including children, are being massively drugged for “conditions” for which these drugs were never approved. The question is: Where does one get money to fund such a campaign?
Wbile stress can lead to illness, stress itself is not an illness. Nor is sadness or anger. They are perfectly normal human reactions. And no, we don’t need the label of “mental illness”. We need to understand what it is like to be a human being.
I find many of your suggestions right on, Nomadic. And I greatly value what you post.That said, you seem to want to expand the power of other arms of the state as if that will solve our problems. In this, we strongly disagree
Agreed, Nomadic, that we need others to be able to step in when a child is not protected. That said, as a Canadian, I don’t know the names or abbreviations for most American agencies, and so I am just guessing what “CPS” stands for. However, my guess is that it is an agency that takes children away from their parents and otherwise steps in at times of perceived neglect or abuse like Child and Family Services in Canada does. What your analysis leaves out and that is another arm of the state, and historically such agencies have done no end of harm, and indeed to everyone, but especially, the working class and the racialized. The point of my article is that all the arms of the state inevitably cause problems –and so to see them as just protection is inadequate. Which is where your itemization of what you thinks needs to be done in an earlier response of your to this article worries me In the better society that I would like to see us create (see Chapter Nine of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness), children in need of protection would be a problem of the entire community as a whole–and directly –and not some more or less detached and all-powerful arm of the state. And doing anything which expands their operation now, I would see as a misdirection.
Fred, yes, critically aware resistance is indeed what I am advocating. And no, it is not easy. That said, your words “I guess we must believe in the strategies we come up with in our most lucid moments,” are very apt here. More or less everyone has lucid moments –and for the most part, we can distinguish between that clearness and what we are thinking when we are less clear. Taking note of that clarity and going with what it dictates even and especially when we are being pulled in other directions –that, I think, is the trick. To use a metaphor here — for I see this as metaphor only –we all have “parts” that are very aware of what is needed, of what protects us. To let that “part” have sway especially when we are tricky positions or in times that require clearly-sighted vision and very careful strategizing and following through, –that, let me suggest, is what people need to get good at. To be able to do this, this, I would suggest, is one of our great strengths as a species, and one it behooves us to exercise more.
The problem with the ‘near death” criterion is that at leaves a lot of people stranded whose medical conditions are such that without assistance they are not able to achieve the relief that they seek, despite them being utterly “competent” and fitting every other criteria.
Indeed, the concept of biological predisposition is not supported by credible evidence, and as suc, the continued reference to it qualifies as a fixed idea (what psychiatrists themselves would would refer to as an “obsession”). Now it is understandable why psychiatry has this fixed idea–it serves their interests. But that is hardly something we should be building science on.
Liberalminority, no, my point –and I have repeated this now a few times–is that you did not in any way get the point of the article. For one thing, I would in no way equate a very careful tracing and analysis with “a whole lot of complaining”. And what you additionally seemed to have missed is that the analysis in question was not about psychiatry per se but was looking at something larger –the way in which institutions come together to create problems. As for solutions, I have frequently written about what we as as society should do instead (see last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness), but regardless, there is a place for intricate analysis. As for myself, I particular favour analysis which actually maps how problems come into being –hence this article. And hence my use of institutional ethnography.
One thing I did what to say in relation to your point about expereince: There has tended to be a separation between people who critique via personal experience and people who do it in a more cognitive fashion. What I like about using institutional ethnography approach is that allows people to use the first as an inroad into the second and as such, is one way of bringing the two together.
Let me suggest, if anyone “rules”, we are in trouble. From my perspective, it is precisely “ruling” that is problematic. I do not think we should be looking to changes in who has “power-over” but looking for routes and spaces for bringing in cooperation and mutual participation.
Thanks, anothervoice. Always good to hear. And I understand why you find personal experience persuasive. And so do I. At the same time, I myself use personal experience not so much to persuade per se but as a beginning of understanding, as entry points which makes the workings of institutions at once visible, traceable, and accountable. Different than testimonials (which for sure also have their own strengths), it t is a mode of doing inquiry that I think has the potential of serving both antipsychiatry and critical psychiatry people particularly well.
Indeed we are animals, but animals not only compete and dominate but they also love, help, empathise and cooperate. And as reflectively aware animals, capable of exercising thought-through choices, we have some say over how much we act on which instinct.
Thanks for you comments. As for me, I don’t believe we need hierarchical institutions, and though certainly we need organizations, they need not be hierarchical or bureaucratic. Nor do I think we need to dominate each other. As for being a pragmatist, I am also a pragmatist but that does not mean that I do think we can have more participatory processes. Though no question that means a substantial shift.
For sure, Alex, as in all movements, the infighting can be terrible. Also the power dynamics are often highly compromised. And it is a shame when this happens, for it is hardly the world that we are trying to build together, and we should all be trying to prefigure that in how we treat one another
I hope, liberalminority, that you will not take offence by my pointing out that describing “horror’ or “torture” was not what the article did; nor was this in any way what the article was about, and as such, you miss the point of the article. That said, all the best.
Thanks for writing, Nomadic, that is, both for writing to me personally and for posting your reply. Yes, I would welcome the types of radical changes that you specify. And I too often find my heart sinking when I visit this site. It would be good to see a whole lot more radicalism.
While I have already responded, I did want to add, humanbeing, that my sense is that helping the average person in “the general population” acquire those traits, is precisely a major part of the job ahead of us. And for this, we need s massive changes in the educational system, though we can all of us as individual also influences directions simply by how we talk, but how we act, by how we write, by the issues that we put on the table. The point is that we are also part of the “cast of characters” and we can play our own role in how people think about things and how they respond.
That said, humanbeing, I do wish you the best with whatever it is that is happening with your neighbour.
Yes, of course there are 2 sides to this, Alex. I am sorry about what you went through. That said, in general, I think that to a large extent he issue of whether or not activism is draining centres around whether people are acting on their own or as part of a community acting on grievances together. I think it is the latter which is more often exciting and uplifting and the former that is more often draining. My sense is that anti-oppression movements like the women’s movement has something to teach here. While individual women needed to stand up for themselves, critical though that was, that was nonetheless very often draining. However, women’s groups proclaiming truths and standing up for women’s rights was truly energizing.
For sure, it is draining, Alex. I don’t know if this is of any help to you, I personally find however, that activism in the interests of making the necessary changes by contrast is not draining, but life-affirming.
While I know it is very difficult in a movement like ours, it does strike me as important to consider resorting to a highly disciplined and sustained civil disobedience campaign. Something that can be done when one can’t compete with the funding or the numbers but the cause is just — as it so clearly is here.
However, if doctors were not allowed to prescribe drugs that had no medical validity whatever, it very much would solve the problem. It would also be the death knell of psychiatry.
Understood. I think that is something that a huge number of people have learned and learned the hard way. And it surely speaks to a massive deficit in society that this is currently the safest option for most people.
The medical model surely is a problem. As for forced detention, it occurs to me that it is not the detention, but your friend reaching out to you that gave you what you needed, That said, while none of us know how things could have happened differently, for all we have in front of us is what did play out, in a more caring society, possibly there might have been “n” number of people who would have noticed that things were not going well for you and would have spent time with you and and helped you get back your hope. A question, I suspect worth asking. Be that as it may, I am delighted that things worked out for you–also that you are alive today. And thank you for sharing as you have.
Frank: When I refer to Susan talking about the criminilization and decriminalization, what I am referring to is historical. Not that long ago, most states listed suicide as a criminal office–ergo criminalized it. What she traces is how they came to remove it from their criminal code (decriminalize it).
I want doctors to have less power rather than more. And I would absolutely prohibit forced treatment. That said, I don’t want a situation where people cannot get help getting a peaceful death, and the state is uneasy about decriminalizing such help for anyone except doctor.
A very inspiring story, Mathew, and a testament to the importance of accepting pain in life, while building in respect and compassion. Come on, everyone, let’s make this touching and important blog go viral.
Katie, I totally agree that here is where things would tend to fall apart–which is part of why I am an abolitionist and in no way a reformist. That said, the mechanism for reining in in this case would be the U.N. If the UN deems that a state is not in compliance because it allow psychiatry to misinform, they could conceivably penalize the state. Am I convinced this would work? Not remotely. For the argument would then be that psychiatrists are the authority. There are reasons why one is an abolitionist.
Precisely, Oldhead. And so psychoanalysis had a power in the university departments and in the APA. But psychoanalysis is not what was received by most people on the ground, who were subjected to the drugs.
Indeed, it does, Oldhead. I totally agree. At the same time, I should add that psychoanalytic psychiatrists made up a 100% of the taskforce for DSM-II. It is not that psychoanalysis was not big at the time–it was huge. Rather it is that it was applied to some population and not others.
Thanks, Steve. There is nothing I disagree with in what you say. And yes, of course the agenda re psychoanalysis is critical to fully understand the picture.
Yes, I agree, the phases do blur–though my sense like Cheri is that more attacks in general (and for sure there are huge exceptions) is a good indicator.
You are definitely not too late to get my attention, Eric. The reason why in my blogs I don’t write about things is it is a huge topic and one that cannot be handled decently in a blog article. I see a highly multifaceted sort of approach needed with a variety of services, and will all of them vested in the community. I also think it is woefully insufficient to just look at services. We also need to change society and how we relate to one another. Where I approach this is the last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness. It is the second largest chapter in the book and it goes into the changes needed in great depth. Re your question about the U.N, at the moment, not a single country is in compliance. I was addressing Canadian, for Canadians like to think of themselves as law abiding and complying. As for the U.S., it was one of the few countries in the world that never signed onto the Convention.
As the treatments are not “medical” for they correct no medical condition, I would eliminate them as options that a doctor can prescribe. If no doctor prescribed what are now called psychiatric drugs, they would fair soon become something that very few people were seeking out.
It is a question of what we mean by “abolish”. If we mean that they cannot call themselves medicine or function as a branch of medicine, this takes away the very plank on which they rest, and after that, they wither.
I am totally with you here, Frank. We need an organized antipsychiatry push. Which of course, means staying on track and in an organized way, keeping up the pressure. Also as has been said so often in this forum, doing what we can to counter the infighting and the attacks.
I would agree with oldhead here. Of course the totalitarian USSR was a major problem, just as wing fascism with. That does not negate the fact that capitalism works so as to cause alienation. Also that financialisation underpins current psychiatry. Hence the need for a complex analysis.
There is no question, barrab, that psychiatry messes up everyone that it gets its hands on and it is getting its hands on more and more people–and anyone who does not understand that for sure is derailing the discussion that needs to be had. It is its own oppression. That said, like all oppressions, it interacts with other oppressions and so it is not a mistake to look at this dimension (just a mistake, I would suggest, to reduce to those other oppressions) I have talked about this elsewhere, and if so inclined, you might want to look at an interview with me about my latest book where I discussed this and see what you think–we might have a meeting of the minds here and we might not. Anyways, it can be found at http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/07/probing-psychiatry-and-business-madness
So a question that I would direct to the people who want to build on the turn and who want to see psychiatry become a thing of the past–for it will not happen if we do not keep the goal firmly mind and act strategically in this direction–what do you think our priorities should be right now? Strategically speaking, what should each of us be doing? And what should we be taking on together?
I would absolutely agree, Oldhead, that nothing is automatic here. And for sure, reactionary forces are always there and eager to exert an influence, and I believe that simple reformism–which I sees as a fundamental error–prepares the way for reactionary forces to do this. Hence my worry about reformism and my attempt to encourage a more revolutionary agenda.
Quite an ordeal, Aria. A comment that may or may not be helpful. I won’t say that you have nothing to fear, for I do not know your situation. But I sincerely doubt that you have anything to be ashamed of. Systems that intrude us have less power over us when we let the shame go, that is, when we refuse to see ourselves through “their eyes”.
Yes, madmom, absolutely, psychoprisons are prisons also. My own sense is that they are both psych wards and regular prison are unacceptable ways of dealing with the conflicts and dilemmas of life, and we need to problematize both at the same time.
Actually, Ted, there was a terrible fear that set in in the women’s movement. And a high percentage of the women who left because of the endless attacks never came back. It was as if everyone’s oppression was a weapon that they wielded against each other. Why did feminism survive? Not, I think, because we found a way to deal with this but because it was already a huge mass movement before this began. None of which answers your question of how to deal with the hostilities within the survivor movement today. Perhaps having a number of conferences precisely focused on moving beyond the attacks would help.
Thanks, Stephen, for taking me in. Yes, for me it is about using all the tools at hand (including helpful books–and that is surely why so many of us write) to fight against a highly oppressive and damaging system. We need our authors read (no, we don’t need their books bought–that’s what libraries are for); we need to mobilize; we need to spread the conversation so that we can create a big enough movement that we are able to effect change.
I absolutely agree that the internet is a huge new dynamic in all of this. It gives everyone a voice, which mentions that survivors can made their experiences known, can put their analysis out there. it is essence makes impossible the monopoly on knowledge and knowledge-making.
Ted, I totally agree with you of course about the lack of a mass movement. That’s what we need, and it is hard to know how to get it. I also agree that it is important to stop the trashing. At the same time, I don’t see this as at all unique to the survivor movement. I remember how very much trashing there was in the women’s movement(s) in the 1980s.
Hi, there, ManintheMoon I m not sure what to say to your beliefs because my sense is that you do not know me; nor have you read many of my writings for I have never supported cuts for real care. The point is that I do not consider the “mental health system” real care. That said, re your point about the book, I do not know if this makes you feel better or not, but I honestly have no great interest in whether or not people “buy” my book for I am not a book capitalist. What I do think is that there is a very important critique built up in the book that is useful–a different matter altogether. That said, I understand we have a very different position on the mental health system.
At the very beginning of all the major psychiatric “treatments” you hear words this awful–then the public stopped buying that brain-damaging people was a good thing–and then the discourse dramatically changed. But yes, it was this brazen, and such words stand as a clear indication of why such treatments are taken up.
Big Pharma has no interest in the stopping the dessimination of information about ECT given that to a degree these two different modes of brain-damaging treatments are in competition. So yes, of course, you are right.
Fred: Your experiences should horrific, and I am so sorry. I can tell you that in this novel, we also see the results of ECT given without anesthetic–I am well aware, a particularly horrendous experience.
Risn: I am so very sorry about what happened to your mother. And if this novel gives people like yourself a way of catching a special glimpse into your mother’s life, another way of knowing her, it has indeed been effort well spent. And you are very very welcome. Re you mother and emotions, while fear has a habit of breaking through everything, one of the horrors of ECT is that it results in a blunting of the emotions. And so your mother may have had little choice around showing your her feelings in that she no longer herself exactly had access to them. That said, my guess is that somewhere deep down, she would have been pleased that you wanted to know.
Thanks for the kind words, Ted, and do take heart. We are going to make a break-through. And my prediction here is that the two of us will live to see the beginnings of it. I am interesting some legislators in my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and when legislators get interested in an abolitionist book, that is minimally something new and a good sign.
Hard to get people to publish non-fiction here, but I will keep my eyes peeled on this. Re your work, I would be tempted to call it a critical autobiography or a critical memoir. However depending on how you write it, you position it in an evolved research mode called “Autoethnography”. All the best with this.
Glad that you broke loose. And thanks for your remarks. And yes, I agree that most works of fiction write and account that is woefully inaccurate. Something that it is important to address.
Well, I agree with what you said, I say the problem as way more fundamental than that. Doctors should not be involved here but the problems people that are now called “mental illness” are in fact not medical.
Yes, I had kind of figured that out, which is why, Robert, in my first response, I invited a rethinking of what constitutes “news” and what objective news reporting looks like. Here more globally is what I am inviting people to grapple with: To accept mainstream understandings of what constitutes new and how look is something that I do not thinks stands us in good stead. While “looking objective”, they are in the final analysis hegemonically defined. So the question is: What what would a critically informed understanding of “news” look like? And how would it differ both in appearance and in ist inclusion and exclusion guidelines from what we see now?
Rob, I would have to agree with Paula on this one. Why are we giving space to psychiatry’s latest claims? If we are doing it to soundly critique them, or at least mainly in the spirit of critique, I get it. If not, the purpose somewhat mystifies me. We after all have every reason to believe the new psychiatric claims are as bogus as earlier ones. So questions that I think need to be asked and let me raise them here is: Is what constitutes news from a critical perspective? And how does that differ from news as hegemonically defined? An issue I think it would be worthwhile for all of us to grapple with.
I would not agree that there is good psychiatry for the discipline is fundamentally faulty, though of course there are individual practitioners of it who do go, irrespective of that. Re not leaving people in the lurch, here we are in total agreement, and I would refer you in this regard to my very extensive last chapter–precisely trying to open up a more radical discussion of what help might look like.
I am coming in by Skype, but I will definitely be there virtually, and there will a question and answer period so that I can actively engage with people
Just a few brief comments. First, I thank all the folk in Eugene Oregon for the important work which they did. I also want to note that Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest certainly dramatized ECT for people in important way, and so I will understand you turning to Kesey. That said, I did want to introduce what I consider a major problem with the the highlighting of this figure and this text. Something seldom talked about–the book is in many ways frighteningly sexist, with note, the horrible villain being “Big Nurse” and the psychiatrist in the piece coming off rather kindly. Moreover, the impression gotten that ECT is something that women force on men–when we are all well aware, the truth is the opposite–with shock doctors not nurses deciding on shock, with 2/3 of the victims being women, and with 90% of shock doctors being men. And as such, I think we would do well to think more deeply about which literary figures we upfront and how we represent.
Szasz was for more than abolishing coercion. He was for abolishing the entire relationship between psychiatry and the state. Both coercion and so called “consensual services fall under that.
I get where you are coming from. And at the same time, I don’t think that you quite get what antipsychiatry is about, Maryy. Antipsychiatry is not just negative. Any more than people in the antiracist movement are “just being negative. What is perhaps particularly apropos to you rpoint, many of us who are antipsychiatry have and put forward very substantial visions for the future. Please see in this regard, the last and very long chapter of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, which provides both a very substantial vision and detailed suggestions on how one might handle dilemmas and issues which arise with regard individuals whose way of being-in-the-world is a problem for themselves and/or problems for other.
Hi there, Oldhead: I think Cooper and Laing have to be mentioned for history’s sake, but except for that, yes, I agree with you. Antipsychiatry no longer means what they meant but it, though there is an influence. And my own sense is that for some time now, there is 99.9% census on one issue only–and that it psychiatry has got to go. After that, we can talk about variations within the movement.
Much thanks, Erin. and do let me know what you think of the book. I wrote it for a wide array of different audiences in mind, including: scholars, the general public, psych survivors progressive professionals, visionaries. So I am naturally interested in hearing from everyone,
Agreed, AA. It all depends on how many other things you have asked for which are considered concessions–as in things that they do not want to do. I think that you can assume that all of us authors ask for such things–then when are forced to decide, what is deal-breaking and what is not.
A good point, re the Kindle version, AA, but the related point missed here is that authors do not have control of what publishers do. For example, when I was offered a hardcover only release of my new book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, I argued that hardcover would not not affordable for most people i know–psychiatric survivors in particular–and so I would walk away from the contract. Five hard moths of negotiation followed. Eventually I was offered both a hardcover and soft cover release. What I would not have say over–is whether a Kindle version would come out and what the price of the soft cover would be.
the point is, it is difficult to bring major presses (which my publisher is) to take our books. And while we can get some concession (as in what I did with my publisher) we do not have the leaverage to get the kinds of things that you ask
And so given this is not a possibility, while it may seem an obvious thing to do, in fact such options aren’t open to us–and so we are better off brainstorming things over which we actually do have power.
I think most authors are doing what they realistically can. the question that I am asking here is not what the different authors can go, but given that we as a community and a movement have a vested interest in these books being read, what can we do ?
We are too long on this side conversation–as important and interesting as it is Can we go back to the focus of the article? Cpuusage, what are your thoughts about book activism?
Most antipsychiatry people are not libertarian, though Szasz for sure was. That said, Szasz was refuting the false medicalization of people’s problems–not the fact of those problems. No offense intended, but if you think you have understood Szasz, your comments keeps showing that you have not. And what I would recommend is picking him up again and reading more carefully.
Cpuusage: You keep conflating “distress” (not a medical concept) with “mental illnes” (a medical concept). Also “mad” (not inherently a medical concept) with “mental illness” (a medical concept). Yes, there have always been distressed and/or distressing people who society tried to figure out what to do with. The supremacy of medicine in this area did not happen until the 18th century (in Europe) and far far later everywhere else. What is likewise important, antipsychiatry theorists in no way deny mental distress, and some of us argue for abundant help to be available. What we are disputing are what medicine itself initially described as “putative illnesses”
Oldhead–if we wait for more of a consensus, the important job does not happen, for consensus has a habit of not happening. I honestly do not think it is premature–but, quite the opposite, long overdue. the trick is simply to acknowledge the differences rather than pretend consensus.
I have never said that any one thing will be suffice–for it simply won’t. Not highlighting children. Not demonstrating recovery. In this regard, People have shown repeatedly that “recovery” is possible. And so no, I don’t think that would remotely suffice–as it important as it is. When you are up against an industry that manufacture and markets lies, while telling and demonstrating the truth is essential–the fact remains that you will be speaking to the choir–and this will not glean you mainstream coverage–it will simply be ignored. Hence my reason for writing about pressure, about strategies, etc.
there is no magic formula that will win for us here. Quite simply, we need to be fighting on many fronts at the same time and proceeding strategically.
Jessica; I did look at your website. and I did not want you to think that I ignored your request. Without question a very interesting cite and a worthwhile proposal.
There is no proof whatever that there are. And you cannot call things illness without proof. They hoped they would find proof for what they called (see Kraepelin) all the “functional illnesses”, but in point of fact they did not, despite a century of trying. When this happens and psychiatrist keeping calling it illness, what is happening is not science but something more like fraud.
Leonard was clear that he was against forced treatment–and he a number to times objected to the abolitionist stance. That said, I agree with you that here is where things become less clear. For he felt that this was compatible with antipsychiatry, whereas it is not with antipsychiatry as a number of us define it.
Re the origin of the term, there is no question but that it originated with Cooper and Cooper for sure did not mean what we mean by it to today–something it is important to talk about. That said, words change meaning over time–as in typewriter at one point meant the human being that did the typing. My own sense is that for example antipsychiatry no longer means what Cooper and Laing meant by it, though they are without doubt still influence the thinking, including mine, and they are a vital part of the history. Obviously all of the complexities should be covered in a new entry.
That said, Frank, do give some thought to what Oldhead and I are suggesting–for these are all issues that you have clearly given a lot of thought to.
The last and second largest chapter in my new book addresses that issue of what to do when you get rid of psychiatry. Too complicated to address in a comment box.
Prisoners Dilemma: Thanks for your comments. Actually, what I expect from the mainstream press or media is intransigence and insistence on the medical model. And yes, I agree that persuasion is hardly sufficient, as I made clear in my second last article on this site. It remains nonetheless one tool among many that we have at our disposal.
There is no single answer to how to change the system. There are many ways that have to be combined together. Though as I argued in a former article, I think the concept of changing or improving the system, is itself misguided and will only perpetuate a system that we direly need to get rid of.
