Lay Siege to the Therapeutic State: Unmake Psychiatry
Freethinkers should fight to abolish what Thomas Szasz called the “Therapeutic State.”
The Therapeutic State is the marriage of government and psychiatry. Government is the warmongering tribal leader. Psychiatry is the charlatan medicine man. The enterprise is a rampaging behemoth that wields a deadly blend of deception and violence. It is an incestuous relationship that damages and harms everyone in its path. It does not heal or alleviate “mental illness,” as it claims. It exercises control over the population, while paying lip service to curing “mental illnesses” and leaving a trail of chemically lobotomized zombies in its wake.
The Therapeutic State has granted psychiatrists ungodly powers. They can lock people up in asylums called “mental health facilities,” without due process and without consent. They have the authority to defraud people into drinking potions that numb and destroy minds.(html comment removed: more)
Thus, psychiatry represents one of the most dangerous attacks on freedom, and it goes almost unobserved by libertarians, anarchists, and other freedom focused individuals. Psychiatry is the new church. It is like the cathedrals of the Dark Ages. It conducts its witch hunts with impunity. It must be stopped, but people have to understand the enemy. Here, I will deconstruct the concept of “mental illness”---the cornerstone of psychiatry---and question the field as a scientific and medical discipline.
Psychiatric Myths Unveiled
Mental illness is a myth; it is fraud. There can be no such thing as “mental illness.” An illness refers to a sickness of the body. In medical terms, someone is “ill” only if a specific biological marker, lesion or germ is discovered on or in the body. A mind cannot be ill. The term “mental” refers to mind, and it is an abstraction. It is an epiphenomenon of brain functioning or an emergent process. It is not an organism or body that can become ill. Can an abstraction, explanation, or process become ill? “Mental illness” or “mental disorder” are forms of semantic trickery.
What does it mean if psychiatry is claiming that the mind is sick? It means that the discipline is providing its opinion on who is sane or insane, based on culture, biases, and beliefs---not on medical science and reality. Psychiatry has claimed to be scientific by delving into genetics, biology, neuroscience and medicine, then retroactively confirming their diagnoses.
But there are problems with this logic. One cannot diagnose someone as mentally ill or infer they are crazy by backwards engineering. They have to find the cause first. A common fallacy within logic is called the burden of proof, which bears on the person making a claim. If psychiatry makes claim about an illness, they should meet the burden of proof for those claims. In this sense, psychiatry’s insistence about the existence of mental sicknesses are hallucinated. Their claims are fallacious.
Chemical Imbalance Nonsense
For instance, psychiatrists often claim that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. This is one of their primary arguments for the existence of mental diseases. And they suggest that certain pills, namely SSRI's and other compounds, can balance these chemicals. However, psychiatrists contradict themselves. Various medical websites and professional sites often mention that there is "no known cause" or "multiple causes" for mental illness. Let's look at depression as a case in point.
Mayo clinic says, "It's not known exactly what causes depression." The American Psychological Association skirted direct answer. Their website said, "There is no single answer to this question." Most other institutions have variations of these answers, and they usually claim that depression has many causes, including social, genetic, neurological, environmental, etc.
But if the "chemical imbalance" cause is true, why say there is no known cause or suggest that it is caused by a multitude of things? This makes no sense, as if these institutions are trying to cover something up, or they are just ignorant of their own lack of knowledge.
Furthermore, how do psychiatrists test for these imbalances if they exist? Funny enough, there is no way to measure neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain. The psychiatrist has no lab test or tool to detect discrete levels of the chemicals. Neurotransmitters like serotonin do not pass the blood brain barrier, so a urine or blood test is out of the question.
The only way to test for neurotransmitters is to test for their metabolites. The metabolite for serotonin, 5-HIAA has been taken from cerebral spinal fluid in order to test for depression in several studies. However, these studies have been inconclusive at best. Dr. Elliot Valenstein and journalist Robert Whitaker discuss these studies at length in their books, respectively: Blaming the Brain and Anatomy of an Epidemic.
So, if psychiatrists cant accurately test for mental illnesses, how do they discover these diseases?
Psychiatry Cannot Discover Mental Illnesses
Psychiatry does not discover anything. Psychiatry does not locate disease bodies like a physician locates cancer. A group of psychiatrists vote on which disorders exist. They categorize them in the diagnostic bible the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and these “mental illnesses” or “disorders” are then applied to people for their faulty behavior and thinking.
This means psychiatry is more like witch hunting. People are judged on actions and thought processes. They are diagnosed by a holy book. Psychiatrists merely feign the use of medical science by employing jargon and fancy euphemisms.
