shankara
Star
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2018
- Messages
- 1,322
“A crime is a deviation from generally recognized standards of behavior frequently caused by mental disorder. Can there be diseases, nervous disorders among certain people in a Communist society? Evidently yes. If that is so, then there will also be offences, which are characteristic of people with abnormal minds. Of those who might start calling for opposition to Communism on this basis, we can say that clearly their mental state is not normal.” (Khrushchev)
The Anti-Psychiatric movement is against all forms of compulsory psychiatric treatment, seeking the establishment of a more open system without hierarchy of doctors above patients and based on voluntary consent. It is clear that there are some problems with psychiatry, perhaps of an epistemological nature, yet it is quite clear that there are people quite incapable of normal functioning who require some form of adjustment in order to operate within the confines of normative reality. Whatever the ultimate causes of the disease may be, the allopathic model is quite correct at least from the wholly pragmatic standpoint and, reserving judgement on other aspects of the system, it is definitely possible to state that psychotherapy is a genuinely useful and humane practise.
Certainly in Europe and the USA psychiatric hospitals are generally quite comfortable, certainly not the horrific machines of torture that existed in earlier times. Patients are generally not seriously prepared to enter the world of work and given a great deal of unstructured time in which, one supposes, they are supposed to be analysing themselves (but in fact are usually watching the TV). Whatever the problems with such a culture, which in assuming disability may create disability, for many the experience of hospitalization can be helpful. Psychosis, like psychoactive drugs, has a “come up” and a “comedown”, and the latter, facing sober reality, is brutal. Hospitals give people a space to go through this without risking major damage to other parties.
Yet, we are speaking of a form of psychiatric treatment with clearly defined diagnostic criteria, symptoms which would be relatively obvious even to a layperson. It is true that certain forms of psychosis are not always wholly visible to the outsider, may seem just like “eccentricity” or something of that nature. Pathological personalities such as narcissists and psychopaths can go unnoticed, their very coldness making them seem normal. Generally however in the case of disorders like schizophrenia, depression or bipolar, it will be visible thatsomething is wrong, that the person’s life isn’t working somehow, that they are suffering, or inflated, or confused. Many psychiatric patients truly welcome the intervention of the psychiatrist to free them from the pain of their disordered states of mind (artistic people, who believe that treatment will blunt their creativity, being the most notable exception).
What would it be like, though, to find yourself in a hospital without having any problems? Not just a hospital but a secure hospital, maybe even with restraints chaining you to the bed, or cold-water baths. Treated the same as those in genuine distress, people screaming, babbling. Given anti-psychotic medication designed to control extreme chaotic states of mind whilst being in a normal state of mind, a form of interior oppression (medications which, until quite recently, tended to have utterly disabling negative side effects, such as causing permanent tremors). Knowing that there’s no way out, that the psychiatrist has classified your normal humanity, your normal passions, as something pathological.
This was the case in the Soviet Union, where psychiatry and the secret police were intimately associated, where the diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” provided a catch-all term for any form of political dissidence. After all, Soviet society was a perfect society, the highest degree of human social evolution, anyone questioning it must be either mad or bad. Why would anyone risk their life, their job, their freedom, in order to fight for some unorthodox political belief? That would not be dissidence, it would be madness. Hence such symptoms as “anti-Soviet thoughts” and “delusions of reformism” were considered as symptoms of a strange disease, a form of psychosis with none of the normal symptoms of psychosis, “sluggish schizophrenia”.
“Reform delusions", "perseverance", "struggle for the truth", “projects for the benefit of mankind". All symptoms of an abnormality on a neurological level, not merely a form of non-conformism but an actual neurological-psychological illness. Mentally ill because "they disseminate their pathological reformist ideas among the masses". Of course outside of the Soviet Union such forms of behaviour wouldn’t be cause for a diagnosis of any kind of schizophrenia. There exists the paranoid type, convinced that they are the centre of some vast social movement while in fact they are simply telling themselves stories, yet clearly there also exist people with critical political beliefs, reformists and idealists. The Soviets sometimes did label dissidents as paranoiacs, yet generally it was “sluggish schizophrenia” which was used a pretext for incarceration.
It is difficult to imagine, living in relatively free countries, what it must be like to live under a regime which considers its own principles as the final and absolute form of perfection, which has literally in it’s own mythomania come to believe that it is the manifestation of perfection, heaven on earth, despite it’s many and obvious flaws and cruelties. A regime in which psychiatrists could actually be convinced that they were not engaging in a form of political repression, or at least that if they were it was wholly justified, while condemning people merely for holding unusual beliefs and worse having the courage to promote them.
This, while millions suffered in gulags, starved, were purged, the flaws of the system being abundantly visible and clear, surely even too glaring to be wholly hidden even with censorship and propaganda, nonetheless open criticism was treated as mental illness. Such acts of psychiatric abuse, psychiatrists either convincing themselves that they were doing the right thing or wilfully acting inhumanly for their own gain, is another example of the same kind of blindness and dumb obedience to authority which has led to so many atrocities in human history. In total it is estimated that two million people were on the psychiatric registry for simply being dissidents, human rights activists, religious believers, or merely people who complained too much about bureaucracy.