Cpusage: Please note that while antipsychiatry people draw very heavily on Szasz, Szasz was very clear that he was not antipsychiatry (that is, not in favour of abolition). Many of us also disagree with Szasz on certain issues.
That said, I suspect that where you fundamentally disagree with Szasz, most antipsychiatry people would agree Szasz–and that is the core question of whether the very concept of mental illness is tenable–where all antipsychiatry people would be emphatic that it is not, and you if I am reading you correctly have a different stand.
On all sides, some are literate, some not. All we can do is be informed ourselves.
Re: What the public as a whole will entertain–that is precisely one of the key battlegrounds on which the fight has to take place–and no one is under any illusions about the difficulty of the battle.
Oldhead has a point. Frank, I think that if you were interested in taking this on, you would do a great job. A suggestion that of course you are free to decline–so please don’t feel on the spot. So just see this as a brainstorming proposal: You take this on, and you bring together and work with what Oldhead is calling a panel of anti-psych experts that you can draw on and pass things by., moreover, that can brainstorm together. If you took things on and oversaw it, I would be happy and honoured to serve as part of that panel of anti-psych experts. Many other people who post on this site could be part of the panel. A suggestion I would have for someone who does not post but is a survivor who has been actively antipsychiatry since the 70s is Don Weitz. And I am sure that we could think of a number more.
One difficulty, I would note, that we have is that there are differences and not consensuses, but I think the consensuses are substantial–also it is fine to mention the differences.
A few additional problems with Wikipedia that we could correct in the processes is that it conflates antipsychiatry with the mad movement and with the survivor movement–which it profoundly overlaps with both, is not identical to other. Also, it is focused on the U.S. So it would be beyond an update–it would be a rethinking.
Ironically, with regard to Leonard, ableit Leonard was an absolutely wonderful activist, Leonard was not antipsychiatry and was very clear about that, and so we would have to be more precise.
What exists now on Wikipedia is sloppy thinking and we could surely remedy that.
What say you, Frank? And do other readers who have or would like to comment on this blog have ideas? For example, can you suggest other people that might be good to have on such a panel–whether yourselves or others?
I agree that the cooptation of individuals in the survivor movement played a role here–especially in the UK, where larger of survivors who were at one point activists became peer researchers, etc. I would also add that in many cases, what mainstream success was had came fromfact that survivors telling their story of how psychiatry had ruined their lives was new to people and so had a special impact. Psychiatry quickly mobilizing and starting putting their patients on shows, before Boards, etc. testifying to how ECT or whatever had saved their lives. At this juncture, telling one’s story, while still enormously impact, no longer had the same impact. The point is that we have an industry very into protecting its own interests, and is very good at it. By the same token, we need to get better at countering it.
Slaying _the _dragon _of _psychiatry: It was a far as I can see the big bucks that went into portraying all of this as scientific. That is what defeated Szasz–and that’s the ediface that we need to dismantle. I trace these trajectories in Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–and will be eager to see what you think.
For sure, hpostpscyhiatry, though that that is not one of our big deficits. These books do exists in university bookstores, because there are more and more of us anti and critical psychiatry folks teaching from that perspective. Still, without question, we could use more. And it indeed makes sense building on a comparative strength.
Book clubs is an interesting suggestion. But first you would have to get the clubs interested–and usually they pick up stuff that is in the mainstream media–you see the problem
Thanks, Slaying_the _Dragon_of _Psychiatry. Why, let me suggest, is precisely the hegemony of psychiatry and its backing by the state. The media like the average person don’t even know that they are backing an ideology, for these concepts, as I point out in my books, seem as real as the air they breath. That said, of course, the financialization of it is also a factor
Nicely done, Phil. The critique of Frances here is important. Both Spitzer (chair of DSM-III) and Frances (Chair of DSM-5), besides themselves affirming the medical model, would like the world to believe that what they did was just fine–as opposed to what the subsequent DSM-5 chair did. Not remotely so, and something that it is critical that we continue to challenge.
Fred, I would surely love to see us zero in on the treatment of the elderly–for this is the population most pscyhiatrized. And I think it is critical that we do so irrespective of whether or not this brings into question psychiatry as a whole. that said, I don’t think it does for most people–a travesty, for which, alas, we can thank ageism.
this indeed is an issue worth reflecting Oldhead. That said, my sense is that it is a factor–as in the outcry against lobotomy. For sure, it is hardly the only factor.
Actually the book is very clear that people are in all sorts of emotional turmoil. That is not the same as “having an illness”. Nor is objecting to the medical terminology an issue of denial. It is an issue of the meaning of terms like “disease” and the science or lack of it involved.
What is important to take here here, almost no one who takes an antipsychiatry in any way denies the very real distress in which people find themselves. to think that they do is to totally misunderstand the nature of the position. And while of course you can object to the position regardless , you can only object to it on the basis of what people are actually saying.
Read the book, and my guess is that you would no longer think that it is not different. It is actually profoundly different than any other book out there–as everyone who has agreed read it to date agrees.
In this regard, we can make vague guesses on the bases of reviews–but in end, however well done the review, that is all that we can do.
Good luck with what you are confronting, Linda Ale. There are sections in my book that particularly and very deliberately speak to parents, and it just might come in handy with your mom. If she would agree read it to the end, while I cannot promise her mind would change, for it could just anger her, there is also a possibility that she would seriously reconsider her position.
Mickey, the only time I saw psychiatry concede a truth that shows that they know nothing is when they don’t want to be found culpable in law for not being able to recognize “dangerousness. They need to have their back against the wall otherwise in this way to concede their lack of knowledge and/or ability. So the tactic needed would be one that makes it economically problematic not to tell the truth.
Publishers like Palgrave (both mine and Whitaker’s new book) only allow to you specify a small handful of places to send free review copies (in the case of Palgrave, 10). After that,the only way a paper or a journal will get a review copy is if the person in charges of reviews writes the publisher, states they are going to do a review, and asks for a complimentary copy. So as you can see, unless someone has contacts with any of the national newspapers who came impel them to make such a request either to the publisher directly or indirectly through the author, they in fact won’t end up with review copies. All and all, a difficult conundrum.
Astute of you to notice the word “business”, Fiarchra. Yes the book very much explores this as a business, both in terms of corporate self-interest and power, but also concrete “work processes” by which the ruling of people is “accomplished”.
I wouldn’t disagree with you that it is like a malignant tumour. However, it is not the only tumour, and so while I see getting rid of psychiatry as essential, I would not agree that this would suffice for “health to blossom”. My take on this? We need a far more major societal overhaul.
It actually does. For example, it maps work processes of psychiatric professionals step by step–something never done in any book before, looking concretely at psychiatry rule as it operates through the activation of texts, for example. You would have to take a look at it, though, to understand what I am getting at.
Certainly a strategy worth pursuing. I am aware at the same time that Breggin and others in their response to the school shootings has consistently taken this line–that being on pscy drugs was a major factor in the shootings–and nonetheless consistently the response to such things has to ensure that more young people are on drugs. So putting on that the treatments endanger the public has so far not worked, but maybe we if we thought more carefully on how to deliver the message.
I don’t understand why you would give the term “mentally ill” for everyone with the privileges that you named above. I would suggest rather that they are all oppressed in some way.
Putting a “real face on mental illness” is an example of persuasion, just one of a particular kind. Persuasion does not have to be done in a non-confrontation manner. As long as what you are out to do is shift their belief via what you say or show, this is the politics of persuasion.
this is an excellent question. My own sense? We have to gently take them by the hand on this one–but which I do not mean say anything less than the truth–but talk and write with awareness of how hard this is for people to take in.
I do agree that on-line activism is an increasingly important dimension, and for sure, it is critical to be involved in it–moreover to get really good at picking out targets.
I think a good beginning would be not to call people whose takes you don’t agree with “psychotic”. Once we use that language, we are buying into the whole problematic discourse.
I agree with you of course, Richard. The question is here then that to link up with each of these movements, with the possible exception of feminism (which has always had links with the movement) the onus is on us, for we have the most to gain and the other movements, in the short run anyway, the most to lose. And the dedicated energy to making this alliances is something that we have never devoted energy to.
I know what you mean, Ted, about the difficulty of being attached in the movement–a problem faced in every movement. Yes, of course, we need to work at treating each other well. In the final analysis, a society in which everyone is treated with kindness and respect, is surely part of the change we are seeking–and we can never get there by putting each other down. And in that regard, our relations with one another are a vital part of our activist work. For your personally, whenever someone is nasty to you, do remember, there are many of us here who greatly value and respect the very important work that you do.
There are two ways we can go: 1) Show that psychiatry is not legitimate medicine; 2) critique both psychiatry and medicine. I do both, while especially emphasizing the first.
I would think that yes, John, all of these groups are potential allies. That said, cultivating the allies is no easy matter, for you have to take on causes for which they are fighting just as you are asking them to take on the causes central to our movement. It would mean a whole lot of people getting involved with a wide range of politics–something that we have yet to do.
Mockery always feels good and can be effective in the short run. In the long run, it simply doesn’t bring pressure to bear (it falls under persuasion in my schema). But yes, for sure, my sense is that it is good thing to do.
I think that the science is very critical. At the same time, the difficulty we face, is that the state goes to other psychiatrists as arbiters of what various psychiatrists are claiming, and so we are caught in a circle here.
Hi there. I totally get that we are in disagreement. This article was not about the issues themselves but how to do activism. So it assumes an antipsychiatry analysis and proceeds from there. To find out where I stand on the substantive issues per se, I refer you to my other articles, also to my recently released book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness.
Re your question around, I do want to help children. But I see the drugs as the among the major problems that they are facing.Again, to find out why I believe this, you would have to look at my other writing.
–All the best.
There is no question but that we are dealing with patriarchy here. And there is no questions but that medicine in general triumphed by pushing down the women healers. A dreadful travesty which I explore in the history chapters of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and which writers like Szasz also have commented on.
Deee042: Sorry about was has happened to you. As someone who is 70 herself, I also have a special feeling for the very unique danger faced by people in senior years. I do not have a press kit, but do write to Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault;and it can send some of its material that you might use. For ECT in particular, you might write to Ted. The easiest way I can think of for you to get hold of John Read would be to message him on Facebook, for he is indeed on Facebook. Working with John Read and with the Breggins sounds good.
Hard to do this with so few allies, and while struggling with damage to boot. Creating a group, if this is something that you end up feeling up to strikes me as a particularly good way to go. Acting as part of a “we” always feels better than action alone.
So sorry about what happened to you, Fred. I will be thinking of you on May 16th as well as many other survivors around the world. We all of us stand united in this.
Hi there, Gary. Glad to hear you are interested. Each of groups are doing their own private demos and so you would have to ask the people in any given area. CAPA personally (the group that I represent and that is demonstrated in Toronto) is at the moment not making t-shirts To get updates on the demos, please check it to seed what Ted C. is posting to Mad in America. For contact people for each of the demos so that you can direct individual questions to them, go to http://www.ectjustice.com/ then hit the button dedicated to the protest.
Yes, markps2, visuals are important–a long standby in protests. It can be images on flat surfaces, whether banners or signs. It can be small enactments. It can be huge three-dimensional affairs. In one of our CAPA (Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault) anti-shock demos, we paraded through the streets carrying giant puppet heads (made of card board). Anything that shows rather than only tells is a good thing.
And re police, to my amazement, I too have known them to suddenly take a supportive interest at demos challenging psychiatry. In this regard, one never knows where one’s support may come from.
Yes, Someone Else, transitions are difficult, though also exciting. For me, personally, I have never been mainstream, but nonetheless, like everyone else, I have faced transitions. My own sense here is that our movement overall needs to transition from being at the stage of awakening that it is at to becoming a force to be reckoned with,something that forces the general public to re-think and re-plan. Otherwise, the system will remain largely what it is, with psych survivors and allies getting tiny concessions here and there.
Yes, it does indeed feel like that. And we need to loud and clear reject them taking over other territory, indeed, to depict them as Philip has here as morally unqualified and beyond that more generally unqualified.
A very sad day. For decades now Leonard has been a fearless, talented, and wise leader in the survivor community. Hard to imagine the world without him, for whenever us activists turned around for guidance or inspiration , there was Leonard–constant, dependable, certain, undaunted. How many of us he inspired to take up the battle against ECT. I am proud to have been able to call him my friend.
Leonard, we will miss your courage. We will miss that wonderful way that your voice went from gentle to a fury that demanded to be heeded. We will miss your wisdom. We will miss the meticulous updates to the Quotationary. We will miss most everything about you.
What a mitzvah to have been able to work with you all these decades!
I do think that were are seeing the beginning of a sea change, and yes, the power lust and hubris of the psychiatristsand the clear vision of the antipsychatry folk is pivotal to what will happen.
Actually, there were a few different killing eugenics programs with doctors at the centre of all of them in Nazi Germany. While some of the doctors involved were found guilty and ended up in jail after the doctors’ trials ,very few. Interviews with them, correspondingly, reveal that decades later, their views had not changed. For from their perspective, the “individual who they were murdering” was not the patient. It was the volk. And the best was to treat the volk, was to cut off the contaminated parts whether it be what they called “idiots”, Jews, or “schizophrenics”. In this regard, one of the doctors in a book by Lifton wrote”. “I am a doctor, and of course, as a doctor, I would remove a gangrenous appendix. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix on the body of mankind.” A frightening view.
obviously, the reason is classism, and the fact the elderly are drugged so much more than everyone else even when from higher classes is ageism, though I suspect classism also enters in here, for as people no longer considered to be “productive”, they are treated as if expendable.
Alas, if history proves to be an indicator, Big Pharma will be exactly who steps up and who pays for the anti-stigma campaign–which means added big money behind the propaganda.
Agreed, Ted, and indeed, I invite people who otherwise have not used it, to consider using the term “antipscyhiatry”. While of course, it is important for people to figure out what they believe and what they are comfortable with, and I very much respect that, I do believe that this is key to changing the equation. It is announcing loud and clear that psychiatry as a solution does not work and indeed cannot work, and coaxing people to grapple with what they otherwise might not.
For sure, Kim. And indeed, we can already seen signs that the information-sharing is beginning to defeat psychiatry. My prediction is that 2015 will go down in particular will down in history as one of the turn-around years, where psychiatry’s fortunes begin to plummet. We just all need here to keep up the good work and to do it with the confidence of people who know that they are riding a momentum.
Well put, Ute. And for sure, it is important to return to people like the existential philosophers re what the nature of human existence is and how we come to know and to act.
An inspiring blog article, Irit. And a well deserved tribute to Don. Mazel tov on the wonderful work that you have done to date–and may we all soon see this ground-breaking book distributed far and wide.
Report comment
If you are in Toronto on January 24th, do come to the booklaunch of this important new book (OISE, 252 Bloor West, Nexus Lounge, 12th Floor) The event, which will be at 5:e0 will include speeches by activists who are part of the dialogue, including by me, by psychiatric drug critic Julie Wood. and by Chilean activist Tatiana Castillo. Correspondingly, there will be a stunning reenactment of part of one of dialogues in the book–as it happens between Robert Whitaker and me. Also included with be antipsychiatry updates, including about the stunning emergence of an antipsychiatry lending library. A moment of consciousness-raising and a not-to-be-missed event.
Report comment
I am sorry about what happened to you, Nita. What most of the other commentators on these blogs are ovelooking is the huge number of children removed because the parents are considered inadequate, when so very many times what is at the base of the parents being considering inadquate is either mentally or racism, or classism or some combination of the three. Absolutely we need direly to protect children from abusive parents, but to assume that no harm is done by these government agencies and that they are always just protectors when they remove children is to ignore a huge part of reality, and for the most part, a highly mentalist and racist part.
Report comment
Radical leftists in Germany right now actually do oppose psychiary. By contrast, in the US and Canada and in Englan, most unfortunately, are staunch supportrs of psychiatry.
Report comment
Without question, more than any other philosopher, Foucault understood how power and how discourse operates.
Report comment
I agree agree with you that there is the unfortunate domination that you see,
Report comment
It makes a whole lot of sense, Steve.
Report comment
Much thanks, Philip.
Report comment
Glad you found it helpful, Rosalee.
Report comment
Arjan, etc, I support people’s right to end their lives. At the same time, the very last people I would like to see as in any way involved in this are psychiatrists.
Report comment
You are very welcome.
Report comment
You are absolutely right about that, Oldhead!
Report comment
You are very welcome, Redcat.
Report comment
I agree, Rachel777, it is highly ironic.
Report comment
Yes, Pacific-Dawn, I have always been aware that we agree on a great deal, including that neither of us accept any psych diagnosis at all as legitimate. Our difference, as I see it, lies mainly in how we think of or treat neiighbouring movements who have position that we see as problematic.
Report comment
It is genocide indeed.
Report comment
Indeed, it is. Thanks for you comments.
Report comment
No problem, Julie
Report comment
there is so much both that I agree with here, Pacific-Dawn as well as what I disagree with, that it is way too much for me to comment on everything, though I do appreciate you contribution. So I am limiting myself to one correction only. While Hirshfeld is famous for sponsoring gay rights, no, it did not begin with him. The person who invented the word “homosexual” is a more likely candidate to think of as the first gay rights advocate, and from Germany also, he signitificantly predates Hirshfeld. (and yes he introduced it as a positive term). the inventor is Unlrichs Kerbeney and he published a book in 1863 (which is before Hirshfeld was born)
Report comment
You’re taking the quote out of context. By “master”, Lorde meant the white slave master and by tools, she meant the tools by which her erected slaveryl
Report comment
the word “autism”, let me suggest, Joey, is very different than the word “homosexual” and that difference is such that it is not only reclaimable, it does not even need to be reclaimed. The word “homosexual” was not invented by a psychiatrist and had a long independent existence. By contrast, when you try to reclaim the word “autism”, the problem facing you is this is a word that did not exist until a psychiatrist invented it, and as such, it is is pretty close to owned by psychiatry. The word and its meaning was invented by Bleuler. In this regard, it should be noted, Bleuler is the very same psychiatrist who invented the word schizophrenia–a word that has plagued society ever since. I should also add that he was a eugenicist. This, alas, is the baggage that the word autism brings with it. Something, I think that it is important to consider as you reflect on what tactics to use in the highly important struggle in which you are engaged
Report comment
Joey, while I don’t think the people in the antipsychiatry movement have been sensitive at all to people in the radical neurdiverisity movement and the radical autism movement, and I think it is important that this change for we should be allies, there is nonetheless a problem however, coming from the other side. When you simply use the word autism, for instance,what you are ignoring is that it is a disorder in the DSM. That is a problem here for you at that point look like you are buying into psychiatry. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would make sense finding . another term to use to describe what you are experiencing. To quote Audre Lorde here, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Report comment
In case people were not aware of this, one of the things that I was trying to do in this article, was to find ways to bring together from people various movements that critique psychiatry . Of the movements that organize against psychiatry, I am a member only of one–antipsychiatry. Which among other things means that I personally oppose all psychiatric diagnoses without exception.
Report comment
I have written about almost all the activist things that you mentioned here, and I am first and foremost an in-your-face activist. What I am telling you here is that besides that you are not understanding neurodiversity theoeists here, and your are very definately not hearing what I am saying; Additionally, you really don’t seem to get where i’m coming from Moreover you are mixing applies and oranges. I don’t like the recovery movement eiher, As for the mental health movement, It is obviously part of the utterly unacceptable hegemonic paradigm.
I think that this conversation has gone about as far as it can go for my sense is that it is going in circles. So please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to future posts of yours. No offence whatever intended.We are obviously both radicals who don’t like liberalism. And I wish you well.
Report comment
There are all sorts of ways to resist. But telling people that they are not resisting when they markedly are, let me suggest, is not one of them. theorizing is one way to resist. Calling people out on their bullying is another. Both have their place.
Report comment
Actually, as a member of the LGBTQ community, I can assure you that yes, we do advocate sexual diversity. Nor does that any way stop us from condemning violations of us. Maybe really looking into what different movements do more thoroughly would serve you here.
Report comment
I think PacificDawn, that you have really misunderstood what neurodiversity theorists are doing. They are not pleading for anything. They are directly countering a pathology paradigm with a neurodiversity paradigm.
Report comment
I wanted to say–and I alluded to it in the article but did not spell it out in detail for the article was not on neurodiversity, that there is a profound difference between the radical neurodiversity movement and the more mainstream one. That in the radical one, no one sees the differences in question as innate or as casual in any way. Moreover, no one in the neurodiversity movement would see any of the differences alluded to as the least bit “pathologoical”–an issue that came up i a few responses to this blog. As I have come to understand it, Why people in the movement championed the concept of diversity is precisely because it links them up with other types of diveristy–sexual diversity, for example, and racial diversity–and totally rules out the concept of pathology.
Report comment
agreed.
Report comment
yes, I do get that, Joey.
Report comment
I agree that cogntive liberty by itself is insufficient.It is simply a principle that think we need to emphasize
Report comment
I am not suggesting that it be a stand-alone principle.
Report comment
The courts perhaps if there was a legal attempt to stop people
Report comment
I do get your point, and i have some problems with these words myself. at the same time ‘diverse’ does not that there is anything wrong with the person. It just implies that they are not mainstream, which depending on one’s vantagepoint, could be seen as a distinct asset.
Report comment
As people united against this bogus branch of medicine, Steve, you and I are in complete agreement on this, . And indeed, as you are suggesting cognitive liberty does not in any way get at this key dimension. That said I am in no way suggesting that we only tackle psychiatry through the concept of cognitive liberty. I am simply suggesting that it be an additional concept that we rally around. Understood that way, does the concept still bother you?
Report comment
They have all sorts of different degrees, and yes, they do exist. As for a law degree, while there are certainly some good scholars in the area with law degrees, no, historically, that’s not where most of them have ended up
Report comment
Yes, there were locked institutions operated by bussiness men that coexisted at the time of the ship of fools and they were anything but voluntary . The big difference is that comparatively few people ended up dthere.
Report comment
Steve, what if we started approaching the word “neurodiverse” the way in the movement approach the word “mad”, acknowledging that for some people, it is key to their identity, moreover, to how others treat them, albeit all people are to varying degrees neurodiverse. If thought of that way, would the word still bother you?
Report comment
I certainly agree the all of the psy disciplines and not jusst psychiatry–assault the person and in horrid ways. At the same time, I make a distinction between your average practitioner and counter-hegemonic practitioners.
Report comment
I understand not being comfortable with the term neurodiversity . In the end, the problem that I have with it–and I have a problem too–iis that most people who use it believing in a difference that is essentialized, which yes, I find problematic. At the same time, not all do. I see the turn somewhat away from the term and toward the concept cognitive liberty as a good sign. Though it remains to be seen what will happen with this.
Report comment
All good points
Report comment
Mel was also a philosopher and an absolutely wonderful human being. I should add that we should be worried when a psychiatric survivor on psychiatric drugs chokes to death, given the fact that these drugs inhibit the gag reflex. Why has there not bee an investigation into Mel’s death?
Report comment
Slaying the Dragon, I agree with you of course, that liberty is the larger principle, of which cognitive liberty is an offshoot. At the same time, given the highly specific targeting of thinking and threat to thinking posed, I do think it is one that deserves considerably more focus than it gets.
Report comment
I can understand that.
Report comment
Understood, Oldhead especially since I am first and foremost antispychiatry . At the same time, for myself, I want to be able to engage in action with people who are not.
Report comment
Great that you are with us, Rosalee.
Report comment
Yes, that said, Milton did not mean that it was not possible to alter someone’s mind, only that it was not permissable.
Report comment
To varying degrees, we surely all are neurodiverse, though the degrees can be very different, which I suspect is why concepts like neurotypical are important to even those people in the neurodiversity movement who do not believe that these differences are inherent.
Report comment
It was legal before they even called themselves psychiatrists. Forced treatment has always, alas, been the hallmark of what state agents do to people who they consider mad.
Report comment
Well put, Joey; and I could not agree with you more.
Report comment
Cheryl Prax, is anyone responding to the UK training program to mount a protest. This seems like an opportune time to protest for it will convey to attendees of the training session a message that they will otherwise not get.
Report comment
So sorry about what happened to you. Your story, streetphotobeing, raises an important point. How can a person possibly give consent for ECT when they are so zoned out on drugs that they little or not idea what they are consenting to?
Report comment
Steve, thanks so much for your help.
Report comment
Thanks, Lashend
Report comment
We would not for a second let them abduct Connie–and they would be in major trouble if they tried. Would I recommend that someone try an action like this from “within an institution”. No of course not. That is a very different set of circumstances. Please note, by the same token, there was no attempt to abduct anyone at all in the MindFreedom Hunger Strike.
Report comment
you’ve got it
Report comment
Steve and others, the slightly edited version of this article has been up on Rabble for 4 days now, and as I predicted, no one at all has commented on it. If you have the time to help out by going to the article on Rabble and commenting on the article, that would be great. You can reach it at: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/toward-world-commons-and-without-psychiatry-bonnie-burstow-blog/2018/11/time-strike
Report comment
I sent it in a few hours ago, Steve As soon as it goes up, I will send a link. Thanks Steve.
Report comment
No, Truth, that’s not what is going to happen. It takes a lot more than this to make them retract. And that’s why we need to keep exposing and keep the pressure up.
Report comment
I really like your story and what you stand for. All the best to you,
Report comment
Incidentally, folk, I am going to be posted a slightly edited version of this article on Rabble.ca on Monday or Tuesday. I tend to be either totally ignored or attacked when I post anything that smells of antipsychiatry on Rabble, for the Rabble readers tends to be incredibly pro-psychiatry. So if anyone has the time and the inclination and to check out the comments posted on Rabble and then put in your “two cents” your input would be greatly appreciated. A lot of the Rabble readers live in Toronto and it would be great if a few of them considered supporting this hunger strike.
Report comment
Bramble, what happened is that once it was determined that case that damage was done was a viable case, the defendants (the ECT manufactured) immediately offered the plaintiffs a monetary settlement, more or less to keep a ruling against them off the books. The defendants accepted the offer of compensation. and so the case went no further. Yes, the industry will continue to spread the same old line, but what happened in that courtroom is now ammunition that we can use against them. And use it against them, we must. The onus is on us to point out exactly what happened here.
Report comment
I agree, CGGreen that ECT is barbaric. I would be worried for your friend too. Generally, people who have taken ECT are a fan of it, come to dramatically change their mind in a few years.
Report comment
A possible strategy is telling people what was said in the US suit, and pushing all the candidates to take a position on shock
Report comment
For sure, that would be a totally unsafe thing to do on a ward. And part of acquiring what I refer to as “sane literacy” is knowing that people’s political resistance is typically interpreted by “mental health authorities” as “symptoms” of one “disorder” or another and a reason to intrude.
Report comment
The 2003 hunger strike was actually largely organized by Mickey Weinberg, and he did a terrific job.
Report comment
yes, that’s a good link
Report comment
Much thanks, Steve
Report comment
Terrific, Rosalie. Incidentally, with health being mainly a provincial issue, it is each of the provincial legislators (far more than the federal) whose weighing in could have an effect.
Report comment
Oldhead, the claim about the 2003 hunger strike generating more positive publicity for us than anything else has is ‘Frank’s” claim, but I would have to say that I do agree with him. While I don’t have time to search for links, you might be able to find them by doing a google search for that hunger strike. Alternatively by visiting the MindFreedom site and seeing if they have posted any of the articles. That said, I do remember at the time that there were quite a number of articles written about the strike during the course of the strike, and every one I came upon was positive. So I am inclined to believe that Frank is correct about this.
Report comment
Thanks, as always for the support, Frank. I too hope this action spreads.
Report comment
Not to worry, Oldhead, besides that this was Connie’s idea and passion, and choice, this is very much a “controlled” hunger strike. And we will be checking with Connie throughout the few days she is intending to strike (for it will be a “limited strike”), whether she wants to continue or not. Thanks for the encouragement and the endorsement.
Report comment
Terrific, madmom. Welcome to the action!
Report comment
I am against hate speech as well (e.g., the diatribes against Jews, Blacks, and people deemed “mentally ill”) But I hardly buy into this neurological argument in any way.
Report comment
My own sense. There is room for trauma based perspective but not remotely room for it to be delivered by psychiatry. People interested this might want to read an article that I wrote on teaching a trauma course. See https://breggin.com/bonnie-burstow/
Report comment
Terrific article, Bob. And much thanks for penning it. That said, I cannot say that this development surprises me. What confuses me rather is that anyone is actually surprised by it.
Report comment
Then the thing to do, Oldhead, is don’t post stuff confronting Richard out there in responses to MIA blogs that puts the rest of us who were privy to these old exchanges in a double bind.
Report comment
I have no difficulty figuring out what either of you mean. It’s more than I think you already know from a long history of trying to come to terms with the differences between you and Richard exactly what Richard means and so I don’t know why you keep putting the question out to him. And I just felt the need to say that.
All the best.
Report comment
Oldhead, my sense is that deep down, you know some of the conundrums that Richard has over identity politics. I have seen you in discussions with him over the formation of an antipscychiatry organization when you argued for less rights for people in the organization if they were not psychiatric survivors, and Richard was uneasy with that. That surely is a type of identity politics that goes beyond the prioritizing of the goals of a specific movement–and that is an example of the type of identity politics that not everyone is happy with. I am somewhat at a loss for understanding why you keep pushing Richard for a definition when the disagreements between the two of you have come up often and have been pretty clear. Beyond that, many people, though especially Richard, have been clear that they would prefer to be part of an antipsychiatry organization where things like class analysis, gender analysis, etc. has a role to play. I am somewhat between the two of you on some of these issues; nonetheless I very much get Richard’s concerns.
Report comment
I don’t define identity politics in a way that makes large issues and other struggles unimportant. That, I see as identity politics at its worst and identity politics does not have to work that way (though, I suspect it is what Richard thinks of when he thinks of identify politics). Rather I define identity politics as organizing based on a common identity. I see room for that. I likewise see room for more broad based coalitions of people. Annd when it comes to antipsychiatry per se, I think that broad based coalitions are the only way to go.
Report comment
Ah, but Alex, let me suggest that there is a very strong chance that one of the people WAS lying. things are hardly equal here.
Report comment
Personally, I see identity politics as critical (hence the importance of women only groups, of Black groups, of psychiatric survivor groups and other such identity based liberation groups). What the philosopher Jean-Paul Satre called “Us-it” formations or Liberation struggles are legitimate and by nature are identity based. I also think coalition politics are essential, where different types of groups work together. That said, I likewise value and am a part of groups that are simply not identity-based, that are based simply on common analysis, common principles, common committments. All of these have value. And while I may be wrong here, I don’t think that Richard would disagree with this. What he disagrees with, if I am reading him right, is the priority given to identity politics. That is, the sense that in the final analysis being from the same oppressed identity should be the sine qua non of political movements. As for myself, I see psychiatric survivor groups as necessarily identity politics based and antipsychiatry groups as necessarily not identity politics based. Can these morph into each other? they can–but the strengths are different and so care needs to be taken here. Two different groups that formed to combated fascism when it began asserting itself in the in the late 1980s are instructive here. One , which was definitely identity based (and I belonged to it) was Jewish Feminist Antifascist League). To belong to the group, you had to be a Jewish woman. The other was AntiRacst Action or ARA (with whom I often worked but to which I did not belong) and it was not identity based. You didn’t have to have any particular identity to be a member of ARA; you just had to share the analysis and the committment. Nor were there different classes of membership. Nor was there any sense that if you did not come from a racialized identity, you were to have less of a say–for again, the group was not identity-based, though of course, everyone recognized the importance of checking in with the people’s whose oppressions were relevant. Both ARA and JFAFL (Jewish Feminist Antifascist League) had jobs to do. And both got along enormously well together and indeed often worked together. Fortunately, this was a time during history when a great many of us saw the value of different types of politics. It followed a time in the early 1980 when identity politics seemed to overshadow everything else, my own sense is to the detriment of social justice causes.
Report comment
A few comments here that may or may not be helpful to others in this conversation. For the most part (and there surely were moments that were different), I saw the US psychiatric survivor moment in the 1980s and 1990’s as not exactly antipsychiatry–though there is no question that now and then antipsychiatry entered into its principles. By contrast, I saw a very real antipsychiatry movement during this same period in Canada , and this was not a movement based on being a psychiatric survivor, though psychiatric survivors were always central to it. Re the left, what I see in North America right now is a left wing that is overwhelmingly, though thankfully not exclusively, pro-psychiatry (and yes I think even more so than the right is) By contrast, there are countries like Germany, for example, where the left is strongly antipsychiatry. (And we see signs of this in Chile too). My own sense is that we have to stop looking at what happens or has happened in the US as normative and instead come to understandings and to possible models and ways forward by thinking globally.
Report comment
Re the disagreement between Oldhead and Richard, I don’t know if this is helpful, but let me just say that in Canada we tend to draw a distinction between the antipsychiatry movement and the psychiatric survivor movement (which we see as overlapping but not identifical) and as a result seldom get into these types of arguments.
As for my own politics, is is not identical to anyone else’s here, though it bears some resemblance to both Richard and Oldhead. I am a leftwing anarchist who sees the importance of a class analysis. At the same time, I have always worked with people across the political spectrum. Also for me, it depends on how sophisticated the right wing analysis is. For example, though my valued friend and ally Dr. Peter Breggin is right wing and I am left wing, we work well and often together for we value what each other brings to the table and because Peter’s right wing politics includes and does not stop him from taking in the reality of oppression. Politics is very complicated when you touch into the antipsychiatry area or even the critical psychiatry area–and this, I have long appreciated.
Report comment
And thank you also, Oldhead for all your work here.
Report comment
Thanks, Uprising.
Report comment
Much thanks for this comment, Rachel.
Report comment
You wrote the following “Bonnie’s so called early life is linked to Don Weitz rather than her own success. In current time period, she is linked to scientology,” This part is YOUR saying it and it is totally problematic. Don and I have both had successes from early on. And while linked to Don, I have at no time being associated with scientology–and it is after that that you go on to make reference to the things the Houghton Post says. This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening in Mad in America. And no amount of rationalizing makes it okay.
Report comment
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in other things I am doing in the Indigenous area that tries to establish links with antipsychiatry, I have created and am running a mini-conference at OISE/UT this Friday called “PsychOut Extended: The Psychiatrization of Indigenous People as a Continuation of Genocide.” We are expecting hundreds to turn up and it may help spark an important conversation about psychiatry in the Indigenous community. The keynote speaker, incidentally is Dr. Roland Chrisjohn–an Indigenous scholar, a Marxist, and while on a very different place on the left-right spectrum–an old time ally and friend of Thomas Szasz.
Report comment
But I AM linked with Don Weitz. I am NOT linked to Scientology. Moreover, you insinuated that my being linked with Don somehow nullified the things which I have done. All of this, I find offensive.
Report comment
The fact that I am slandered in the Houghton Post (as was Peter Breggin) is no reason to slander me here. It is not acceptable. I have absolutely no connection with Scientology and never have had. Other in other venues slander antipsychiatry activists as well as critical theorists by stating such connections in the hope to discredit their message I expect more from a Mad in America venue. Also when it comes to early work, I should be out, that yes, I worked in the 1980s with Don Weitz on the Phoenix Rising Collecive and in the 1980’s Don was in Ontario Coalition to Stop Electroshock, of which I was the co-chair along with shock survivor Shirley Johnson. Exactly what any of this is a bad things is an utter mystery to me. We all of us wrote articles against psychiatry. We all of us mounted active opposition to electroshock.
Disagreement with positions is one thing. And I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with slander and slanderous innuendo. The fact that Scientology praised the Scholarship has absolutely whatever nothing to do with me. They praise everything antipsychiatry and even most stuff that is critical psychiatry.
Peter Breggin stop writinging for Houghton Post because of the appalling inaccurate things said about him. By contrast, we expect to be safe writing in Mad in America.
Report comment
I have many many projects going on. They all have different emphasis. That is not called exclusion. That is just the nature of activism.
Report comment
Someone in this exchange made the totally erroneous claim that I am linked to Scientology. I need to pout out that is both wrong and slanderous, I have never had any dealing whatever with Scientology. How horrible for anyone to be expressing wrongful slurs like this in Mad in America!
Report comment
Even on purely pragmatic level–and I have other reasons besides pragmatism here–we need allies to get rid of psychiatry. And you don’t get allies unless you care and show in your actions that you care about other oppressions besides that one with which you are most concerned.
Report comment
leave one oppression in tact, it will serve to reinvent the others. Attack one oppression without looking at how you are impact or not impacting other oppressions in my opinion is sadly misguided.
Report comment
Progress toward getting rid of injustice and inequality.
Report comment
Thanks, CatNight
Report comment
Let me suggest that you are suggesting would be the end of coalition politics, and without that, there would be little progress at all.
Report comment
Yes, this is the group that we all of us need to prioritize.
Report comment
thanks as always, Frank.
Report comment
Concerned carer: What you are saying would be a bit like saying we need slavery so that we can have the critiques of slavery. I have used an extreme example, so as to point out the flaw in this kind of thinking. We absolutely only need to have critical psychiatrists and researcher because we have psychiatry. Would we still need other critical researchers. Of course, but that is a very different question.
Report comment
Roughly, I would categorize it as “lite ECT”. Do i think it is okay? I surely do not. I very much object to it.
Report comment
We haven’t been making strides on ECT in the public vnue . We are planning a much more ambitious series of actions in Toronto in Toronto 2019, including a hunger strike. The issue is winning back the media on the issue. And this new action is promising.
Report comment
You get more resilient, David. Just take their fury at you as an indication that you are doing good work,
Report comment
The answer to your question about applying is further up in the comment section.
Report comment
Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry, there is no graduate program in antipsychiatry. What there is an institute that is called “Ontario Institute for Studies in Education” (Oise for short) and in this institute are scholars that nclude a critique of psychiatry and in the case of my program (Adult Education and Community Development) it includes as one among many focuses, not only antipsychiatry theory but antipsychiatry activism. There is also an antipsychiatry scholarship–that one that I have endowed–for thesis students at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education doing antipsychiatry research. Only students who are at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education can apply for the scholarship. People interested in apply to Adult Education and Community Development at OISE should go to the OISE website (http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/Home/index.html)
and search on the application process from there
Report comment
Thanks, Eric. It took a lot of work, but yes, my sense is that has been time very well spent.
Report comment
We are definitely making strides here.
Report comment
Healey’s support of ECT is horrific as is all other professionals’ support of ECT.
Report comment
So kind of your to let me know how you see it, kuminexile
Report comment
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And that constitutes poetic justice.
Report comment
I have a thesis support group for my masters and doctoral thesis students. About half my thesis students do thesea in the anti or critical psychiatry area. And they are among the brightest students at the institute, with fellow students in fact to a large degree looking up to them.
Report comment
Much thanks
Report comment
I incorporate antipsychiatry into every single course I teach. I integrate it just as one integrates issues of sexism and racism. That said, perhaps the courses where it has most impact is a counterhegemonic course that I teach on trauma, also a course on activism in alliance with disenfranchized populations.
Report comment
thanks,streetphotobeing
Report comment
thanks, Steve. And yes, they do seem to be rather terrified. Which tells me that one some level, we are doing our job well.
Report comment
All good ideas, Julie, but far beyond what I am capable of pulling off in what is left in my life. Possible ideas for younger faculty somewhere to entertain.
Thanks for you comment.
For sure, making universities easier place for psych survivors to attend is critical. A good place to begin is getting rid of “mandatory leave” which plagues psych survivors in half the the universities around the world.
Report comment
Much thanks, madmom. When I started out on this mission, I was told not to bother, that Big Pharma, which contributes billions to the universities would stop this. As you could see, much as they might of wanted to, that is not how this story played out.
Report comment
Much thanks, Fred. Yes, to pull this off, my determination and focus was unrelenting. Keeping focused, strategic keeping our eye on the ball, that’s what we need to do. And when we do that and we do it long and skillfully, the victories will come.
Thanks for your comment, Fried. And thank for all your work over the years.
Report comment
Much thanks, J.L. And I would love to see that also
Report comment
Of course. But it was doing that anyway. this for the time being we cannot stop, but we can get in there ourselves.
Report comment
Our anti-shock demo this year one day before Mother’s Day will be a stellar. While I won’t be letting the cat out of the bag just yet, our anti-shock protest the following year in May of 2019 will be absolutely astounding and will garner press far and wide. Stay tuned!
Report comment
An interesting idea for a work of fiction. Good luck with it.
Report comment
Many of us around the world on May 12 will demonstrating against electroshock, demanding its abolition. This is an international day of protest against electroshock, with a clear feminist focus what with the statistics of two to three times as many women get ECT as men. If there is nothing going on in your city, do consider putting together a demo. In a number of the cities, what we will be chanting (and all the better if any press turning up asks you what it means) is:
“We are The Other Mrs. Smith
Stop shock now:
Report comment
Much thanks for your comments, Amy. It is always nice to hear from people who have read the novel and who have reflected deep and long on what it has to offer. It is precisely in readers like you that the hope liesl
Report comment
That’s certainly the hype that is given, this without any evidence to support, and that suggests otherwisel
Report comment
Rachel777: The acronym is Centre for Addictions and Mental Health. What do they get from it? It is an industry, centred on pseudo-researcj,and what they get is more more research money.
Report comment
A good reminder, Julie. Meanwhile, a question, Julie. what do you yourself think of the novel itself? And do you have a response to Jim’s review?
Report comment
I agree with you. We surely do need more media coverage that is solidly questing the part line.
Report comment
A heads up re The Other Mrs. Smith and the role that it can play, Right now in cities around the world (e.g., Cork, Ireland, Toronto, Canada, Montreal Canada), people are gearing up for annual feminist demonstration against electroshock, held on May 12 (e.g, in many parts of the world, the day before Mother’s Day) In Canada, in light of the sexist as well as ageist facts about ECT, the event has long been called “Stop Shocking Our Mothers and Grandmothers”. This year in Ontario and perhaps also Quebec , the primary chant at the demos will be “We are the Other Mrs. Smith! Stop Shock Now.@ It is our hope that the media will ask us about this and thereby reinforce the synergy that we are trying to create. If you are at any demonstration in the days leading up to Mother’s Day, do join us in the chant.
Report comment
And thank you, Steve, similarly for your service to the cause
Report comment
Much thanks, BCharris, and much thanks, Gabi Taylor. I honestly think this novel has the potential to move a lot of people and do some heavy lifting for us, though of course, only if it is widely read. Any help that MIA readers can give getting it in into their local libraries and spreading the word about the novel would be greatly appreciated and my sense is would be time well spent. This novel–The Other Mrs. Smith– truly helps people “get” the horror of ECT in a visceral way–what ECT does to people and it could lead to a public outcry against shock–something that we desperately need. If you haven’t dipped into it yet, I encourage you to do so and suspect you won’t regret it for among other things, strange though this may seem, besides being informative and moving, it is a well written book and with all its rich characters and twists and turns, it is highly enjoyable. As one of the commentators on Amazon put it, ” Make a cup of tea, get your favorite blanket, curl up, and enjoy – it’s that good.”
Report comment
This is CAMH’s “thing”. and it is important that we avalanche them with bad publicity ever sing time
Report comment
Indeed, much thanks for the review, Jim
Report comment
All excellent points, Au Valencia. To reinforce some of them, in speaking about the autistic movement, we are speaking about a movement–and movements take stands. And not for a second have I ever seen advocates take the stand that they are a separatist movement. And While obviously not the same as antipsychiatry, the overlaps between the autistic movement and the antipsychiatry movement are enormous. Personally, I am grateful to advocates like Nick Walker for recognizing this and asserting connections. Additionally, there is absolutely nothing in the original article that gives anyone reason to be believe that we are dealing with a “disorder”. Note the huge growth in the number of people diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum (which was given as evidence) can be understood in ways not unlike the huge growth of the number of people diagnosed as mentally ill–the point is that we have industries here in whose interest this growth lies and we have no pressing reason to attribute that growth to anything other than that. Correspondingly, if I might add a new point, while again of course there are differences–admittedly huge differences–in the antipsychiatry/critical psychiatry movment, we face similar objections from some quarters that some people (e.g., those labeled schizophrenic) actually have a disorder. However, behind this claim lays no facts. In neither case, I would add, would anyone for a second say that the people in question are not suffering and proferring help is not in order.
Now I totally empathize with someone who feels that they are being silenced or their personal experiences are being ignored. ANd while it is hardly for me to say, maybe this the question that the community needs to grapple with. At the same time, one’s experience is about experience. And that is a very different matter than “causation” and by the same token, a very different matter than whether or not something is a disease. For interpretations like this are not intrinsically part of “experience”.
As an outsider here, that is, as someone who is not autistic, there may of course be important considerations that I am not understanding. ANd if so, please enlighten me.
Report comment
Actually, how iI would put t, Mi, not that we are failure. It that we haven’t come close to succeeding yet;
That said, for sure psychiatry was absolute horrific under Communist regimes. The capitalistic financialization and moneyed interest that we see today, however, make this in some way a whole new ball game–more formidable and deadly that ever.
Report comment
Yes, of course, the capitalist foundation has become ever more evident and something that urgently needs to be addressed. And what a terrific song! much thanks, for this and for your ongoing contributions
Report comment
CAPA and several other organizations in Canada will be demonstrating againt ECT the day before Mother’s Day as we have for decades. This year one of our chants will be “We are the other Mrs. Smith! Stop shock now!
Report comment
I will always fight for you. Doing otherwise is unthinkable.
Report comment
I am not in psychiatry and I have never worked as a psychiatrist. I am not a MD.
Report comment
Well put, Julie
Report comment
thank you so much, Richard. So wonderful to have a comrade like you.
Report comment
And thank God, you did, Stephen. We are the better for having you here.
Report comment
Indeed, thank God you survived!
Report comment
Thanks for the good wishes, Fred.
Here is a point that I need to make which reaffirms my point about actually doing something.I asked that people in Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault to consider granting me a birthday wish to talk to at least one person that day on why shock should be abolished. Ten people wrote to me to say that they had done just that. I made similar request in this string on MIA. I got no response to it. Now I do get the difference. This is not an activist group. It is a website. At the same time, I am worried about how far we can get when we are largely restricted to talking and people rarely pick anything up and up.