Surely wherever Communism rears it’s ugly head we will not fail to see the same kind of acts, the same twisted false logic, the same abuse of repression to silence all dissent. We take for granted our freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, but we must remember that for billions of people around the world such fundamental liberties don’t exist.
The Anti-Psychiatric movement is against all forms of compulsory psychiatric treatment, seeking the establishment of a more open system without hierarchy of doctors above patients and based on voluntary consent. It is clear that there are some problems with psychiatry, perhaps of an epistemological nature, yet it is quite clear that there are people quite incapable of normal functioning who require some form of adjustment in order to operate within the confines of normative reality. Whatever the ultimate causes of the disease may be, the allopathic model is quite correct at least from the wholly pragmatic standpoint and, reserving judgement on other aspects of the system, it is definitely possible to state that psychotherapy is a genuinely useful and humane practise.
Certainly in Europe and the USA psychiatric hospitals are generally quite comfortable, certainly not the horrific machines of torture that existed in earlier times. Patients are generally not seriously prepared to enter the world of work and given a great deal of unstructured time in which, one supposes, they are supposed to be analysing themselves (but in fact are usually watching the TV). Whatever the problems with such a culture, which in assuming disability may create disability, for many the experience of hospitalization can be helpful. Psychosis, like psychoactive drugs, has a “come up” and a “comedown”, and the latter, facing sober reality, is brutal. Hospitals give people a space to go through this without risking major damage to other parties.
Yet, we are speaking of a form of psychiatric treatment with clearly defined diagnostic criteria, symptoms which would be relatively obvious even to a layperson. It is true that certain forms of psychosis are not always wholly visible to the outsider, may seem just like “eccentricity” or something of that nature. Pathological personalities such as narcissists and psychopaths can go unnoticed, their very coldness making them seem normal. Generally however in the case of disorders like schizophrenia, depression or bipolar, it will be visible thatsomething is wrong, that the person’s life isn’t working somehow, that they are suffering, or inflated, or confused. Many psychiatric patients truly welcome the intervention of the psychiatrist to free them from the pain of their disordered states of mind (artistic people, who believe that treatment will blunt their creativity, being the most notable exception).
What would it be like, though, to find yourself in a hospital without having any problems? Not just a hospital but a secure hospital, maybe even with restraints chaining you to the bed, or cold-water baths. Treated the same as those in genuine distress, people screaming, babbling. Given anti-psychotic medication designed to control extreme chaotic states of mind whilst being in a normal state of mind, a form of interior oppression (medications which, until quite recently, tended to have utterly disabling negative side effects, such as causing permanent tremors). Knowing that there’s no way out, that the psychiatrist has classified your normal humanity, your normal passions, as something pathological.
This was the case in the Soviet Union, where psychiatry and the secret police were intimately associated, where the diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” provided a catch-all term for any form of political dissidence. After all, Soviet society was a perfect society, the highest degree of human social evolution, anyone questioning it must be either mad or bad. Why would anyone risk their life, their job, their freedom, in order to fight for some unorthodox political belief? That would not be dissidence, it would be madness. Hence such symptoms as “anti-Soviet thoughts” and “delusions of reformism” were considered as symptoms of a strange disease, a form of psychosis with none of the normal symptoms of psychosis, “sluggish schizophrenia”.
“Reform delusions", "perseverance", "struggle for the truth", “projects for the benefit of mankind". All symptoms of an abnormality on a neurological level, not merely a form of non-conformism but an actual neurological-psychological illness. Mentally ill because "they disseminate their pathological reformist ideas among the masses". Of course outside of the Soviet Union such forms of behaviour wouldn’t be cause for a diagnosis of any kind of schizophrenia. There exists the paranoid type, convinced that they are the centre of some vast social movement while in fact they are simply telling themselves stories, yet clearly there also exist people with critical political beliefs, reformists and idealists. The Soviets sometimes did label dissidents as paranoiacs, yet generally it was “sluggish schizophrenia” which was used a pretext for incarceration.
It is difficult to imagine, living in relatively free countries, what it must be like to live under a regime which considers its own principles as the final and absolute form of perfection, which has literally in it’s own mythomania come to believe that it is the manifestation of perfection, heaven on earth, despite it’s many and obvious flaws and cruelties. A regime in which psychiatrists could actually be convinced that they were not engaging in a form of political repression, or at least that if they were it was wholly justified, while condemning people merely for holding unusual beliefs and worse having the courage to promote them.
This, while millions suffered in gulags, starved, were purged, the flaws of the system being abundantly visible and clear, surely even too glaring to be wholly hidden even with censorship and propaganda, nonetheless open criticism was treated as mental illness. Such acts of psychiatric abuse, psychiatrists either convincing themselves that they were doing the right thing or wilfully acting inhumanly for their own gain, is another example of the same kind of blindness and dumb obedience to authority which has led to so many atrocities in human history. In total it is estimated that two million people were on the psychiatric registry for simply being dissidents, human rights activists, religious believers, or merely people who complained too much about bureaucracy.
Surely wherever Communism rears it’s ugly head we will not fail to see the same kind of acts, the same twisted false logic, the same abuse of repression to silence all dissent. We take for granted our freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, but we must remember that for billions of people around the world such fundamental liberties don’t exist.