Hey people, any ideas here?
Report comment
All going on at the same time, law suits, various works of art, especially theatre of the oppressed, the leads the audience to act, spirited demos that bring in allies from other movements, law suit, consciousness-raising events, lobbying legislatures. What it would mean to organize together is to know what others are doing and actively promote it and otherwise consciousness-raise around it. The problem is not knowing what has to be done. The problem is people taking it as a priority and making a point of following through and actually acting.
Report comment
A belated happy birthday, Julie. Just to be clear, I am always happy to wish you a happy birthday for we can celebrate at any time the day that you were born. And like everyone who cares about justice, you are a blessing to the world.
Report comment
Hey there, allies. It is my 73 birthday today. For anyone so inclined–and of course, no one has to be–here is the best present that anyone could give me. Talk to two people today who are not one of the Mad in America devotees about why it is critical to abolish shock. Why I say not one of Mad i America devotees is that that is too easy and won’t get us very far. We really do have to go beyond the “usual suspects” and talk to folk other than those who are already converted.
Report comment
Julie, yes, agreed people do what they think they can get away with with impunity. this particular issue that you bring up strikes me as reason to lay more charges. We might also make public a shame list as in a list like: The shameful act of subjecting people to electroshock, here is the list of psychiatrists in ___ that engaged in that this month: _____________ ________________
__________________
Report comment
Fred, your simile seems very apt.
Report comment
I can surely understand everyone being discouraged as for sure, we have gotten nowhere on this issue for a long long time. And although I continue to plan them, I agree that demonstrations won’t do it. My sense is that we need multiple strategies all going on simultaneously.
Report comment
Throwing it in the garbage where it belongs feels good to me.
Report comment
very interesting, FeelingDiscouraged and very telling. Can you give us references for this study?
Report comment
good distinction, FeelinDiscouraged
Report comment
FeelingDiscouraged: Do let me know that develops. And the best of luck with it.
Report comment
Would love to hear from some artists out there. If you are an artist, do share some thought on how you might invoke “aha” about ECT through the use of your art. Would love to see you weigh in on this question.
Report comment
Indeed, it is, Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry. It is is totally a system of deception and coercion even when technically people have given “consent”.
Report comment
It is not a question of whether or not burning would be justified. It is only a question of how it would appear to 99.99% of the general public.
Report comment
All of psychiatry hurts everyone, and they are quite happy to hurt everyone, irrespective of gender race, sexuality but no I would not agree there is “equality”. Research decisively shows that sexism, racism, heterosexism etc, plays out as well and it does so formidably.
Report comment
Again, so sorry about what happened to you, “Yeah_ I survived.”
Report comment
Hi again, Julie. The problem of burning books, including the atrocity of a book like the DSM, is that would symbolically link people in the moment to the people involved in the Nazi book burning. I see no problem our burning another symbol of psychiatry or medicine, but book-burning i do not see as helping our cause. That said, yes, i did burn my bra (but in the 1960s, not the 1970s)
Report comment
Film, is a great dea, Fred. But we need films of the new novels that are out there, ones that that are not sexist and so reflect the current sentiment. As wonderful as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was, nurse Hatchet will at least in part a reflection of sexism. Where we really need to put our anger against the industry and the people in the industry who spread the propaganda, who order shock, and who own and distribute shock machines.
Report comment
You don’t sound wishy-washy, “Yeah I Survived”. You sound practical and totally realistic. Everyone has to figure out for themselves what would make sense for them to read, when. Know that I appreciate your words and respect the choices that you make. As for “not knowing” yes, of course, that is the existential dilemma and the perplexity in which ECT survivors are placed.
Report comment
Nice to hear, Julie.
Report comment
Thanks so much for the comment. I am so sorry about what happened to you. And I welcome you as a fellow fighter in the fight to expose ECT. If you come to read the novel, do let me know what you think of it.
Report comment
I appreciate your sensitivity here, but the situation is more complex than you think. The position you are taking was once Peter Breggin’s position (decades ago), even though he knew ECT was enormously brain-damaging? What he thought is that you just have the truth out about ECT and then respect people’s choice. What he eventually came to realize is that psychiatry will never tell the truth about ECT, will always flagrantly misrepresent. As a consequence, while people may consent, truly informed consent is not possible–which led him to my position of ECT abolition. One other thing that is important here: “Treatments” that “work” by doing nothing else but damaging the brain are not medical treatments. And so medical people should not be allowed to offer them. Now does anyone ever feel better (however temporarily) from them? Yes. For the same reason that someone would temporarily feel better if you hit them over the head with a two-by-four. As closed head injury, it stimulates the very temporary release of endorphins–heroine like substances. By no one would think that hitting people over the head with a two-by-four should be seen as an acceptable medical treatment. I should add that running also causes the release of endorphins.
Report comment
Much thanks for these comments, Julie. Yes, I surely hear something similar to what you have said from other shock survivors. And yes, indeed, shock survivors writing is absolutely critical. In its own way, such writing helps us start to repair the world.
Report comment
To weight in just quickly on this, for sure racism is traumatizing and the lack of awareness and skills by counsellors is a problem, nor is it one that i think will go away. What is likewise important, Oldhead is absolutely right, you need to get rid of racism, and that as distinct from counselling should be the top priority. To act otherwise is to individualize what is systemic.
Report comment
Everyone is different. Many ECT survivors have read my book, and sine even have even written blurbs for it. and many can’t. Everyone has to figure out what and what does not work for them.
Report comment
Like you, truth, I think if lots of people read the book, we could move mountains with it. I am urging people to read it and help me spread the wordl
Report comment
Thanks, Uprising.
Report comment
Yes, while Susan has made some very cogent points as always, “reconstructing” psychiatry should hardly been the goal. this is not revolutionary and this is not radical. This is liberalism.
Report comment
Bravo. As always, Peter, stellar.
Report comment
A terrific article, Missy and Skylar. Thanks for sharing.
Report comment
Scott, I applaud your critique of the medical model.At the same time, I am deeply concerned by your celebration of the new FDA trial and the movement to give people who suffer from trauma what is in essence is a few doses of doctor-delivered Ecstasy. While I take in that the hope is that just a few doses will do (and we all know what will happen if they don’t imminently produce the long-term “effect” being sought) here again drugs that interfere with totally normal neurotransmitter levels are involved and being presented as “medical” treatment.
Let me suggest that this is but a new (read: additional) entry point into the medical model–and not something to celebrate.
We can hardly defeat a paradigm by slipping into it.
Report comment
I greatly prefer Jean-Paul Sartre’s concepts of such things.
Report comment
Freud did some ingenuous things for sure. At the same time, he pioneered a form of talk therapy that did not involve dialogue and mitigated against dialogue. Moreover, he was very clearly an empire builder. Additionally to claim a break with psychiatry as “medicine” is a simplification and as such, misleading. Several times he states that eventually biological markers would probably discovered for what he was developing psychoanalytically.
Report comment
While for sure, Freud may be credited with inventing talk therapy, he hardly just listened–he psychoanalyzed! And using very bizarre theories at that. Nor did he have an relationship with his clients, for he was committed to being a “blank screen”. And his writings were not just unfair to women but were hopeless misogynous. Calling him antipsychiatry is an incredible stretch.
Report comment
very scary stuff indeed.
Report comment
Eager to see what you think, madmom
Report comment
A wonderful article, Peter. Yes, indeed, they are treating the brains of “patients” like something cancerous. the problem is that psychiatrists have a vested interest in thinking how they do. Correspondingly, while there may be exceptions, and while for sure, they hate the brains of others, it is not all clear that they hate their own brains.
Report comment
Alas, much of both the left and the right are behind psychiatry.
Report comment
Thanks, J. And I very much get your decision.
Report comment
Yes, Oldhead, the internet surely is helpful. And most students surely are colonized. That said, my sense is that we need to consciousness-raise and organize using absolutely every avenue at our disposal.
Report comment
A terrible experience, Julie. Would that it were an isolated experience, but I am well aware that it isn’t!
Report comment
I wish I could state that it is safe to come out at university as someone who experiences things differently, Madmom, but mostly it is not precisely because academics, unfortunately, has the exact same prejudices as everyone else. That said, there are nooks and crannies where it is safe. There are faculty and programs for example where people are more accepting and have a critique of psychiatry (the graduate program in which I teach is one of them). You end up having to know where they are, though. Getting good at figuring out where it is safe to share and where it is not, that is invaluable skill that one needs to acquire.
Report comment
Absolutely.
Report comment
I am angry as well, Madmom.
Report comment
Most professors are, alas, colonized by the mental health industry, believe the propaganda.
Report comment
yes, helping students create groups where they support one another, is one of the safe and empowering ways to go.
Report comment
Student support groups, for sure, can be terrific. Good for your daughter.
Report comment
very good point, Julie. That said, the laws prohibiting discrimination on disability are arguably helpful, for they included “perceived disability” and not just “disability”
Report comment
thanks, Francesca. And yes, sharing with authorities facts that they can use against you generally just puts you in jeopardy.
Report comment
excellent idea.
Report comment
Sorry this happened to you, Julie. And yes, it is among other things a catch-all category by which people can be given the boot. And yes, I think launching law suits, it seems to be, is important in fighting against this.
Report comment
well put, Frank
Report comment
yes, a lot of people are bothered. When we held a public meeting about it–mostly for students–a whole lot of people turned out.
Report comment
My sense is, we can only be effective if we organize. We really need not only individual but organizations taken a united stand. Eg., human rights groups etc. Which really means serious networging.
Report comment
Yes, I agree, it is absolutely terrible. The thing is now to try to stem the tide, for people are being badly hurt.
Report comment
Very nice article, Emily. And thanks for sharing. To add a complementary perspective on the issue, Borderline Personality Disorder is a diagnosis overwhelmingly given to women. And why? Because women generally are more emotional (read more in touch with their emotions) than men, and it is men with power (e.g., psychiatrists) who name what is and what is not “normal”. And who else gets this diagnosis? Men who are similarly more emotional (read: like the disparaged gender). In other words, we are also looking at sexism here.
Of course, you should remain yourself, Emily. Besides that you are terrific, who else but you could you be authentically?
Report comment
well put
Report comment
much thanks, Bramble. The hardest thing I have ever written in my long career as a writer. But I am so glad that I did it.
Report comment
Re the release date, it is already released in Canada. See https://www.inanna.ca/catalog/other-mrs-smith/
Report comment
Thanks, Truth.
Report comment
Because, Truth, far far more people read fiction than read autobiographical accounts of damage done. Note the enormous effect of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. And there is a history of the average person being and profoundly moved by fiction. For good or ill, this is simply a truth about fiction-I am am trying to leverage our special attachment to fiction.
Report comment
I would dearly love to see it turned into a movie and think it would make gravitating movie. If anyone knows any directors, please feel free to pitch it.
Report comment
Looking forward to seeing what you think after you read it.
Report comment
Looking forward to seeing what you think after you read it.
Report comment
thanks, Julie, and yes indeed, we could use your help.
Report comment
Nicely done. Yes, indeed, political art and indeed art that uses humour is an important weapon.
Report comment
As usual, Peter, you are a courageous voice standing up for truth and decency. Bravo. And be assured that we stand resolutely behind you.
Report comment
Nicely done, Peter, as always. The question of course that faces us is how do we change the popular narrative? Because while unearthing the science is critical, were that enough, we would have prevailed against the pscyhopharmaceutical complex long ago.
Report comment
You are very welcome, Eric.
Report comment
yes, indeed, it is both human rights deprivation and pseudoscience that we need to fight–both together
Report comment
In the 80s, I was chair of a group in Canada called Resistance Against Psychiatry. Don Weitz was in the group also. Among other things, we declared allegiance with all prisoners and on Prisoner Justice Day, we demonstrated at both psychiatric prisons and “regular prisons”. Ontario Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault also took this stand. One difficulty we ran into, however, was prejudice from both constituencies against the other. Some psychiatric inmates were uneasy about being identified with “regular” prisoners, for they were worried that these were “bad people” and association with them would hurt the reputations of psychiatric survivors. Correspondingly, some prisoners in the justice system were worried about what would happen to their reputation being allied with people they saw as “crazy”. Herein, as I see it, is part of the struggle and the education that we need to do. That said, I do think it is time to again seek unity between the two movements– prison abolition and psychiatry abolition, the human rights re prisons and the human rights for re psych institutions (which when you come down to it, are prisons themselves)
Report comment
well,put, Steve. Yes, as Szasz put long ago, we are dealing with a religion, and an enormously harmful one for it assumes the guise of science
Report comment
There is a presumptuousness in therapy that is for sure highly problematic.And many have been hurt by people who call themselves therapists–just as you say, not just you but all sorts of others. That said, Julie, how do you account for the radical therapists who operate enormously differently than what you suggest? What is important to take in is that while psychiatry is baseless in the first place, and while individual school of therapy may have questionable claims, therapy over all is making no claims beyond the significance of engagement with another and self-reflection.
As for the bit about money, what this leave out are the four or five decades of feminist therapists who, beyond the fact that they located problems in the social, not the individual, consistently used a sliding scale, in many cases agreeing to see people for just over minimum wage
That said, I surely do get why people who have been harmed by presumptuous, unaware, and self-entitled therapists–and indeed, that is very common indeed, and across the whole spectrum of therapy –think of therapy as a scam.
Report comment
pretty damned close!
Report comment
That said, your asking about this, Oldhead, has gotten me thinking. When people put “social” and “therapy” together, they are usually in some way designating a mode of “therapy” which includes the social, thereby leading us to believe that it is more astute, less psychologistic. It might be worth looking at the the various phenomena thusly named more closely , however, to try to ascertain whether or not going in the direction tends to open the door to greater intrusion.
Report comment
sorry about what happened to you.
Report comment
No connection. It is a commonly used expression
Report comment
Yes, thanks, Oldhead.
Report comment
I am reminded hear, Steve, that the oldest active psych survivor in CAPA (Don Weitz) has written to me saying that he was to put on the agenda of the September meeting of CAPA holding a demonstration against the of solitary in both the psych system and the prison system
Report comment
Julie, a box does not come up when I go to answer your last question (its a complication of their web system). That said, to answer your question, no, making imprisonment fake medicine cannot be traced to any one person. Nor does this description itself exactly square with the history. Moving a certain segment of the prison population from prisons to hospital was the work of many centuries, with eventually the mad doctors (originally called “alienists” ) in charge. A reminder in this respect that in the western scene, doctors were since the middle ages were one the groups in competition over what might be called “the madness turf”.
Report comment
thanks, Steve. That said, it is the courage of the 31 men who brought a law suit who deserve the credit for this victory. Yes, I absolutely agree with you this verdict can surely be used to support the challenge to solitary confinement in prison–and I look forward to that happening. So yes, I am cheering also.
Re the archived photos, yes, the public has access but the authorities made their selection carefully so as to make it look like very different, in fact good and caring work was happening with the men additionslly duly empowered.. Try this link to get an idea what I mean: https://historyexhibit.waypointcentre.ca/exhibits/show/treatment/or-program
Report comment
Yes, of course we do. That is part of what I argue for. That said, it is important to take in that people seen as mad were locked up centuries before the medical folk take over. The oppression of locking up, in other words, greatly precedes psychiatry. What they added was “treating” and making it all look medical
Report comment
Your thoughts are interesting, but I cannot really respond as for the most part, I do not see any special relevance to what I am writing. Nor do I in any way believe that “gestalt” can undo psychiatry. I am far more a materialist than that. That said, good luck with your work.
Report comment
thanks, Slaying_ the _Dragon_of_Psychiatry. Let me just suggest here that the fact that all these area are problem and while indeed, law intrinsically underpins psychiatry, does not mean that these other systems cannot be also leveraged to get at psychiatry–something that we need to do a whole lot better at.
Report comment
That said, The _cat, for sure the taxpayer for sure will foot the bill for the defendant “the government of Ontario,” but I doubt that they us taxpayer will foot any part of the bill for either of the two psychiatrists.
Report comment
I understand your sentiment. Rather than comment on it, let me just say, that wasn’t the nature of the suit they lodged. The survivors who launched the suit did not launch a criminal suit. They launched a civil suit.
As for punishing the tax payers, legally speaking, tax payers are not held responsible for the actions of officials, though governments are–hence one of the defendants in this suit was the government of Ontario, which likewise was found guilty.
Report comment
yes indeed
Report comment
absolutely, Frank. What makes this ruling special, though, is the wording that goes with it, opening the door to “standard practice” to be considered torture, and as such, “actionable”.
Report comment
Absolutely, Julie, we must report. At the same time, reporting what is not known about is just the tip of the iceberg–these practices were not just known about, the were world famous and lauded, just like ECT today is world famous and lauded! We now have a verdict we can use. Part of the attrition model of psychiatry abolition to focus on what will erode the system and surely successful law suits against “standard practice” are optimal. I think we have just be handed a weapon. We should be suing the asses off professional who engage in standard practice that court might judge to be torture–and have been given the go-ahead to do so. Please note here the justice explicitly ruled that torture is torture irrespective of whether or not it is accepted “mental health practices”
Report comment
For whatever the reasons (and I am well aware that some of those reasons may be racist) thank God that children of POC are as it were, winning out of by being spared what euphemistically goes by the name of “standard care”.
Report comment
It is good that you are vocally against the use of ECT. So congratulations on that. And yes not giving it is important but not remotely enough. I think that the problem is far more extensive them not having other tools. What my research reveals about the average psychiatrist is that they actually don’t use ECT themselves, have some sense of the harm it causes, but unlike you, do not have the honesty to actually critique ECT. Indeed, about 6 months ago, a Toronto psychiatrist was consulted by one of his patients about ECT because here niece had decided to have ECT herself and the “treatment” was scheduled to begin in one day’s time. The psychiatrist in a panic called me up and asked if I could speak with the family–because she had asked him his opinion on ECT–and he didn’t dare give it. While it is good that he reached out, imagine not answering your patient because you are worried about being penalized by the profession for doing to. If you will excuse my saying so, speaking of gutlessness! This guy was past retirement age and at this point had little to lose–and nonetheless, he ducked the question. Yes I know that there is a price to pay for going against the profession by saying ECT is harmful, but if every psychiatrist who knows that it is highly problematic and arguably unacceptable would only admit to what they know, we might have gotten rid of this appalling “treatment” decades ago! As for interns, as Breggin and I have been both wrote, moreover, they are made to get their hands dirty early on by being forced to give ECT, thereby rendering them complicit.
Report comment
Ah, the problem is that most of the organizations that think of themselves as vanguard are not remotely vanguard, but indeed remain attached to the system and as such perpetuate the system.
Report comment
Whenever we pull back from the conclusions that our own analysis shows is warranted,we in the long run endanger everything for which we are fighting, whatever great strides we appear to be making along the way. .
Report comment
You have to know the context in which that person thinks what they think. When you understand the context, you understand what they are up against, what they mean by what they say. Calling something either a brain disorder (which it is not) or a mental illness (which is nonsensical) eliminates the context that will help you understand what what the person is dealing with and instead substitutes an arbitrary label that you apply which is mistakenly called treated as causal.
Report comment
That’s correct, but they’ve managed it now for over 100 years and have had a huge resurgence every time it looked like we had them beat–so we need to have our wits about us
Report comment
precisely
Report comment
registered, I am not sure why you are saying these things. It is not that you are not correct about how the majority of people have or will respond. You most certainly are. However, to not speak truth because the majority of people will begin by dismissing what you say and because you know how they will dismiss you has never been the way that progress is made on huge issues. There is a process here, and the process involves speaking the truth and speaking it relentlessly irrespective of how people respond. to quote Gandhi on this one, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you –and then you win.”
Report comment
I realize that it looks this way, Oldhead, and so I very much see why you ask what you did My own sloppiness here. No, I don’t agree that the attrition model is not longer “realistic or possible”. I think it is as vital as it ever was–and incidentally it is a model which came into being only about ten years ago and in part precisely because of the developments which Richard suggests. What I agree with rather is the concluding paragraph. That said, I should add, as a leftist and as someone with an intersectional analysis which very much includes class, I also agree that ignoring the monied interests involved would be a serious mistake. As such, correspondingly, when I write at length about the attrition model in book chapters (the only place where I can develop it at length) I prioritize such ways of eroding psychiatry as law suits, hardly something that gets rid of capitalism, but something that uses the leverage within the system in a way that could seriously detract from the huge profits made and in so doing, do its own job in eroding psychiatry.
Thanks for asking for the clarification, Oldhead.
Report comment
Ted is indeed alive.
Report comment
Robert, first let me say again how much I appreciate not only your work but your incredible honesty and openness. at the same time, let me suggest that people who call themselves antipsychiatry proceed initially from the very same position as you do–that what history and science has shown is that psychiatry cannot be reformed and it harms people. The only difference is that we call for getting rid of it. If you are convinced at this point that it cannot be reformed and necessarily harms, why would you call for reform (as is the case with critical psychiatry) To put this another way, why would you call for the reform of an institution that you now believe cannot be reformed? Isn’t the strictly critical psychiatry position something that no longer fits your beliefs?
Report comment
Larger societal changes for sure are necessary.
Report comment
Nicely put, Richard, And needless to say, I agree.
Report comment
yes, Robert, I can see what you get from identifying as critical psychiatry rather than antipsychiatry. At the same time, I think that there are things that you lose–the clarity that this is an area that cannot and must not continue, that we are not looking at something that has the chance of being made acceptable,
Report comment
Organizing and working with others on the basis of the one understanding of antipsychiatry that kept antipsychiatry alive and well and not diluted, that is my democratic right, also my responsibility. If you Oldhead, choose to operate otherwise, that is your choice.
Report comment
and thank you, Robert, for all your hard work. That said, I have an obvious question. I agree of course that psychiatry cannot be reformed–but why do you go from there to “critical psychiatry” instead of “antipsychiatry”, when critical psychiatry largely rests of the basis that reform is possible?
Report comment
very nice piece, fellows Keep up the good work
Report comment
Nicely done, as always, Phil. And yes, the fact that the very existence of psychiatry is based on lies is precisely what cannot be reformed–and why this direction is ultimately a no-starter.
Report comment
Szasz’s strength–and he was a giant here–was deconstructing the concept of mental illness and attacking the idiotic use of languaage. IN this he was a leader unparalleled. also of course he did not practice psychiatry and taught his deconstruction to others. did he understand other oppresssions and their relationship to psychatry? A bit here and there but in no consistent way, and some of his pronouncements were horrifying. For example, there was a video he made many decades where he quite rightly objected to homeless people being thrown in the psychiatric system–then to my amazement he added, that they shoul be thrown in the prison system instead for they are violating vagrancy laws. So while brilliant and an enormously important leader this area, perhaps even the most important, Szasz was as it were a mixed bag, both exceptionally enlightened and unenlightened at the same time.
Report comment
Oldhead,my guess is that Richard is addressing this to you because of your dismissal of how essential it is that antipsychiatry be defined in term of abolition of psychiatry–and not just abolition of forced psychiatry. Nor is this just a matter of words
Re the difference between abolish, end, eliminate, while you keep bringing this up as if frank agreed to the committment to “ending” as part of the definition of antipsychiatry, but the point is that he hasn’t, leastwise not in anything which i have read. Hence, this is far more that a semantic issue.
Report comment
It is not antidemocratic to have a bottom line. It is principled.
Report comment
I don’t know how to shed light here, but Judi was concerned that if a total antipsychiatry position was taken and was successful, it would leave people in the lurch who were in serious emotional distress. Now I agree with her and always have that antipsychiatry needs to take cognizance of of the difficult straights in which people find themselves and needs for example to make sure that people who have been coping by the use of psychiatric drugs will still have them at their disposal. Judi and I actually had two meetings in toronto not long after she made the statement that Oldhead is referring to. The first was just between the two of us, and it was precisely on who she had in mind when she critiqued antipsychiatry folk and how to understand her disagreement, though we quickly drifted into discussing feminism. The second was a meeting precisely on the paucity of feminist analysis in the movement and on this she met with three of us Toronto antipsychiatry Toronto women On the first issue, which actually, we both saw as a far less urgent issue, we never came to any resolution, though my sense is that the two of us walked away with more mutual understanding, also with increased respect for one another. On the second, the agreement was more or less total, but the feminist initiative that we were hoping would materialize out of the discussion never exactly happened. Would we have gone further on either of these issues had she visited Toronto again? I would like to think so, but that necessarily remains an unknown.
Report comment
or in fact instead of being a problem, it is precisely what preserved antipsychiatry at a time when the survivor movement, as Lapon wrote, was going liberal.
Report comment
The issue is not you personally, Oldhead but the compromised definition of antipsychiatry that a few people have and your insistence that they are still antipsychiatry. During the long period when you stopped being involved, antipsychiatry was kept alive precisely by those of us (most in Canada, a few in the US like Chabasinski) insisting on a total abolitionist definition. Most everyone else watered things done, in part in order not to alienate people, in part out of liberal inclinations And before you know it, antipsychiatry was on a serious decline pretty well everywhere except Canada. Those of us who took abolition as a bottom line kept antipsychiatry alive and active over those decades precisely by insisting on the bottom line of abolitionism and never allowing the concept to get watered down. Now of course, people are free to define things as they wish. I am likewise free to only be part of grouping which hold fast to abolitionism and to encourage that understanding of antipsychiatry.
Report comment
saying that someone who is not for abolishing psychiatry is not antipsychiatry is not being dogmatic. Everyone bands together on the basis in part of definition. There has to be a basis of unity that distinguishes who you band together with tht basis directly related to what your ulltimate goal. By insisting on the goal, Canadian antipschiatry activists kept antipsychiatry alive and active for decadeswith help from Americans like Lapon and Chabasinski in the US a, while it largely collapses in most of the world including most of the US. It collapsed for a a variety of reasons but one of which was a definition that did not define the ultimate goal, one which watered down the meaning. Antipsychiatry was kept alive by people very much keeping to the bottom line that you are recommending being open about. For myself personally, i didn’t do that in the late 80s –and I am not about to do that now. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you had gone on to other issues for most of those decades and just returned in the last several years and so maybe you are not the familiar with these dynamics–but that does not make them an iota less critical. I invite you, Oldhead,to take that seriously and not to just assume that you missed nothing during that time and that people who are taking a different attitude than you are simply being “dogmatic”.
Report comment
actually Judi was not only talking about people like Laing, though that for sure was her main reference, she was also talking about the Phoenix Rising. Not that we did not see eye-to-eye on all sorts of issues, including the need for greater feminist analysis.
Report comment
Actually, I have an interesting anecdote about Szasz here. When he was in England, he met with people from Asylum Magazine. they wanted to have his autograph but had no piece of paper to put it on. So they give him a copy of Asylum (which has a nickname “toward a democratic psychiatry.” He took up his pen about to sign, then stopped, saying, “I cannot sign this–it has the word “psychiatry on it!”
Report comment
Actually, I have an interesting anecdote about Szasz here. When he was in England, he met with people from Asylum Magazine. they wanted to have his autograph but had no piece of paper to put it on. So they give him a copy of Asylum (which has a nickname “toward a democratic psychiatry.” He took up his pen about to sign, then stopped, saying, “I cannot sign this–it has the word “psychiatry on it!”
Report comment
Julie, what Szasz set in motion here caused problem from people who are antipsychiatry ever since. That said, one of our most eminent Toronto ECT survivors made it very that if her choice was between Scientology and psychiatry, she would take her chances “with the shrinks”. Not a decision she came to lightly.
Report comment
Good to have others who know the history
Report comment
Yes, we are in total agreement on this, Frank.
Report comment
Again, Judi was not antipsychiatry and indeed largely critiqued antipsychiatry, though we were strongly joined on almost every other matter.
Report comment
actually, Julie, here is where Szasz went badly astray. Alas, Szasz formed an alliance with Scientology, which is what gave birth to CCHR–an alliance which has been used against antipsychiatry ever since.
Report comment
yes, precisely
Report comment
Yes, Judi, who without question was otherwise absolutely wonderful, always dismissed antipsychiatry this way, clearly ignoring such vital antipsychiatry warriors as psychiatric survivors Lenny Lapon and Don Weitz as well as the vast majority of people who wrote for leading survivor magazines like Phoenix Rising. Clearly her movement was not antipsychiatry (which is one the reasons that I have carefully distinguished between the survivor movement and the antipsychiatry movement– saying that they interpenetrate but are not the same–and clearly this was not one of her areas of expertise.
Report comment
Yes, Oldhead, that is indeed what democracy is all about. At the same time part of democracy is that people be allowed to say that they think an argument is going in circles without being accused of being mean, anti-democratic or authoritarian.
It also has to be perfectly acceptable that while making concessions on all sort of matters, some of us have bottom lines. Clearly mine –and I have always been crystal clear about this–is abolition.
Report comment
Actually everyone is increasingly vulnerable as they advance into old age and everyone becomes a potential victim.
Report comment
Ron, given the entire profession is based on myths and misrepresentations, we are clearly talking a about a profession here–not bad apples. No doubt in every case of atrocity, there are officials involved who to act more humanely and who deeply regret what their colleagues do –which is great–but that does not change the verdict that we need to make about the profession. Herein lies the difference between a systemic argument and individualization and liberalism.
Report comment
To be clear, Frank, the attrition model of psychiatry abolition would of course prioritize getting rid of force; the ultimate goal, nonetheless would be psychiatry abolition more generally (and no, not by force). In this regard, you might (or might not) want to look at what I have written about the attrition model elsewhere (see for example,https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/attrition-model-psychiatry-abolition/
A question: If an attrition model of psychiatry abolition were adopted, could you live with this as opposed to restricting abolition to what you are calling “consensual psychiatry”?
Report comment
So it might seem, Frank but when we push on this matter to find out what you mean–and others have done so repeatedly– strange and at least seemingly inapplicable concepts like freedom of speech keep popping up. Which suggest that there is far more to this difference than semantics and it does seem to present an obstacle. In your words–just saying.
Report comment
Julie, email me at [email protected]
Report comment
Not foolish at all, Julie. While changes that we fight for often dont materialize in our lifetime, of course we all want them to. Now personally, as someone who is remarkably, unwell, I was expecting to go to my grave with seeing a resurgence in antipsychiatry. Nonetheless, like many others I plowed on, year after year, like earthworm, preparing the ground for change. Then lo and behold, we saw ourselves in the midst of a resurgence–and so you never know!
Report comment
Hi there, people, I noticed the word “14 years of activism in the area” has crept in. Possibly, a typo that kept being repeated and perhaps even initially of my doing. To stop any confusion, the antipsychiatry work done by abolitionist (activists and survivors) has been going strong at least in Canada since 1979, with a huge boost coming in the early 80s. I myself joined the movement in 1979 but only became extremely active in 1981–then never looked back.
One other thing, since posting this article, a number of people have emailed me indicating that they want to join CAPA. As long as you appreciate that CAPA is an abolitionist group, of course, we are happy to accommodate. Unfortunately the CAPA email is on the blink right now, but I can easily add you to the CAPA email list if you email me asking, which two of you have done in the last few days. You will find my email address listed on the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education website.
Report comment
Interesting, Fred. Thanks for this.
Report comment
Oldhead, I agree with you that the fact that we have all these people arguing about the meaning of antipsychiatry is a sign of progress. I would add that in part, this is what 14 years of activism in this area has finally resulted in, as opposed to your describing the product of those years as constituting “zero progress”. That said, we are not simply arguing about words. We are arguing basic principles–bottom lines And while semantics is surely involved here, it is not just a matter of semantics. Also it is hardly just bullshit. It makes a huge difference whether people declare themselves opposed to coercive psychiatry only or whether they declare themselves opposed to psychiatry period. Moreover, people surely have a right to have their own bottom lines and to organize and group together on the basis of these. And clearly psychiatry abolition is a bottom line for a huge number of us.
Report comment
I wouldnt say we had no victories, Oldhead, just temporary and qualified victories. For example for a long time we got rid of lobotomies–and both a major fight and major achievement it was.
Report comment
yes, Kindredspirit, it was clear to me that there was a typo here–and I knew what you meant.
Report comment
Well put, Oldhead
Report comment
Yes, I would agree with Steve here. Medical substances can sometimes be of assistance to people in emotional distress, and so one would not want to rule out medical people as among those who could be helpful. For this, however, Ron, for we do not need the bogus medical specialty called psychiatry. To credit psychiatry as acceptable because they sometimes provide the help that any good doctor would or should is to totally miss the point.
Report comment
Let me suggest that there is a difference between vision and strategy that needs to be made. Uprising is absolutely correct that eliminating force is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to eliminate psychiatry. At the same time, I think that eliminating the use of force would go a long long way toward eliminating psychiatry for force in intrinsic to psychiatry. And is even that the whole story? Not really. As Oldhead says, psychiatry is about force. However, it is also about the rise and dominance of medicine.
Report comment
great. Do email me.
Report comment
Yes, Oldhead, you are absolutely right. The Wikipedia definition represents the hegemonic definition, in this case the definition by the professionals.
Report comment
I would agree with Oldhead that what others have to say is irrelevant. As moral people, we should be acting in terms of what is ethical–not in terms of whether or not others disparage yusfor it. At the same time, I do not agree, Oldhead, with saying that abolition is not the bottom line. While the definitions of abolition are not exhaustive (and few definitions of any term are) people who are aboltitionists have pretty well spelt out what they mean by it, including myself in this article, clarifying that stripping psychiatry of the power which it has, cutting the special relationship with the state, and eliminating it as a recognized field of medicine would in itself constitute abolition. Again, others would have some differences with this definititon–and I knew of few words in any language anywhere where you would not find people differing on the definition–my sense is that most abolitionists would largely agree with this definition. Which is the end as good as you can get when you dealing with language. As for the issue of not using the word, of course someone can be a antipsychiatry without using the word “abolition”. If they persistently find themselves uneasy with others using the word and keep on wanting to modify it, on the other hand, then no, I do think they are antipsychiatry, although they may want to be and although they may have an otherwise strong critique.
Report comment
Oldhead, while I understand your point about the AMA and its like and indeed appreciate you visionary anarchism here, and while I too have a broader critique of medicine ,there are very few people who want to get rid of psychiatry who also want to deregulate medicine, and as such, in any way tying antipsychiatry to such a agenda, let me suggest, would be a profound mistake. My sense here is that an antipsychiatry agenda needs to be cognizant of, relate to, and look for the openings that exists in the here-and-now.
Report comment
Ron, there are a number of problems with what you are saying. the fact that people use the word “antipsychiatry” as a term of disparagement is epistemologically and ethically irrelevant. Positions should not be determined by how people by whether or not people attack you for them. As for the fact that some psychiatrist sdo good work–yes, that has been acknowledged by me in this article and in others. But the good work they do is not medical in nature and in spite of the fact, not because of the fact that they are psychiatric.
As for what stops me from recognizing the weakness of the abolitionist positions–the simple fact that weaknesses that you refer to are weaknesses in the position of the theorists who reject the abolitionist position–not weaknesses in the abolitionist position itself. IN other words, what stops me is logic.
Not, I realize what you were hoping to hear,
Report comment
well put, Steve
Report comment
I am critical of it as well. At the same time, feminists have always used the words differently–being very clear that they are using the word metaphorically and that it is to be understood as a metaphor only .
Which is not to say that I am recommending feminist therapy. Again, the emphasis on professionals seems to me mistaken. Moreover,There are, alas, lots of feminist therapists that have harmed survivors in one way or another. Only that it needs to be thought of differently.
Report comment
Yes, lies that make you feel that are in trouble if you don’t take some “treatment” or other, added to pressure from others–of course these are subtle forms of coercion. And take away what is legally called coercion only and this will still wreak havoc in people’s lives. To tell ourselves otherwise is to let down all the millions of people profoundly damaged by what is euphemistically called “consensual psychiatry”.
Report comment
Abolishing forced treatment is a wonderful things to do and should be prioritized, but no, that would not be abolishing psychiatry just the use of blatant forced in administering it.
Report comment
Frank, if psychiatry does not exist as a medical profession, then for all intents and purposes, you have abolished it. If people want to pay others for a certain type of philosophy or whatever who are not recognized doctors and not pretending to be, but that once would have been seen as psychiatrists, that is s a different question and no one who is calling themselves antipsychiatry is trying to stop that.
that said, while I am not meaning to offend you, I worry about how much time so many of us have spent going around in circles with you on this question, for despite what I see as good intentions on everyone’s part, it does not seem to be productive. Which I have to say worries me.
Report comment
Julie, the likelihood is that whoever is supposed to be checking that account just isn’t doing it. That keeps happening. No, you don’t have to be a toronto resident,though the meetings are held in Toronto. If you want to Skype in to a meeting, let us know ahead of time (email me at my University of Toronto address) and that will do it. We are off for the summer, but I could surely add you to our email list now. Just go to the Ontario Institute at University of Toronto website http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/Home/index.html
And if you email me now, I can get you on our email list.
and look up my email address at the bottom of the pages where it says gateway to faculty and the email me
Report comment
There was no discussion of Healey at all. There were three issues really, neither of which would have won the day without the others: 1) academic freedom; 2) the fact that universities don’t like saying no time a free gift of money; and 3) the fact that I am a faculty member. Pushing all of these together and repeatedly is what won the day.
Report comment
Yes, indeed, Uprising. Of course, we need to define it!
Report comment
Steve, much thanks for your comments. Re Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, we haven’t really voted for years. And while we could not accommodate a bunch of people skyping in, now and again, someone who is member wishes to Skype in to attend a meeting lets us know in advanceand one of our Toronto members accommodates. The long and the short is that if you if wanted to join and could make the time to skype into 2 meetings, there is no problem with you joining. Now as if happens, we take the summer off every year rom May or June onward (as in no meetings), and so we are off right now but we will be back to official meetings in September and will be having monthly meetings from then on until May or June of the following year. If you want to join, email me at my University of Toronto address and you will be added to the list; and even now, you could start getting our emails
Report comment
That makes perfect sense to me. Of course, it is the nature of the person and the quality of the relating. And this a degree simply does not confer
Report comment
You are an interesting thinker, Duncan
Report comment
You are very welcome, Richard. And yes, you and I are very much in agreement on how we understand abolition.
Report comment
I am not “anti-therapy” and do think it can be very useful, On the other hand, I am against therapy that pathologizes, that depoliticizes, that is involuntary, also even kind empathic therapy that turns itself the centre of the person’s existence. The point is that there are all sort of ways for people to deal with their issues–not one. And don’t think we need more therapists in the world but less. Less professionals in general, and more people helping one another. Less professionals and more real community.
Report comment
Frank, the attrition model of psychiatry abolition does look at first steps that move in the direction of abolition as a way to proceed. Getting rid of force, getting rid of ECT would both be seen as reasonable first steps
Report comment
I totally agree, KindredSpirit.
Report comment
I always find it hard to know, Frank, whether the issues between us are just semantical or more than that. Please note that I never defined “abolition” in this article or any where else as meaning “wising it off the face of the earth”. Nor did I suggest that a person could not consult “a shrink” only that the “shrink” would not be given the authority of being a medical person, for psychiatry would be delegitimizes as such and not longer qualify as medical.
Report comment
good to hear from you, David. A different type of article than that, but you might find it interesting.
Report comment
Kindred Spirit, much thanks for your thoughts here. Re the issue of being called a “radical”, while people may see it as an insult, I very much accept the term profoundly see myself as a radical. the “roots” of the word radical are mportant here, for it literally means “roots”. To be a “radical”, ergo, is to go the the roots of the matter. And really, what else is worth doing?
Report comment
Hi there, Julie. Always so good to hear from you. And yes, absolutely, we see thing similarly
Report comment
Always nice to hear from you, uprising
Report comment
Ah, but Bradford, it IS something you are “against”.
Report comment
much thanks
Report comment
I agree with your analysis of psychiatry but confused about about what you say about antipsychiatry. We don’t grant psychiatry an iota of legitimacy.
Report comment
thanks
Report comment
much thanks.
Report comment
point taken, Stephen. I am uncomfortable with this too. If you can think of another way to quickly do this, I would stop using the slash method.
Report comment
it surely is, humanbeing
Report comment
I absolutely agree, Richard.
Report comment
very interesting figures.
Report comment
Yes, indeed, Frank. It would be nice to see more such news. Maybe now that there has been a single inroad, others who are in a position to do so can use it as leverage for getting such a thing going at their university. Or possible a change that is a bit different but that this provides leverage for?
Report comment
A very good question, Steve, and perhaps I shouldn’t be creating using this slashed word (anti/critical), though I do from time to time. Here is why I do. For sure I think critical psychiatry is a highly problematic, simple reformist, and as such, not the way to go. At the same time, I am aware that there are discoveries made by critical psychiatry thinkers that antipsychiatry thinkers fully agree with, while in no way agreeing with the reformist position. I use the “slashed” word every so often to suggest the inclusion of those discoveries. Can you think of another way to do so that does not get one into huge explanations at every turn? So far I cannot, but as I said, I very much get why you are raising the issue.
What about other antipsychiatry people who are on this forum and are reading this exchange? How would you deal with this question elegantly without having to go through a major explanation each time the issue came up? For it surely does come up repeatedly.
Report comment
good arithmetic.
Report comment
Thanks, Robert, for the update and for your work. That said, Oldhead is absolutely right. This is reformism pure and simple and while it will avail people in the short run –and so I would not speak against it–in the long run, it will not lead to a fundamental shift.
Report comment
Mazel tov, Emily
Report comment
A very thoughtful review, Susan. Much thanks
Report comment
Yes, Chaya, I kind of suspected that would appeal to you
Report comment
much appreciated, anothervoice
Report comment
The list would go on forever, but yes, it would feel good.
Report comment
Oh it is cursed, Frank. It just does not know it yet.
Report comment
Thanks for asking, Bippyone. My novel “The Other Mrs Smith” is likely to come out in either the late fall or very early winter. I am exciting by the prospect of it coming out for I think it is an important piece of consciousness raising, as indeed art can be.. It is something that I promised a friend who is a shock survivor in Toronto –the now deceased Carla MacKague, that one way or another I would perserver with until it got out. And while she did not live to see it, in my very last phone call with her, –and we only got to talk for a couple minutes for she was too sick to stay longer on phone –I got to tell her that it was in the bag, as it were.
Anyway, do stay tune for it could be coming out as early as October, depending how quickly the publisher moves.
Report comment
Using the oppressors’ own research against them is indeed an important strategy for us all to cultivate.
Report comment
yes, it is sad, Borut.
Report comment
Antip:To be clear, cursing with a “mental health professional” present would of course be highly unwise. So would cursing in any other place where it is likely to land one in trouble. Knowing what is possible where, what is safe and what is unsafe and when and where is a type of acquired literacy that is indispensable. As for books, I have written a large many.
Nice to hear from you. All the best
Report comment
One way of interpreting it, Oldhead. The other is less pragmatic, and more of an ironic bent.
Report comment
Good to hear about both the cheering up the plotted exit. All the best.
Report comment
I am not sure whether or not CAPA is the only active antipsychiatry group going –but active, we surely are. May guess is that there are a few others. I have a hunch that there is one in France. And for sure, there are lots on individuals throughout the world. Maybe if we started a network, we would soon find groups coming out from the woodwork. There is a CAPA meeting this Sunday. Do you want me to float the idea around about CAPA of taking the first step to facilitating the formation of a network of antipsychiatry groups and individuals? And if so, what do you think that first small step should look like? We are absurdly busy right now –but it is something that we could possibly more seriously look at, say, come May.
Report comment
Not meaning to offend you, EliseMaia, and I don’t know if this helps, but as I think about what people are subjected to, there are some obscenities so profound –and I count ECT among them –that a response that is totally polite feels inadequate. Ergo, resolution language which gives voice to that.
Report comment
There are a lot of books that deal well with the science and show that all of it is faulty. My recommendation Harper, would be to read some of these and you may glean a better idea of why people are responding as they are.
Report comment
I belong to and am chair of n antipsychiatry group in Toronto Canada called “Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, which has been active for a very long time. If others also belong to antipsychiatry organization, we could put on the agenda of our different groups having a international network that we could all join. Where are others on this issue? Have you local groups that are antipsychiatry? Could you form one if you have not one already? Could you take the initiative for them to join a network? Having at very least a network with some basic principles, is, I would think, very doable.
Report comment
There was no one there, Frank, who was committed to keeping up the momentum. Single demonstrations do very little. You need an organized campaign. And accounts in a very important way for why all initiatives have failed.
Report comment
yes, I recall her doing that, which is why I stayed away from the various comments about her in the last little while. So sorry about what happened to you, Truth. And yes, Oldhead, we need to speak back to celebrities becoming “poster children” for the “mental health” message.
Report comment
Richard, I am glad you like the blog, and as always, it is good to hear from you, Re the contradictory nature of Gandhi, I assume that all leaders are to varying degrees contradictory, but that does not stop me from seriously considering their espoused principles. As for Gandhi, I am concerned by your statement that it is “an historical truth that during his lifetime there was not a single war he did not like, and he ended up actively helping to recruit people to fight in those wars.” I cannot but feel this is a serious exaggeration, as opposed to a “historical fact” for it flies in the face of many of the very clear stands he took when countries were under attack (not all of which I agree with, by the way, but which were nonetheless distinctly in conformity with the principles of non-violent resistance). Also, there is a sense in this post as well as some of those by others that “revolutionary” necessarily means the inclusion of violence, an equation which is not something I agree with, though I very much agree that “revolutionary” definitively means the concerted application of some kind of pressure or force (in other words, that consciousness-raising itself is not enough). Anyway, just my two cents so that you know where I am coming from. I respect that often that those of us who are radical are forced to agree to disagree on such things for we are highly unlikely to convince one another, and there in the end, a great deal that unites us.
Report comment
Of course, but the point is that it won’t. That’s why we need to get a whole lot better both educating and applying pressure.
Report comment
I am all for coordinated campaigns.
Report comment
A single world demonstration does very little, as you can see, though it was a good beginning. But a demonstration is not a prolonged strategy. You need a coordinated campaign with multiple tactics. It is not that none of us have the knowledge to bring this off. what we do no have is the people power. In essence, we need a far far bigger movement with people willing to act.
Report comment
Hi again, Frank: Your point about Cooper, for sure is important. And yes, as you know, I am an anarchist. the problem with the Wikipedia pages, is beyond what you outline. Almost none of what they include is actually antipsychiatry. Moreover, it is incredibly American-centric.
Report comment
Yes, indeed, an antipsychiatric 2017.
Report comment
Thanks for the comments, Oldhead. To be clear, I am not an evolutionist and yes I agree pressure is needed. While I value much of Marx, my idea of pressure however, stems more from Gandhi. That noted, it goes without saying that i totally agree that we need an unequivocally antipsychiatry agenda–something not clouded by reformism,
Report comment
well put, Frank
Report comment
good to hear!
Report comment
The attrition model of abolition assumes just that , that is, assumes that this is a slow and gradual process.
Report comment
After so little attention, it is great that we all together making this happen Phil. Thank you and thank everyone else for all your hard work making these breakthroughs happen.
Report comment
agreed.
Report comment
terrific
Report comment
Yes, indeed, there are lots of metaphors from nature that would do.
Report comment
Oldhead, it is hard to say re the attacks on the scholarship, but at very least, it did not seem to hurt
Report comment
glad you were able to make it, Lerkkweed, and thanks for the comment.
Report comment
Always good to hear from you, Frank
Report comment
much thanks, Richard.
Report comment
An interesting interview. That said, let me just weight in with the thought that it very much matters what words we use, and insofar as any of us use words like “schizophrenic” and “psychotic”, we are thereby implying their legitimacy and in the process we are upholding psychiatry. And while this issue may look minor, it is not. As Black feminist Audre Lorde so poignantly put it, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
All the best.
Report comment
Hi there, everyone. First let me profusely thank all of the people who have come to my defence re the criticism of the scholarship that has been coming out in Canadian sources. Much appreciated. That said, let me correct a misimpression that first appeared in one of the comments on MIA and keeps getting recycled. The scholarship is not something for the medical school at University of Toronto. It is for students at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), which is the graduate faculty of education at University of Toronto. It has particularly relevance for Adult Education and Community Development (which is a social change and activist program). Correspondingly, there is not remotely a course in antipsychiatry in the medical school. Rather there is an integration of antipsychiatry into my courses at OISE, as well as a coterie of students doing theses in this area, including students who are psychiatric survivors. Hope this helps clarify.
Report comment
Alex, obviously on anything that keeps the systems running, we would not be allies. We are not wanting to “improve” the system after all, but get rid of it. Where can we often ally with folk who are not antipsychiatry? By doing things together that they also want that fall within the parameters of the attrition model of abolition (see my on this in Psychiatry Disrupted). What the attrition model does is to call on antipsychiatry activists to only support reform that moves in the direction of psychiatry abolition. A concrete example, we can ally with groups that want to get rid of non-voluntary treatment, including those folk that are not remotely antipsychiatry. Why? Because albeit it is not sufficient, willynilly, it moves society in the direction of psychiatry abolition. By the same token and for the same reasons, we can ally with people who are not antipsychiatry who want to get rid of electroshock. In my chapter I go through a bunch of examples of how this can of reasoning can be used and has been used to decide what to support and what not support, what to ally over and what not.
Report comment
Nice to hear someone referring to the 1982 principles, Oldhead. Those of us in Toronto, where as you know, the conference was hosted, have always been proud of these 1982 principles and antipsychiatry folk in Toronto continue to live by them. That said, while Toronto is an oasis and has continued to sport one of the few truly antipsychiatry groups around, our ability to grow has been greatly impeded. And while there are many reasons for this,yes, one is precisely the co-optation of survivors etc. by the government and also by reformist professionals who do not understand liberation or liberation movements. Also, in the 80s we had the interest of the media (I will never forget the extensive and for the most part positive coverage which they gave us when Don Weitz, Shirley Johnson and I (as reps of Coalition Against Electroshock) staged a three day sit-in in the Minister of Health’s office –but the media has now almost totally bought the biological story line, the myth of the dangerous “mental patient” and except in isolated cases has little regard for the rampant denial of human rights. In this regard,psychiatry has successfully sold the public on its message. So successful have they been, that the legal route is not what we would have hoped, for judges continue to be intransigent and so when there are legal challenges, we almost always lose.
I see little shift in the media, or in the judiciary. Where I am seeing shifts right now, however, is with survivors themselves and in academia. Survivors for decades avoided antipsychiatry like the plague, going rather with a “reformist” bent and now by contrast, what we see is more and more survivors once again actually interested in antipsychiatry. We are also in different ways seeing legitimation of the area in academia–hence the scholarship, hence my invitation to use academia in the fight against psychiatry.
So I have to say that I am once again having hope.
As for MindFreedom, please note that MindFreedom is not and has never claimed to be antipsychiatry. Nor does Mad in America. It is into reform of the system, while antipsychiatry folk are clear that the system has to be bit by bit dismantled.
That said, I am grateful for allies even when they are not antipscyhiatry. And I have no interest in fighting with them, only for being aware of when we can and where we cannot work together.
Report comment
Yes, Frank, it is implicit. At the same time, it is important to make it highly explicitly. To be able to map exactly how and exactly when these other professions are doing the work of the “mental health” regime, and in particular, psychiatry.
Report comment
My own guess? What you did all those years is likely on the “undermine” continuum, though inevitably it would have at the same time have been mixed with “doing the work” of psychiatric regime. Again, my invitation is to write something for you have your own kind of insider knowledge of this horrific system and you have the location from which to speak to nurses.
I am glad you are enjoying–if that is the word for it–my books. The best book which I have written and will ever write is Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–and you might find it interesting for there is a lengthy discussion of the colonization of nursing, psychology, and social work in it, with these disciplines and their colonization such that they do the work of psychiatry forming one of the chapters.
All the best.
Report comment
Agreed, Julie. Anything that uses diagnoses for things that are not diseases, anything that nurtures dependence, anything that increases hierarchy, anything by which others are experts on who a person is and/or should be is inherently unacceptable. As for psychiatrists who totally reject the medical model, yes they exist, and Breggin is an excellent example. At the same time, the majority of them, while often wonderful allies are critical psychiatry, not antipsychiatry, and so will only help us so far in the route that we need to tread, the changes that we need to effect. Their limitation is this regard is that they are into reformism –which as I have written elsewhere is not only not good enough but can be downright counterproductive.
Report comment
Nathan: Here is my sense of the antipsychiatry activist world re the matter you raised. I have been a very active member since 1980, have worked with activists throughout the world and feel I have a reasonably broad take on the community. What unites us all is antipsychiatry –that is, psychiatry abolition. We differ on other issues. This notwithstanding, besides that I agree with you that a critique of the related areas is absolutely necessary, I have seldom come across an antipsychiatry activist who does not have a critique of psychotherapy, psychology, social work etc. For the reality is, a good part of these are highly compromised and oppressive –and as such, something we do well to be concerned over. The difference is they have a critique–and they operate on it, but they are not calling for abolition of these whereas they are calling for the total abolition of psychiatry. Getting rid of psychiatry, getting rid of compulsory treatment, and getting rid of the “mental health” system as we know it, this is the focus, the point of agreement, and the bottom line. Now some of us (myself included) go further and want to get rid of the state per se, for we see the state as something that will inevitably erode community and create problems for individuals, as well as disempower them –and indeed I see principled anarchism as having a logical relationship to antipsychiatry. At the same time I recognize that this is not something on which antipsychiatry activists are likely to agree, and so I only stress such concepts in my own writing.
Report comment
It surely is. I could not agree more. Talking to professionals is hardly the optimal way to go and in the long run, this direction destroys and will continue to destroy community.
Report comment
Viuu, nice to hear from you. Always good to hear from someone who recognizes the mistakes that they have made and now knows whose side they have to be on. So good for you.
That said, that actually places you in a good position to do your part to help discredit psychiatry should you opt to do so. You might want to consider speaking up. You would not be alone in this for while it is very small, there are nurses doing just that. There is even a radical journal of nursing education. Nor is it too late. As for age, I am 71, very sick, and severely disabled, and am still doing that i can–to speak out against what is happening, to take part in demonstrations, to advise, to write, to strategize, etc,, while at the same time teaching full time and being head of my program. So I would not take 67 as too late if you wanted to have an impact here.
Report comment
Well put, Julie. The only thing it does not cover is the difference between antipsychiatry and critical psychiatry folk. Antipsychiatry folk like me, like Oldhead, like others, are seeking abolition not only of the obvious cooercion (which for sure is pivotal), but of the entire system
Report comment
I completely agree. We are as antipsychiatry activists opposed to the entire “mental health” system
Report comment
Absolutely, Frank
Report comment
actually, almost all antipsychiatry folk are highly critical of other parts of the system and other so-called mental health professionals. The difference is that psychiatry is the major focus, and when it comes to professionals, while generally strongly opposing professional inroads, very few are calling for a total abolition of any other profession, though for sure we want to contest a good part of what they do, of the claims which they make, and naturally of the power which they wield. Personally I have been on record repeatedly stating that we do not need more psychologists, etc., in fact, we need a whole lot less. And I have consistently opposed what is called “professionalization”.
Report comment
Forgive the confusion, Royalperiodot. My fault. I was actually responding to Kal. And the reasons that feelings came up was his words “I am sorry you feel that way.”
Report comment
As usual, Nomad, you seriously misinterpret me. I am all in favour of legal action. I don’t believe in states, and so the “eutopia” I am talking about is in a stateless society. I never remotely use the concept of recovery. I write about political actions and am persistently engaged in them. Also I am totally opposed to coercion and coercive “treatment”. As for Foucault, besides that to both of our satisfaction, the two us worked together in the 80s, I myself did not put his picture on the blog article (although i do not object to it). Mad in America did.
that said, as responding to your comments in the past about my articles has never led to anything except what I see ever new misinterpretations–something which, I suspect, does neither of us any good: A heads-up, I won’t be responding to further comments of yours. Though of course, you are free to keep commenting, however unfairly.
Report comment
Please understand that my analysis is not a “feeling” but an analysis. And as I have said already, why I brought up slavery was only to make the point that there are not always two legitimate sides to an issues. There is not with racism; there is no with slavery; there is not with murder, and there is not whether or not with blood-letting. Nor is there with psychiatry–for the paradigm is wrong and the claims do not hold water. Not that I would disclaim that there is connection in some way between slavery and psychiatry –only that this was not the point that I was making.
Report comment
PaisleyToes, you might want to take a look at the very last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–for it provides a detailed answer to the question that you have raised.
Report comment
thanks, Julie.
Report comment
Sorry, there has been so many comments that I have lost sight of exactly whose life you are referring to.
Report comment
The only option really is to report.
Report comment
The comparison with slave owning was to demonstrate one thing and one thing only–that is, it is not true that there always two legitimate sides to an issue. The issue that I am making is a logical one, Kalmd, and so it is totally irrelevant that slavery and psychiatry are not the same thing. The point is that there are not always two legitimate sides to an issue. If you want to know why I reject a side that you don’t, you would have to read my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness. –All the best.
Report comment
Kalmd: I understand your concern, but I cannot help you here–for the paradigm is simply wrong and when something is wrong, you have to get rid of it. Just as take one side only on the issue of slavery, I can take one side only on the issue of psychiatry–it is fundamentally flawed and harmful–and it has to go
Report comment
absolutely.
Report comment
Much thanks, Richards. It always feels so good hearing from folk who truly get the significance of this breakthrough
Report comment
Good question –and let me say I don’t think in this case that there is a single answer that fits everyone. Some people get stuck because stuff that happened in their earlier years and the triggers connected with them stop them from grappling constructively. Some because they do not get the support which they need. Some because the oppression out there is continuing to hammer at them, often relentlessly. Some because they are frighteningly isolated. Some because they have bought the line others (worse yet, generally professionals) can fix their problems.
Report comment
Sorry about what happened to you, and especially that the assault began so young, Carcar
Report comment
The person that I am trying to reach may or may not have read Foucault. I don’t just have just one audience. Yes, I want to reach the academic, and in an article on using academia –and only in such an article–they are of course one of the primary audiences. More generally, I am interested in reaching everyone who is open to strategizing with me about how to bring down psychiatry.
Report comment
You are very welcome, Alex.
Report comment
If you are largely looking for short, my articles are not for you, and you do better to skip them. As it happens I consider nothing in my article extraneous. It is an exploration of a topic. Will my writing influence MDs? Not the most obvious target. Nor does that worry me, for change from within is not what I am seeking. Psychiatrists will not get rid of psychiatry–for their interests runs counter. By the same token, any “reform” which they do will leave the damaging processes in tact. Please note in this regard, there are two different strains of theorists that write in this venue–the critical psychiatry folk and the antipsychiatry folk. And I belong to the latter.
Report comment
Well put, Frank
Report comment
There is a profound difference between us. While I believe people can have dire problems in living, including enormous distress and confusion, I do not believe in “mental illness”. This, I see as a medical fiction that does not serve but rather harms the group that it is hypothetically serves. And evil is not so much the word that I would use but rather harmful and self-interested. If you want to know why, Kal, do check out my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, where the whole issue is discussed in great detail.
Report comment
Precisely, Oldhead. These are the types of legitimation, the types inroads that we need.
Report comment
Very important, for of course, it can’t come to its sense–nor for its existence, can it afford to.
Report comment
Pretty far from Florida, I am afraid.
Report comment
Thanks, John.
Report comment
I agree with you human being, that academic freedom is very fragile, and no, without a huge fight, we often do not win –the thing is, though, we can fight fight –and then generally win.
Report comment
Thanks, Liz
Report comment
thank you, everyone. Yes, I have spent 45 some odd years in academia very much talking about antipsychiatry out loud!
Report comment
Much thanks, Frank. We are all of us doing this together! And don’t look now, but we have just moved mountains. Incidentally, I a blog coming out tomorrow that will be addressing this and other aspects of the use of academia to fight psychiatry.
Report comment
because to try to stop t is to admit that disability has a material side. Please note in this regard that people with a social only model of disabiity have labeled people like Breggin and I who object to electroshock because it is brain-damaging ableist. This is what we are up against.
Report comment
There is a problem with the tenets of critical disability that cannot be ignored and that is–it ultimately dissolves into liberalism and as such, is not “critical” at all. To ignore materialism with respect to psvchiatry makes perfect sense since there is no material difference between the people labeled mentally ill and the people labeled “mentally healthy” (though the damage created by the drugs eventually shifts this). To ignore it where materiality does make a difference (e.g., lungs that don’t breathe) is a whole different matter. How convenient to pretend it is a social construct when our polluting of the environment is involved. By so labeling it, we don’t have to stop the polluting. How convenient for those of us in the global north to say that it is a social construct, when our pollution of the environment and the wars that we foster create the material problems experienced by people in the global south–a reality that we can then ignore. There is a likewise a problem equating what people who are labeled “mentally ill” go through with the word “disability” –an equation, note, that we forget to our detriment, originated with psychiatry itself.
Report comment
Alex: To be clear, it was never my intention to imply that you were being defensive. I absolutely take your word for what happened in this particular situation. And how good that you took care of yourself in it and bravo for standing up for yourself!I was talking rather about general situations and key principles that we need to touch base with.
Re feminism per se, I do notice that in MadinAmerica, there is very little attention to feminism and when it does turn up, the reaction often strike a defensive (again, I am not commenting on you) A dynamic which tends to worry me. None of which is a comment at all on any particular person or any particular situation.
Re all being human beings together, yes of course that is exactly what we have to do. At the same time, my own position is that we will never really resolve inequities if we do not also focus in on them.
Report comment
While I am perhaps not as quick to label things this way, Alex, and while there are for sure differences between us here, we are not as far apart on this issue as it might first appear. I feel very differently about jobs than I do than other things –and my guess is that if I were in your place, while I would probably have assessed the situation differently, nonetheless I would have fairly soon walked away from this job situation also as long as if I had first made an honest attempt to learn. And I would have eventually walked away from it whether it was a job situation or not. The thing would be for me to know if I really did listen and that defensiveness on my part was not part of the equation. All of which, you indeed, may well have done yourself. Two bottom lines for me in this regard: The first is that I owe to people who are oppressed in way that I am not to be a learner and see if there are things that i need to adjust irrespective of whether or not I feel I am the object of a degree of unfairness. The second is that I owe it to myself not to stay in a situation where willy-nilly, I remain suspect and disrespected.
Report comment
I am not arguing that. Nor in any way have said that.
Report comment
No question, that happens. Fortunately so do other things.
Report comment
Research suggests that Blacks are oppressed more than whites by psychiatry currently, and for the vast majority of its history, women are oppressed more than men. That said, there is a degree nonetheless, where psychiatry is an “equal opportunity oppress”. That is, it is quite happy to colonize, brain-damage, and otherwise oppress everyone, irrespective of gender, class, and colour.
Report comment
There is a difference, I would agree, between revolutionary groups and simple identity groups, both of which I see as having a place in the world, but there is one which I priortize more. Marxism is a revolutionary movement, as is anarchism, as is feminism, as is environmentalism. Other things are less clear for they less consistently have a vision for the world. Both the mad movement and the antipsychiatry movement, I see in the in-between zone but veering toward revolutionary/visionary, and at their best, these are both inclusive and visionary. There is a question of timing here, at the same time and a question of emphasis. I do not see BLM as yet revolutionary but I do see it as a just, as necessary, and asprincipalled movement that I am called upon to endorse and actively support as someone who wants to see justice in this world. What is also significant is their complex intersectional analysis.
Am I suggesting that the antipsychiatry movement or the mad movement “join” BLM? I am not –any more than I am suggesting we join any other of the very important movements.What I am suggesting is that we listen to their concerns, do what we can to address their concerns, and more generally find ways for us all to be allies of each other in the fight for a better world.
Report comment
I am delighted that you like it, Fred.
Report comment
To be clear, Alex, when I say it is part of the process, that is not a justification of it at all, for I am not making an ethical statement but but a practical one. I personally do not like that kind of organizing and do not find it constructive. But I know that this is where people often need to be and so have found a way of allowing people their space here. Or to put this another way, I just know that it happen, that it inevitably happens, and you do not take it personally when it happens. You just try to be a force for moving beyond this type of analysis without losing your committment and without getting entangled in useless back-and-forth on it. Had I taken it personally and as a sign of something awful every time I was told that I had no right to an opinion for example because I was not a member of the oppressed group, I would not be doing what I am today in any group, including in antipsychiatry. That, I feel, would have been truly unfortunate.
Report comment
When people from oppressed groups reject those who are from the rest of the population, especially from the other side of the particular oppression binary that they are contending with, this is an expected moment in the development of any movement. I have seen it happen in absolutely every social justice movement, including in the mad movement. The thing is not to take it personally, not to employ words like “reverse sexism” or “reverse racism” but to understand for what it is and to see it as a part of a process.
Report comment
As a Canadian RR, I see more of what happens in Canada. And what I can tell you is that in Toronto, BlM has stood up against many oppressions including ableism. For an article of mine that shed some light of their recent disruption of Gay Pride and the racist responses to it, which will indeed, shed light on how I have seem BLM, see http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/bonnie-burstow/2016/07/breaking-down-arguments-and-mistruths-against-blmtos-pride-ins
Report comment
Blacks indeed are more at risk of psychiatric abuse than whites, Johns And that is vital to address; and I am all it favour of it being put front and center in the movement. By the same token, and this keeps being forgotten, women are particularly at risk, and the significance of that reality has long been marginalized in the movement
Report comment
what you are saying here RR is the same as what sexist men said during the heyday of feminism wheobjecting to women saying that women need human rights. Of course everyone needs right. and of course, everyone matters. But in a hegemonic society, it is always assumed that white lives matters–hence the phrase “black lives matters
Report comment
I would agree that if would be a very good thing if each of you who are Americans on this website called your Senators about Murphy. In this regard, we need to more actively intervene. The point here is that though analysis is critical, and indeed indispensable, analysis without action, as radical adult educator Paulo Freire puts it, is but verbalism. By the same token, to bring this back to the topic at hand, we should through our actions (both personal and more overtly political) be supporting BLM and indeed all other liberation and social justice movements. That is one of the principal ways that we an create a better society –and issue which includes but transcends identity politics.
Report comment
I don’t know if this is of help, but my sense is that to our detriment, elements of absolutely every social justice movement sell out elements of other social justice movement. Something that because a problem for us as social activists. Hence the importance both of conscientiously not reducing any any social movement to any other, and finding ways to both hold out to and negotiate between different perspectives.
Report comment
Agreed, it is the inmates liberation movement and not the consumer movement which stems from the civil rights movement.
Report comment
Interesting thought, Frank.
Report comment
Nomadic, It is not that I want to promote the family. It is that for the most part –and there are for sure dreadful experiences to the contrary–I would prioritize the family over the institution. Not that I want to prioritize either for what I most believe in is small communities where everyone has a say and everyone attends to the needs of each other and especially of children and seniors and those in need of support. And note that the purpose of institutional ethnography (my methodology) is to trace precisely how institutions wreak harm in individual lives –to trace, significantly, not to compare or evaluate.
Do I believe in the ideology of the family? As a feminist (and as such, as someone who sees it as part of capitalist patriarchy), and as someone more generally with a radical analysis, of course not.
IN this regard, any given article or book that I write or anyone else writes is not in a vaccuum. It is written in the context of everything else I have written or will write.
Again, all the best.
Report comment
I am replying to what you wrote further down in this exchange, because I could not do it there. Alex, it is good that both you are your partner are out about the fact that you were basically alone in this. I would have to add, that even where others are fully supportive, as I see it, ultimately no one “saves” anyone else. People save themselves.
Report comment
Wonderful that you had someone there for you in this highly difficulty but crucial transformation.
Report comment
Nomadic, I was trying to respond to what you posted on the 26 (or was that 27th) but could not. To answer your questions about Lisa, I don’t want to talk about her as if she were automatically suspect of maybe slipping into being responsible for child abuse, when to me, what she did is dramatically the opposite. Child abuse comes in many forms. The most well know is harming a child or being negligent. And this she not only did not do but ensured that it did not happen. Another form of child abuse, though the law does not so recognize it would be unnecessarily depriving a child of access to their parent or other who was taking care of them. This she also did not do.
That said, while I did not wish to go here for I don’t either want to do anything but celebrate Lisa’s actions, I do get why you wanted an answer to your question. And yes, I agree that question is relevant to this discussion. If Lisa’s solution did not work as in the shouting continued, and she didn’t do what then which she needed to (which likely would include but ideally would not be limited to reporting) then she would be derelict and would bear responsibility.
Again, that is not the person that I know so what I am writing at this point is very much a hypothetical.
Report comment
All possible, but not what was playing out in this particular story. That said, of course I agree that letting a child be used is not acceptable. I would add at the same time, your trust in things like Child Protection Services is something that I don’t remotely share. A common pattern is the child is removed from slightly abusive home and put in a place that is far more abusive.
Report comment
Of course protection services are needed. That said, to claim that the fact that a far higher percentage of kid apprehended are those re from oppressed families like working class etc. can be majorly attributed to the fact that the middle class is better able to hide what they do wrong misses a critical ingredient. Given that the determiners of what is abuse and neglect are middle class, white folk, their own classism and racism predisposes them to see “abuse” and “neglect” in how “others” raise their children.
Report comment
I was not familiar with Goffman’s 1972 publication. Thanks for the reference, also for a very thoughtful aticle.
Report comment
There clearly needs to be a major campaign to educate the general public about the fact that besides that psychiatric drugs are approved for “conditions” on the basis of poorly conducted and often dishonest research that people, including children, are being massively drugged for “conditions” for which these drugs were never approved. The question is: Where does one get money to fund such a campaign?
Report comment
Wbile stress can lead to illness, stress itself is not an illness. Nor is sadness or anger. They are perfectly normal human reactions. And no, we don’t need the label of “mental illness”. We need to understand what it is like to be a human being.
Report comment
I find many of your suggestions right on, Nomadic. And I greatly value what you post.That said, you seem to want to expand the power of other arms of the state as if that will solve our problems. In this, we strongly disagree
Report comment
Agreed, Nomadic, that we need others to be able to step in when a child is not protected. That said, as a Canadian, I don’t know the names or abbreviations for most American agencies, and so I am just guessing what “CPS” stands for. However, my guess is that it is an agency that takes children away from their parents and otherwise steps in at times of perceived neglect or abuse like Child and Family Services in Canada does. What your analysis leaves out and that is another arm of the state, and historically such agencies have done no end of harm, and indeed to everyone, but especially, the working class and the racialized. The point of my article is that all the arms of the state inevitably cause problems –and so to see them as just protection is inadequate. Which is where your itemization of what you thinks needs to be done in an earlier response of your to this article worries me In the better society that I would like to see us create (see Chapter Nine of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness), children in need of protection would be a problem of the entire community as a whole–and directly –and not some more or less detached and all-powerful arm of the state. And doing anything which expands their operation now, I would see as a misdirection.
Report comment
Fred, yes, critically aware resistance is indeed what I am advocating. And no, it is not easy. That said, your words “I guess we must believe in the strategies we come up with in our most lucid moments,” are very apt here. More or less everyone has lucid moments –and for the most part, we can distinguish between that clearness and what we are thinking when we are less clear. Taking note of that clarity and going with what it dictates even and especially when we are being pulled in other directions –that, I think, is the trick. To use a metaphor here — for I see this as metaphor only –we all have “parts” that are very aware of what is needed, of what protects us. To let that “part” have sway especially when we are tricky positions or in times that require clearly-sighted vision and very careful strategizing and following through, –that, let me suggest, is what people need to get good at. To be able to do this, this, I would suggest, is one of our great strengths as a species, and one it behooves us to exercise more.
Report comment
Yes, transforming group dynamics is critical for as activists, we need groups, and yet there are so often toxic.
Report comment
Nomadic, which of Foucault’s books did you get this from?
Report comment
The problem with the ‘near death” criterion is that at leaves a lot of people stranded whose medical conditions are such that without assistance they are not able to achieve the relief that they seek, despite them being utterly “competent” and fitting every other criteria.
Report comment
Indeed, the concept of biological predisposition is not supported by credible evidence, and as suc, the continued reference to it qualifies as a fixed idea (what psychiatrists themselves would would refer to as an “obsession”). Now it is understandable why psychiatry has this fixed idea–it serves their interests. But that is hardly something we should be building science on.
Report comment
Liberalminority, no, my point –and I have repeated this now a few times–is that you did not in any way get the point of the article. For one thing, I would in no way equate a very careful tracing and analysis with “a whole lot of complaining”. And what you additionally seemed to have missed is that the analysis in question was not about psychiatry per se but was looking at something larger –the way in which institutions come together to create problems. As for solutions, I have frequently written about what we as as society should do instead (see last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness), but regardless, there is a place for intricate analysis. As for myself, I particular favour analysis which actually maps how problems come into being –hence this article. And hence my use of institutional ethnography.
Report comment
One thing I did what to say in relation to your point about expereince: There has tended to be a separation between people who critique via personal experience and people who do it in a more cognitive fashion. What I like about using institutional ethnography approach is that allows people to use the first as an inroad into the second and as such, is one way of bringing the two together.
Report comment
thank you also, Alex. And take care.
Report comment
Let me suggest, if anyone “rules”, we are in trouble. From my perspective, it is precisely “ruling” that is problematic. I do not think we should be looking to changes in who has “power-over” but looking for routes and spaces for bringing in cooperation and mutual participation.
Report comment
Thanks, anothervoice. Always good to hear. And I understand why you find personal experience persuasive. And so do I. At the same time, I myself use personal experience not so much to persuade per se but as a beginning of understanding, as entry points which makes the workings of institutions at once visible, traceable, and accountable. Different than testimonials (which for sure also have their own strengths), it t is a mode of doing inquiry that I think has the potential of serving both antipsychiatry and critical psychiatry people particularly well.
Report comment
For sure, vigilance is always called for.
Report comment
Indeed we are animals, but animals not only compete and dominate but they also love, help, empathise and cooperate. And as reflectively aware animals, capable of exercising thought-through choices, we have some say over how much we act on which instinct.
Report comment
Lovely work you are doing, Alex. A very heart-warming video.
Report comment
Thanks for you comments. As for me, I don’t believe we need hierarchical institutions, and though certainly we need organizations, they need not be hierarchical or bureaucratic. Nor do I think we need to dominate each other. As for being a pragmatist, I am also a pragmatist but that does not mean that I do think we can have more participatory processes. Though no question that means a substantial shift.
Report comment
For sure, Alex, as in all movements, the infighting can be terrible. Also the power dynamics are often highly compromised. And it is a shame when this happens, for it is hardly the world that we are trying to build together, and we should all be trying to prefigure that in how we treat one another
Report comment
It was doing a lot more than that, and so respectfully, let me say, that no, you did not get the point.
Report comment
I hope, liberalminority, that you will not take offence by my pointing out that describing “horror’ or “torture” was not what the article did; nor was this in any way what the article was about, and as such, you miss the point of the article. That said, all the best.
Report comment
Thanks for writing, Nomadic, that is, both for writing to me personally and for posting your reply. Yes, I would welcome the types of radical changes that you specify. And I too often find my heart sinking when I visit this site. It would be good to see a whole lot more radicalism.
Report comment
While I have already responded, I did want to add, humanbeing, that my sense is that helping the average person in “the general population” acquire those traits, is precisely a major part of the job ahead of us. And for this, we need s massive changes in the educational system, though we can all of us as individual also influences directions simply by how we talk, but how we act, by how we write, by the issues that we put on the table. The point is that we are also part of the “cast of characters” and we can play our own role in how people think about things and how they respond.
That said, humanbeing, I do wish you the best with whatever it is that is happening with your neighbour.
Report comment
Yes, of course there are 2 sides to this, Alex. I am sorry about what you went through. That said, in general, I think that to a large extent he issue of whether or not activism is draining centres around whether people are acting on their own or as part of a community acting on grievances together. I think it is the latter which is more often exciting and uplifting and the former that is more often draining. My sense is that anti-oppression movements like the women’s movement has something to teach here. While individual women needed to stand up for themselves, critical though that was, that was nonetheless very often draining. However, women’s groups proclaiming truths and standing up for women’s rights was truly energizing.
Report comment
For sure, it is draining, Alex. I don’t know if this is of any help to you, I personally find however, that activism in the interests of making the necessary changes by contrast is not draining, but life-affirming.
Report comment
The ripping out of the security blanket is indeed a huge event in people’s lives.
Report comment
Understood and thanks. It is for sure a very messy world
Report comment
We are absolutely on the same page, Frank. that is what can be done when outfunded and outnumbered and one’s cause is just.
Report comment
While I know it is very difficult in a movement like ours, it does strike me as important to consider resorting to a highly disciplined and sustained civil disobedience campaign. Something that can be done when one can’t compete with the funding or the numbers but the cause is just — as it so clearly is here.
Report comment
However, if doctors were not allowed to prescribe drugs that had no medical validity whatever, it very much would solve the problem. It would also be the death knell of psychiatry.
Report comment
David: All the best to you with the operation. And be assured, within this movement your voice continues to be heard loud and clear.
That said, Happy Creative Maladjustment Week.
Report comment
A very nice piece of work here, Andrew. Much thanks.
Report comment
Much thanks for writing this, Ron. Good to know that you also are out there
Report comment
Yes, every professional who does not speak out surely is responsible.
Report comment
Understood. I think that is something that a huge number of people have learned and learned the hard way. And it surely speaks to a massive deficit in society that this is currently the safest option for most people.
Report comment
The medical model surely is a problem. As for forced detention, it occurs to me that it is not the detention, but your friend reaching out to you that gave you what you needed, That said, while none of us know how things could have happened differently, for all we have in front of us is what did play out, in a more caring society, possibly there might have been “n” number of people who would have noticed that things were not going well for you and would have spent time with you and and helped you get back your hope. A question, I suspect worth asking. Be that as it may, I am delighted that things worked out for you–also that you are alive today. And thank you for sharing as you have.
Report comment
everyone always has strong views on this issues.
Report comment
Frank: When I refer to Susan talking about the criminilization and decriminalization, what I am referring to is historical. Not that long ago, most states listed suicide as a criminal office–ergo criminalized it. What she traces is how they came to remove it from their criminal code (decriminalize it).
Report comment
Frank, I am not sure who you are talking to in the first sentence, for I am not in the least in favour of criminalizing suicide–nor is Stefan.
Report comment
I want doctors to have less power rather than more. And I would absolutely prohibit forced treatment. That said, I don’t want a situation where people cannot get help getting a peaceful death, and the state is uneasy about decriminalizing such help for anyone except doctor.
Report comment
A very inspiring story, Mathew, and a testament to the importance of accepting pain in life, while building in respect and compassion. Come on, everyone, let’s make this touching and important blog go viral.
Report comment
Thanks to you also, Oldhead.
Report comment
Precisely. And I too have long compared it to rape.
Report comment
Yes, indeed. A Rubic cube is a good way to put it.
Report comment
Katie, I totally agree that here is where things would tend to fall apart–which is part of why I am an abolitionist and in no way a reformist. That said, the mechanism for reining in in this case would be the U.N. If the UN deems that a state is not in compliance because it allow psychiatry to misinform, they could conceivably penalize the state. Am I convinced this would work? Not remotely. For the argument would then be that psychiatrists are the authority. There are reasons why one is an abolitionist.
Report comment
Absolutely, Someone Else
Report comment
Great that you are out there, doing the work that you do.
Report comment
Redmond, a very lovely piece!
Report comment
Precisely, Oldhead. And so psychoanalysis had a power in the university departments and in the APA. But psychoanalysis is not what was received by most people on the ground, who were subjected to the drugs.
Report comment
Even the use of the word “symptoms” is a medicalicalizing of what is not medical. As for the biological, there is no proof.
Report comment
Indeed, it does, Oldhead. I totally agree. At the same time, I should add that psychoanalytic psychiatrists made up a 100% of the taskforce for DSM-II. It is not that psychoanalysis was not big at the time–it was huge. Rather it is that it was applied to some population and not others.
Report comment
Nicely put, Mary
Report comment
Thanks, Steve. There is nothing I disagree with in what you say. And yes, of course the agenda re psychoanalysis is critical to fully understand the picture.
Report comment
He is indeed an MIA writer and to know what he has to about this would be good.
Report comment
Yes, I agree, the phases do blur–though my sense like Cheri is that more attacks in general (and for sure there are huge exceptions) is a good indicator.
Report comment
No argument from me on that one, Oldhead.
Report comment
You are definitely not too late to get my attention, Eric. The reason why in my blogs I don’t write about things is it is a huge topic and one that cannot be handled decently in a blog article. I see a highly multifaceted sort of approach needed with a variety of services, and will all of them vested in the community. I also think it is woefully insufficient to just look at services. We also need to change society and how we relate to one another. Where I approach this is the last chapter of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness. It is the second largest chapter in the book and it goes into the changes needed in great depth. Re your question about the U.N, at the moment, not a single country is in compliance. I was addressing Canadian, for Canadians like to think of themselves as law abiding and complying. As for the U.S., it was one of the few countries in the world that never signed onto the Convention.
Report comment
As the treatments are not “medical” for they correct no medical condition, I would eliminate them as options that a doctor can prescribe. If no doctor prescribed what are now called psychiatric drugs, they would fair soon become something that very few people were seeking out.
Report comment
the question is how to get the general pubic to pay attention to what is being brought them.
Report comment
It is a question of what we mean by “abolish”. If we mean that they cannot call themselves medicine or function as a branch of medicine, this takes away the very plank on which they rest, and after that, they wither.
Report comment
I am totally with you here, Frank. We need an organized antipsychiatry push. Which of course, means staying on track and in an organized way, keeping up the pressure. Also as has been said so often in this forum, doing what we can to counter the infighting and the attacks.
Report comment
I would agree with oldhead here. Of course the totalitarian USSR was a major problem, just as wing fascism with. That does not negate the fact that capitalism works so as to cause alienation. Also that financialisation underpins current psychiatry. Hence the need for a complex analysis.
Report comment
There is no question, barrab, that psychiatry messes up everyone that it gets its hands on and it is getting its hands on more and more people–and anyone who does not understand that for sure is derailing the discussion that needs to be had. It is its own oppression. That said, like all oppressions, it interacts with other oppressions and so it is not a mistake to look at this dimension (just a mistake, I would suggest, to reduce to those other oppressions) I have talked about this elsewhere, and if so inclined, you might want to look at an interview with me about my latest book where I discussed this and see what you think–we might have a meeting of the minds here and we might not. Anyways, it can be found at http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/07/probing-psychiatry-and-business-madness
Report comment
So a question that I would direct to the people who want to build on the turn and who want to see psychiatry become a thing of the past–for it will not happen if we do not keep the goal firmly mind and act strategically in this direction–what do you think our priorities should be right now? Strategically speaking, what should each of us be doing? And what should we be taking on together?
Report comment
I would absolutely agree, Oldhead, that nothing is automatic here. And for sure, reactionary forces are always there and eager to exert an influence, and I believe that simple reformism–which I sees as a fundamental error–prepares the way for reactionary forces to do this. Hence my worry about reformism and my attempt to encourage a more revolutionary agenda.
Report comment
Quite an ordeal, Aria. A comment that may or may not be helpful. I won’t say that you have nothing to fear, for I do not know your situation. But I sincerely doubt that you have anything to be ashamed of. Systems that intrude us have less power over us when we let the shame go, that is, when we refuse to see ourselves through “their eyes”.
Report comment
yes, psych wards and prisons are mirror images of each other. And neither is a good solution to anything.
Report comment
Yes, madmom, absolutely, psychoprisons are prisons also. My own sense is that they are both psych wards and regular prison are unacceptable ways of dealing with the conflicts and dilemmas of life, and we need to problematize both at the same time.
Report comment
Actually, Ted, there was a terrible fear that set in in the women’s movement. And a high percentage of the women who left because of the endless attacks never came back. It was as if everyone’s oppression was a weapon that they wielded against each other. Why did feminism survive? Not, I think, because we found a way to deal with this but because it was already a huge mass movement before this began. None of which answers your question of how to deal with the hostilities within the survivor movement today. Perhaps having a number of conferences precisely focused on moving beyond the attacks would help.
Report comment
Sorry, ManintheMoon, for the abuse you underwent.
Report comment
yes, indeed, B.
Report comment
Thanks, Stephen, for taking me in. Yes, for me it is about using all the tools at hand (including helpful books–and that is surely why so many of us write) to fight against a highly oppressive and damaging system. We need our authors read (no, we don’t need their books bought–that’s what libraries are for); we need to mobilize; we need to spread the conversation so that we can create a big enough movement that we are able to effect change.
Report comment
I absolutely agree that the internet is a huge new dynamic in all of this. It gives everyone a voice, which mentions that survivors can made their experiences known, can put their analysis out there. it is essence makes impossible the monopoly on knowledge and knowledge-making.
Report comment
Ted, I totally agree with you of course about the lack of a mass movement. That’s what we need, and it is hard to know how to get it. I also agree that it is important to stop the trashing. At the same time, I don’t see this as at all unique to the survivor movement. I remember how very much trashing there was in the women’s movement(s) in the 1980s.
Report comment
yes, of course, we would all like it to turn quicker, but i think that we need to be far more organized for this.
Report comment
Hi, there, ManintheMoon I m not sure what to say to your beliefs because my sense is that you do not know me; nor have you read many of my writings for I have never supported cuts for real care. The point is that I do not consider the “mental health system” real care. That said, re your point about the book, I do not know if this makes you feel better or not, but I honestly have no great interest in whether or not people “buy” my book for I am not a book capitalist. What I do think is that there is a very important critique built up in the book that is useful–a different matter altogether. That said, I understand we have a very different position on the mental health system.
Report comment
Glad you like it. I think that there is a truth here that it is important to hold onto that. That said, there is a huge lot of hard work ahead.
Report comment
A thoughtful article as always, Phil.
Report comment
At the very beginning of all the major psychiatric “treatments” you hear words this awful–then the public stopped buying that brain-damaging people was a good thing–and then the discourse dramatically changed. But yes, it was this brazen, and such words stand as a clear indication of why such treatments are taken up.
Report comment
You are very welcome, Frank. And yes, the loss of these two anti-shock warriors is staggering.
Report comment
Big Pharma has no interest in the stopping the dessimination of information about ECT given that to a degree these two different modes of brain-damaging treatments are in competition. So yes, of course, you are right.
Report comment
Indeed, shock is not Healy’s strong suit.
Report comment
She was indeed a wonderful woman–a kind woman and a warrior!
Report comment
I am glad that you were not as badly hurt by the ECT. But most people are–in particular women–who are far more greatly affected.
Report comment
Much thanks, Lauren. Yes, she really was a incredible pillar. So sorry that you have lost your support network. And yes, she will be greatly missed.
Report comment
Much thanks. And do let me know your thoughts on Psychiatry and the Business of Madness
Report comment
A terrible ordeal.
Report comment
Thanks for letting me know.
Report comment
Fred: Your experiences should horrific, and I am so sorry. I can tell you that in this novel, we also see the results of ECT given without anesthetic–I am well aware, a particularly horrendous experience.
Report comment
Risn: I am so very sorry about what happened to your mother. And if this novel gives people like yourself a way of catching a special glimpse into your mother’s life, another way of knowing her, it has indeed been effort well spent. And you are very very welcome. Re you mother and emotions, while fear has a habit of breaking through everything, one of the horrors of ECT is that it results in a blunting of the emotions. And so your mother may have had little choice around showing your her feelings in that she no longer herself exactly had access to them. That said, my guess is that somewhere deep down, she would have been pleased that you wanted to know.
Report comment
Absolutely.
Report comment
Thanks for the kind words, Ted, and do take heart. We are going to make a break-through. And my prediction here is that the two of us will live to see the beginnings of it. I am interesting some legislators in my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and when legislators get interested in an abolitionist book, that is minimally something new and a good sign.
Report comment
Absolutely, I agree with you,
Report comment
Hard to get people to publish non-fiction here, but I will keep my eyes peeled on this. Re your work, I would be tempted to call it a critical autobiography or a critical memoir. However depending on how you write it, you position it in an evolved research mode called “Autoethnography”. All the best with this.
Report comment
Glad that you broke loose. And thanks for your remarks. And yes, I agree that most works of fiction write and account that is woefully inaccurate. Something that it is important to address.
Report comment
Thanks as always for you hard work, Lauren
Yours in struggle, Bonnie.
Report comment
Well, I agree with what you said, I say the problem as way more fundamental than that. Doctors should not be involved here but the problems people that are now called “mental illness” are in fact not medical.
Report comment
Totally agree
Report comment
Yes, I had kind of figured that out, which is why, Robert, in my first response, I invited a rethinking of what constitutes “news” and what objective news reporting looks like. Here more globally is what I am inviting people to grapple with: To accept mainstream understandings of what constitutes new and how look is something that I do not thinks stands us in good stead. While “looking objective”, they are in the final analysis hegemonically defined. So the question is: What what would a critically informed understanding of “news” look like? And how would it differ both in appearance and in ist inclusion and exclusion guidelines from what we see now?
Report comment
Rob, I would have to agree with Paula on this one. Why are we giving space to psychiatry’s latest claims? If we are doing it to soundly critique them, or at least mainly in the spirit of critique, I get it. If not, the purpose somewhat mystifies me. We after all have every reason to believe the new psychiatric claims are as bogus as earlier ones. So questions that I think need to be asked and let me raise them here is: Is what constitutes news from a critical perspective? And how does that differ from news as hegemonically defined? An issue I think it would be worthwhile for all of us to grapple with.
Report comment
I would not agree that there is good psychiatry for the discipline is fundamentally faulty, though of course there are individual practitioners of it who do go, irrespective of that. Re not leaving people in the lurch, here we are in total agreement, and I would refer you in this regard to my very extensive last chapter–precisely trying to open up a more radical discussion of what help might look like.
Report comment
Much thanks. It feels god to know that you are out there.
Report comment
Abbott: Thanks for your comments. I have indeed tried repeatedly but so far have been frozen out.
Report comment
I am coming in by Skype, but I will definitely be there virtually, and there will a question and answer period so that I can actively engage with people
Report comment
Richard, I look forward to hearing from you on it.
Report comment
Right on, Julie. And thank you for all you hard work at the launch.
Report comment
Thanks, Ted.
Report comment
Much thanks, anothervoice.
Report comment
It is more older women, John, but the age factor is not as big as it used to be. What never changes is the gender differential
Report comment
Just a few brief comments. First, I thank all the folk in Eugene Oregon for the important work which they did. I also want to note that Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest certainly dramatized ECT for people in important way, and so I will understand you turning to Kesey. That said, I did want to introduce what I consider a major problem with the the highlighting of this figure and this text. Something seldom talked about–the book is in many ways frighteningly sexist, with note, the horrible villain being “Big Nurse” and the psychiatrist in the piece coming off rather kindly. Moreover, the impression gotten that ECT is something that women force on men–when we are all well aware, the truth is the opposite–with shock doctors not nurses deciding on shock, with 2/3 of the victims being women, and with 90% of shock doctors being men. And as such, I think we would do well to think more deeply about which literary figures we upfront and how we represent.
Report comment
Szasz was for more than abolishing coercion. He was for abolishing the entire relationship between psychiatry and the state. Both coercion and so called “consensual services fall under that.
Report comment
a nice piece, Andrew. And congratulations on your new book.
Report comment
Well put, Mickey.
Report comment
Robert: Take it as a compliment that he is this threatened. And yes, good that you issued the challenge.
Report comment
I get where you are coming from. And at the same time, I don’t think that you quite get what antipsychiatry is about, Maryy. Antipsychiatry is not just negative. Any more than people in the antiracist movement are “just being negative. What is perhaps particularly apropos to you rpoint, many of us who are antipsychiatry have and put forward very substantial visions for the future. Please see in this regard, the last and very long chapter of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, which provides both a very substantial vision and detailed suggestions on how one might handle dilemmas and issues which arise with regard individuals whose way of being-in-the-world is a problem for themselves and/or problems for other.
Report comment
Hi there, Oldhead: I think Cooper and Laing have to be mentioned for history’s sake, but except for that, yes, I agree with you. Antipsychiatry no longer means what they meant but it, though there is an influence. And my own sense is that for some time now, there is 99.9% census on one issue only–and that it psychiatry has got to go. After that, we can talk about variations within the movement.
Report comment
Much thanks, Erin. and do let me know what you think of the book. I wrote it for a wide array of different audiences in mind, including: scholars, the general public, psych survivors progressive professionals, visionaries. So I am naturally interested in hearing from everyone,
Report comment
Yes, a data base would be good. Maybe MadInAmerica could play a role here.
Report comment
Agreed, AA. It all depends on how many other things you have asked for which are considered concessions–as in things that they do not want to do. I think that you can assume that all of us authors ask for such things–then when are forced to decide, what is deal-breaking and what is not.
Report comment
Terrific, Steve. Yes, we need to take the battle to Amazon.
Report comment
A good point, re the Kindle version, AA, but the related point missed here is that authors do not have control of what publishers do. For example, when I was offered a hardcover only release of my new book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, I argued that hardcover would not not affordable for most people i know–psychiatric survivors in particular–and so I would walk away from the contract. Five hard moths of negotiation followed. Eventually I was offered both a hardcover and soft cover release. What I would not have say over–is whether a Kindle version would come out and what the price of the soft cover would be.
the point is, it is difficult to bring major presses (which my publisher is) to take our books. And while we can get some concession (as in what I did with my publisher) we do not have the leaverage to get the kinds of things that you ask
And so given this is not a possibility, while it may seem an obvious thing to do, in fact such options aren’t open to us–and so we are better off brainstorming things over which we actually do have power.
Report comment
Yes, for sure, Emmeline, we need various people translating for different audiences.
Report comment
I think most authors are doing what they realistically can. the question that I am asking here is not what the different authors can go, but given that we as a community and a movement have a vested interest in these books being read, what can we do ?
Report comment
Audio books is indeed promising suggestion.
Report comment
Let me suggest that you are attacking straw dogs–for people you are critiquing are not putting forward the simplistic answers that you critique.
Report comment
We are too long on this side conversation–as important and interesting as it is Can we go back to the focus of the article? Cpuusage, what are your thoughts about book activism?
Report comment
Very good point, Emmeline. Yes, let’s get back to a discussion of book activism.
Report comment
Most antipsychiatry people are not libertarian, though Szasz for sure was. That said, Szasz was refuting the false medicalization of people’s problems–not the fact of those problems. No offense intended, but if you think you have understood Szasz, your comments keeps showing that you have not. And what I would recommend is picking him up again and reading more carefully.
Report comment
Cpuusage: You keep conflating “distress” (not a medical concept) with “mental illnes” (a medical concept). Also “mad” (not inherently a medical concept) with “mental illness” (a medical concept). Yes, there have always been distressed and/or distressing people who society tried to figure out what to do with. The supremacy of medicine in this area did not happen until the 18th century (in Europe) and far far later everywhere else. What is likewise important, antipsychiatry theorists in no way deny mental distress, and some of us argue for abundant help to be available. What we are disputing are what medicine itself initially described as “putative illnesses”
Report comment
Oldhead–if we wait for more of a consensus, the important job does not happen, for consensus has a habit of not happening. I honestly do not think it is premature–but, quite the opposite, long overdue. the trick is simply to acknowledge the differences rather than pretend consensus.
Report comment
I have never said that any one thing will be suffice–for it simply won’t. Not highlighting children. Not demonstrating recovery. In this regard, People have shown repeatedly that “recovery” is possible. And so no, I don’t think that would remotely suffice–as it important as it is. When you are up against an industry that manufacture and markets lies, while telling and demonstrating the truth is essential–the fact remains that you will be speaking to the choir–and this will not glean you mainstream coverage–it will simply be ignored. Hence my reason for writing about pressure, about strategies, etc.
there is no magic formula that will win for us here. Quite simply, we need to be fighting on many fronts at the same time and proceeding strategically.
Report comment
Jessica; I did look at your website. and I did not want you to think that I ignored your request. Without question a very interesting cite and a worthwhile proposal.
Report comment
Much thanks, Jessica, and good luck with your endeavours
Report comment
There is no proof whatever that there are. And you cannot call things illness without proof. They hoped they would find proof for what they called (see Kraepelin) all the “functional illnesses”, but in point of fact they did not, despite a century of trying. When this happens and psychiatrist keeping calling it illness, what is happening is not science but something more like fraud.
Report comment
Thanks for the thought, Cpuusage
Report comment
I would disagree. Psychiatry has been nothing if not redundant and their forever repeating of their claims/slogans has served them very well.
Report comment
Leonard was clear that he was against forced treatment–and he a number to times objected to the abolitionist stance. That said, I agree with you that here is where things become less clear. For he felt that this was compatible with antipsychiatry, whereas it is not with antipsychiatry as a number of us define it.
Re the origin of the term, there is no question but that it originated with Cooper and Cooper for sure did not mean what we mean by it to today–something it is important to talk about. That said, words change meaning over time–as in typewriter at one point meant the human being that did the typing. My own sense is that for example antipsychiatry no longer means what Cooper and Laing meant by it, though they are without doubt still influence the thinking, including mine, and they are a vital part of the history. Obviously all of the complexities should be covered in a new entry.
That said, Frank, do give some thought to what Oldhead and I are suggesting–for these are all issues that you have clearly given a lot of thought to.
Report comment
Cpuusage: These are not “mental illnesses” those are bone fide brain injuries and disorder.
Report comment
The last and second largest chapter in my new book addresses that issue of what to do when you get rid of psychiatry. Too complicated to address in a comment box.
Report comment
An important point, Ted
Report comment
Prisoners Dilemma: Thanks for your comments. Actually, what I expect from the mainstream press or media is intransigence and insistence on the medical model. And yes, I agree that persuasion is hardly sufficient, as I made clear in my second last article on this site. It remains nonetheless one tool among many that we have at our disposal.
Report comment
There is no single answer to how to change the system. There are many ways that have to be combined together. Though as I argued in a former article, I think the concept of changing or improving the system, is itself misguided and will only perpetuate a system that we direly need to get rid of.
Report comment
Cpusage: Please note that while antipsychiatry people draw very heavily on Szasz, Szasz was very clear that he was not antipsychiatry (that is, not in favour of abolition). Many of us also disagree with Szasz on certain issues.
That said, I suspect that where you fundamentally disagree with Szasz, most antipsychiatry people would agree Szasz–and that is the core question of whether the very concept of mental illness is tenable–where all antipsychiatry people would be emphatic that it is not, and you if I am reading you correctly have a different stand.
On all sides, some are literate, some not. All we can do is be informed ourselves.
Re: What the public as a whole will entertain–that is precisely one of the key battlegrounds on which the fight has to take place–and no one is under any illusions about the difficulty of the battle.
Report comment
Oldhead has a point. Frank, I think that if you were interested in taking this on, you would do a great job. A suggestion that of course you are free to decline–so please don’t feel on the spot. So just see this as a brainstorming proposal: You take this on, and you bring together and work with what Oldhead is calling a panel of anti-psych experts that you can draw on and pass things by., moreover, that can brainstorm together. If you took things on and oversaw it, I would be happy and honoured to serve as part of that panel of anti-psych experts. Many other people who post on this site could be part of the panel. A suggestion I would have for someone who does not post but is a survivor who has been actively antipsychiatry since the 70s is Don Weitz. And I am sure that we could think of a number more.
One difficulty, I would note, that we have is that there are differences and not consensuses, but I think the consensuses are substantial–also it is fine to mention the differences.
A few additional problems with Wikipedia that we could correct in the processes is that it conflates antipsychiatry with the mad movement and with the survivor movement–which it profoundly overlaps with both, is not identical to other. Also, it is focused on the U.S. So it would be beyond an update–it would be a rethinking.
Ironically, with regard to Leonard, ableit Leonard was an absolutely wonderful activist, Leonard was not antipsychiatry and was very clear about that, and so we would have to be more precise.
What exists now on Wikipedia is sloppy thinking and we could surely remedy that.
What say you, Frank? And do other readers who have or would like to comment on this blog have ideas? For example, can you suggest other people that might be good to have on such a panel–whether yourselves or others?
Report comment
Yes, moving people is for sure one important strategy. And art has a way of doing that.
Report comment
I agree that the cooptation of individuals in the survivor movement played a role here–especially in the UK, where larger of survivors who were at one point activists became peer researchers, etc. I would also add that in many cases, what mainstream success was had came fromfact that survivors telling their story of how psychiatry had ruined their lives was new to people and so had a special impact. Psychiatry quickly mobilizing and starting putting their patients on shows, before Boards, etc. testifying to how ECT or whatever had saved their lives. At this juncture, telling one’s story, while still enormously impact, no longer had the same impact. The point is that we have an industry very into protecting its own interests, and is very good at it. By the same token, we need to get better at countering it.
Report comment
Slaying _the _dragon _of _psychiatry: It was a far as I can see the big bucks that went into portraying all of this as scientific. That is what defeated Szasz–and that’s the ediface that we need to dismantle. I trace these trajectories in Psychiatry and the Business of Madness–and will be eager to see what you think.
Report comment
absolutely, Shrink
Report comment
terrific suggestions
Report comment
I do agree that lawsuits are a very important line of attack
Report comment
Nicely put, as always, Frank. and yes, for sure, someone should update Wikipedia.
Report comment
Agreed that other mediums need also to be used. Hence the value of the internet.
Report comment
For sure, hpostpscyhiatry, though that that is not one of our big deficits. These books do exists in university bookstores, because there are more and more of us anti and critical psychiatry folks teaching from that perspective. Still, without question, we could use more. And it indeed makes sense building on a comparative strength.
Report comment
Yes, brigades makes sense. If you will excuse the military (and patriarchal) metaphor, we need to be our own armies.
Report comment
Book clubs is an interesting suggestion. But first you would have to get the clubs interested–and usually they pick up stuff that is in the mainstream media–you see the problem
Report comment
Thanks, Slaying_the _Dragon_of _Psychiatry. Why, let me suggest, is precisely the hegemony of psychiatry and its backing by the state. The media like the average person don’t even know that they are backing an ideology, for these concepts, as I point out in my books, seem as real as the air they breath. That said, of course, the financialization of it is also a factor
Report comment
Nicely done, Phil. The critique of Frances here is important. Both Spitzer (chair of DSM-III) and Frances (Chair of DSM-5), besides themselves affirming the medical model, would like the world to believe that what they did was just fine–as opposed to what the subsequent DSM-5 chair did. Not remotely so, and something that it is critical that we continue to challenge.
Report comment
Fred, I would surely love to see us zero in on the treatment of the elderly–for this is the population most pscyhiatrized. And I think it is critical that we do so irrespective of whether or not this brings into question psychiatry as a whole. that said, I don’t think it does for most people–a travesty, for which, alas, we can thank ageism.
Report comment
this indeed is an issue worth reflecting Oldhead. That said, my sense is that it is a factor–as in the outcry against lobotomy. For sure, it is hardly the only factor.
Report comment
Actually the book is very clear that people are in all sorts of emotional turmoil. That is not the same as “having an illness”. Nor is objecting to the medical terminology an issue of denial. It is an issue of the meaning of terms like “disease” and the science or lack of it involved.
What is important to take here here, almost no one who takes an antipsychiatry in any way denies the very real distress in which people find themselves. to think that they do is to totally misunderstand the nature of the position. And while of course you can object to the position regardless , you can only object to it on the basis of what people are actually saying.
Report comment
Read the book, and my guess is that you would no longer think that it is not different. It is actually profoundly different than any other book out there–as everyone who has agreed read it to date agrees.
In this regard, we can make vague guesses on the bases of reviews–but in end, however well done the review, that is all that we can do.
Report comment
Good luck with what you are confronting, Linda Ale. There are sections in my book that particularly and very deliberately speak to parents, and it just might come in handy with your mom. If she would agree read it to the end, while I cannot promise her mind would change, for it could just anger her, there is also a possibility that she would seriously reconsider her position.
All the best.
Report comment
You are very welcome
Report comment
Mickey, the only time I saw psychiatry concede a truth that shows that they know nothing is when they don’t want to be found culpable in law for not being able to recognize “dangerousness. They need to have their back against the wall otherwise in this way to concede their lack of knowledge and/or ability. So the tactic needed would be one that makes it economically problematic not to tell the truth.
Report comment
Publishers like Palgrave (both mine and Whitaker’s new book) only allow to you specify a small handful of places to send free review copies (in the case of Palgrave, 10). After that,the only way a paper or a journal will get a review copy is if the person in charges of reviews writes the publisher, states they are going to do a review, and asks for a complimentary copy. So as you can see, unless someone has contacts with any of the national newspapers who came impel them to make such a request either to the publisher directly or indirectly through the author, they in fact won’t end up with review copies. All and all, a difficult conundrum.
Report comment
Astute of you to notice the word “business”, Fiarchra. Yes the book very much explores this as a business, both in terms of corporate self-interest and power, but also concrete “work processes” by which the ruling of people is “accomplished”.
Report comment
I wouldn’t disagree with you that it is like a malignant tumour. However, it is not the only tumour, and so while I see getting rid of psychiatry as essential, I would not agree that this would suffice for “health to blossom”. My take on this? We need a far more major societal overhaul.
Report comment
It actually does. For example, it maps work processes of psychiatric professionals step by step–something never done in any book before, looking concretely at psychiatry rule as it operates through the activation of texts, for example. You would have to take a look at it, though, to understand what I am getting at.
Report comment
By the same token, Mickey, I very much look forward to hearing your impressions of it.
Report comment
Nice one, Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry.
Report comment
Philip: Needless to say, I am delighted that you like the book, and I thank you for a very thoughtful review.
Report comment
Certainly a strategy worth pursuing. I am aware at the same time that Breggin and others in their response to the school shootings has consistently taken this line–that being on pscy drugs was a major factor in the shootings–and nonetheless consistently the response to such things has to ensure that more young people are on drugs. So putting on that the treatments endanger the public has so far not worked, but maybe we if we thought more carefully on how to deliver the message.
Report comment
I don’t understand why you would give the term “mentally ill” for everyone with the privileges that you named above. I would suggest rather that they are all oppressed in some way.
Report comment
Putting a “real face on mental illness” is an example of persuasion, just one of a particular kind. Persuasion does not have to be done in a non-confrontation manner. As long as what you are out to do is shift their belief via what you say or show, this is the politics of persuasion.
Report comment
Absolutely, AA
Report comment
this is an excellent question. My own sense? We have to gently take them by the hand on this one–but which I do not mean say anything less than the truth–but talk and write with awareness of how hard this is for people to take in.
Report comment
Right on, oldhead
Report comment
I do agree that on-line activism is an increasingly important dimension, and for sure, it is critical to be involved in it–moreover to get really good at picking out targets.
Report comment
I think a good beginning would be not to call people whose takes you don’t agree with “psychotic”. Once we use that language, we are buying into the whole problematic discourse.
Report comment
Precisely.
Report comment
it takes a lot of work to accomplish that.
Report comment
I agree with you of course, Richard. The question is here then that to link up with each of these movements, with the possible exception of feminism (which has always had links with the movement) the onus is on us, for we have the most to gain and the other movements, in the short run anyway, the most to lose. And the dedicated energy to making this alliances is something that we have never devoted energy to.
Report comment
At the moment, I also see a growing movement. In this regard, it is critical to keep up the momentum.
Report comment
Follow the Yellow Pill road–brilliant!
Report comment
I know what you mean, Ted, about the difficulty of being attached in the movement–a problem faced in every movement. Yes, of course, we need to work at treating each other well. In the final analysis, a society in which everyone is treated with kindness and respect, is surely part of the change we are seeking–and we can never get there by putting each other down. And in that regard, our relations with one another are a vital part of our activist work. For your personally, whenever someone is nasty to you, do remember, there are many of us here who greatly value and respect the very important work that you do.
Report comment
Say more about what you are thinking, Fred.
Report comment
All of which acquires a huge expenditure of effort, but one that I think would reward us in the long run.
Report comment
There are two ways we can go: 1) Show that psychiatry is not legitimate medicine; 2) critique both psychiatry and medicine. I do both, while especially emphasizing the first.
Report comment
Interesting. I would never have read this as sarcasm, but you are of course right that all opposition is considered an illness.
Report comment
I would think that yes, John, all of these groups are potential allies. That said, cultivating the allies is no easy matter, for you have to take on causes for which they are fighting just as you are asking them to take on the causes central to our movement. It would mean a whole lot of people getting involved with a wide range of politics–something that we have yet to do.
Report comment
Mockery always feels good and can be effective in the short run. In the long run, it simply doesn’t bring pressure to bear (it falls under persuasion in my schema). But yes, for sure, my sense is that it is good thing to do.
Report comment
Yes. That is what is what I was talking about in discussing resources
Report comment
I think that the science is very critical. At the same time, the difficulty we face, is that the state goes to other psychiatrists as arbiters of what various psychiatrists are claiming, and so we are caught in a circle here.
Report comment
totally agree.
Report comment
Yes, Ted, strategy has not been our strong suit. But for sure, it needs to be
Report comment
precisely. And this is not movement that easily acquires leverage,
Report comment
good to hear from you as always. And yes, we are in agreement
Report comment
I wholeheartedly agree with you TenaciousMe.
Report comment
Much thanks for sharing.
Report comment
Hi there. I totally get that we are in disagreement. This article was not about the issues themselves but how to do activism. So it assumes an antipsychiatry analysis and proceeds from there. To find out where I stand on the substantive issues per se, I refer you to my other articles, also to my recently released book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness.
Re your question around, I do want to help children. But I see the drugs as the among the major problems that they are facing.Again, to find out why I believe this, you would have to look at my other writing.
–All the best.
Report comment
There is no question but that we are dealing with patriarchy here. And there is no questions but that medicine in general triumphed by pushing down the women healers. A dreadful travesty which I explore in the history chapters of my book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and which writers like Szasz also have commented on.
Report comment
The psychiatrization of Aboriginal people is for sure yet another travesty. A horrific reminder, that psychiatry, is indeed racist to the core.
Report comment
A very nice article, Philip, that aptly demonstrates the circularity of it all. Well done.
Report comment
You guys are doing a tremendous job, Ted.
Report comment
Deee042: Sorry about was has happened to you. As someone who is 70 herself, I also have a special feeling for the very unique danger faced by people in senior years. I do not have a press kit, but do write to Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault;and it can send some of its material that you might use. For ECT in particular, you might write to Ted. The easiest way I can think of for you to get hold of John Read would be to message him on Facebook, for he is indeed on Facebook. Working with John Read and with the Breggins sounds good.
Hard to do this with so few allies, and while struggling with damage to boot. Creating a group, if this is something that you end up feeling up to strikes me as a particularly good way to go. Acting as part of a “we” always feels better than action alone.
All the best to you in your efforts.
Report comment
So sorry about what happened to you, Fred. I will be thinking of you on May 16th as well as many other survivors around the world. We all of us stand united in this.
Report comment
you are very welcome. Glad that you liked the article.
Report comment
Hi there, Gary. Glad to hear you are interested. Each of groups are doing their own private demos and so you would have to ask the people in any given area. CAPA personally (the group that I represent and that is demonstrated in Toronto) is at the moment not making t-shirts To get updates on the demos, please check it to seed what Ted C. is posting to Mad in America. For contact people for each of the demos so that you can direct individual questions to them, go to http://www.ectjustice.com/ then hit the button dedicated to the protest.
all the best
Report comment
Yes, markps2, visuals are important–a long standby in protests. It can be images on flat surfaces, whether banners or signs. It can be small enactments. It can be huge three-dimensional affairs. In one of our CAPA (Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault) anti-shock demos, we paraded through the streets carrying giant puppet heads (made of card board). Anything that shows rather than only tells is a good thing.
And re police, to my amazement, I too have known them to suddenly take a supportive interest at demos challenging psychiatry. In this regard, one never knows where one’s support may come from.
Report comment
Yes, Someone Else, transitions are difficult, though also exciting. For me, personally, I have never been mainstream, but nonetheless, like everyone else, I have faced transitions. My own sense here is that our movement overall needs to transition from being at the stage of awakening that it is at to becoming a force to be reckoned with,something that forces the general public to re-think and re-plan. Otherwise, the system will remain largely what it is, with psych survivors and allies getting tiny concessions here and there.
Report comment
A very nice piece of research, Julie
Report comment
Yes, it does indeed feel like that. And we need to loud and clear reject them taking over other territory, indeed, to depict them as Philip has here as morally unqualified and beyond that more generally unqualified.
Report comment
A very sad day. For decades now Leonard has been a fearless, talented, and wise leader in the survivor community. Hard to imagine the world without him, for whenever us activists turned around for guidance or inspiration , there was Leonard–constant, dependable, certain, undaunted. How many of us he inspired to take up the battle against ECT. I am proud to have been able to call him my friend.
Leonard, we will miss your courage. We will miss that wonderful way that your voice went from gentle to a fury that demanded to be heeded. We will miss your wisdom. We will miss the meticulous updates to the Quotationary. We will miss most everything about you.
What a mitzvah to have been able to work with you all these decades!
May your memory be as a blessing.
Report comment
thanks, Phil.
Report comment
I do think that were are seeing the beginning of a sea change, and yes, the power lust and hubris of the psychiatristsand the clear vision of the antipsychatry folk is pivotal to what will happen.
Report comment
Actually, there were a few different killing eugenics programs with doctors at the centre of all of them in Nazi Germany. While some of the doctors involved were found guilty and ended up in jail after the doctors’ trials ,very few. Interviews with them, correspondingly, reveal that decades later, their views had not changed. For from their perspective, the “individual who they were murdering” was not the patient. It was the volk. And the best was to treat the volk, was to cut off the contaminated parts whether it be what they called “idiots”, Jews, or “schizophrenics”. In this regard, one of the doctors in a book by Lifton wrote”. “I am a doctor, and of course, as a doctor, I would remove a gangrenous appendix. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix on the body of mankind.” A frightening view.
Report comment
obviously, the reason is classism, and the fact the elderly are drugged so much more than everyone else even when from higher classes is ageism, though I suspect classism also enters in here, for as people no longer considered to be “productive”, they are treated as if expendable.
Report comment
Alas, if history proves to be an indicator, Big Pharma will be exactly who steps up and who pays for the anti-stigma campaign–which means added big money behind the propaganda.
Report comment
Right on, Someone Else
Report comment
Agreed, Ted, and indeed, I invite people who otherwise have not used it, to consider using the term “antipscyhiatry”. While of course, it is important for people to figure out what they believe and what they are comfortable with, and I very much respect that, I do believe that this is key to changing the equation. It is announcing loud and clear that psychiatry as a solution does not work and indeed cannot work, and coaxing people to grapple with what they otherwise might not.
Report comment
For sure, Kim. And indeed, we can already seen signs that the information-sharing is beginning to defeat psychiatry. My prediction is that 2015 will go down in particular will down in history as one of the turn-around years, where psychiatry’s fortunes begin to plummet. We just all need here to keep up the good work and to do it with the confidence of people who know that they are riding a momentum.
Report comment
Well put, Ute. And for sure, it is important to return to people like the existential philosophers re what the nature of human existence is and how we come to know and to act.
Report comment