The DSM has also had major changes and updates, which undermine its validity. Mental disorders have been removed because they were seen as offensive, society grew to accept them or for other arbitrary reasons. Homosexuality was in the DSM, as was various other "sexual dysfunctions." In addition, back in the 1800's, a doctor by the name of Samuel Cartwright, said that runaway slaves had a mental illness called drapetomania. This "illness" was said to arise when a slave fled captivity. Cartwright argued that the cure for it is something along the lines of a sound beating.
Diagnosing strictly on behavior is scientifically and medically questionable, because it is based on subjective valuations instead of objectively identifiable illnesses. How many more diagnoses will be removed when cultural traditions grow accustomed and tolerant of them, or psychiatrists simply want to make room in their holy book? What limit is there to generating mental illnesses out of thin air, based on new cultural trends?
Not only does psychiatry hold the power of creating pseudo illnesses, they also hold the power of claiming to cure those illnesses and help the “mentally ill.” They do this by prescribing chemical lobotomies and drug cocktails that hurt more people than help. These drugs (like for chemical imbalances) have iatrogenic effects, which means that the doctor harms the patient. This is the hidden maleficence within psychiatry. The literature on the harmful affects of these drugs is legion, especially the anti-schizophrenic meds.
Don’t Trust the Witch Doctors; A New Vision for Anarchists
Psychiatry is a fraud that plays on cultural biases and takes advantage of people’s desire for self-pity and self-loathing. It plays on peoples superstitions that insanity can exist in a supernatural form, but can somehow be localized to the body. It plays on people’s entitlement mentalities, because it allows people to seek help and get favors and money based the fact that nothing is wrong with them, aside from feeling down or unloved.
For the sake of honesty and psychological purity, people must step away from institutionalized psychiatry and rely on their genuine relationships with other people, and counselors who just want to help without catering to their entitlement mentalities.
This is not to say that all people are “malingering” or feigning mental illnesses. A lot of people certainly have life issues and problems and get to feeling down; but these folks represent primary victims of psychiatry, and thus helping abolish psychiatry and Therapeutic State should be one of the anarchists missions in attempting to liberate mankind from injustice and tyranny.
References:
http://www.apa.org/topics/depress/recover.aspx
http://www.szasz.com/freeman24.htmlhttp://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/basics/causes/con-20032977
http://www.wayneramsay.com/evil.htm
My name is Sterlin. Follow me @ Psychologic-Anarchist. I also run the Psychologic-Anarchist Facebook page and produce many YouTube videos. My interests lie in the intersection of counseling psychology and anarchism. I write about the depredations of psychiatry, and also the new philosophy of compassionate anarchism. We have a large community devoted to discussing psychology and relational voluntaryism.
Love it! Wish more people were talking about this. I think a history of psychiatry and how this new "germ model" arose as basically a publicity stunt after people were disgusted with the institutionalization model (which ironically may have been more human than the current one) in an attempt to convince people they were "real doctors" would be an enjoyable to read.
Yeah, both models have been horrid in terms of human rights violations. However, arguably, the psychiatric medical model has been pretty barbaric. Thanks for the commentary, sir.
So schizophrenia is just an expression of a different culture? I'm highly skeptical here after having first-hand experience with a schizophrenic loved one.
Yes, it sounds hard to believe, but it is true. Other cultures have different lenses through which they view what we call illness such as schizophrenia. It is often much less harmful to the individual and those around them.
There has been a lot of scholarship in this area in recent years. Here is an interesting article highlighting some of the research:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/when-hearing-voices-is-a-good-thing/374863/
Perfectly reasonable question. My response to that would be that schizophrenia is a word we use to describe a particular type of mind. Technically it is a mind that has difficulty distinguishing imaginary sounds (and more rarely sights) from real sounds. They hear voices. In fact, a schizophrenic did a Ted talk about this.
There is clearly neurodiversity. "Mental Illness" is also, however, very obviously a human construct. Illnesses like AIDS, tuberculosis, infections, colds, etc. have physical manifestations. They are viruses and bacteria that can be observed and studied. Proponents of the mental illness dogma simply point to vague "chemical imbalances" which do not stand up to serious scientific rigor but they use to justify the prescription of drugs that have acknowledged and horrendous side effects only one of which is often violent outbursts.
There are anti-depressants that list suicidal thoughts as one of the potential side effects. Our loose relationship with the understanding of consciousness prevents us from properly understanding the phenomena we call 'mental illness', and societal distaste for discomfort prevent us from broaching the subject in any substantive way.
Every concept is a human construct. It's a human mind putting together ideas and creating new ones. Cancer is a human construct and it describes a wide range of diseases that aren't fully understood.
Given that we only barely understand a few things about the mind, I'm not sure how well supported it is to claim that mental illness doesn't exist. Maybe it can be measured like, say, H1N1, it's just that our technology hasn't risen to that level yet.
I'm skeptical of the explosion in named mental illnesses. For example, I think ADHD is way over-diagnosed. Peter Breggin has a lot of interesting things to say about that.
But to say that mental illness does not exist at all seems just as wild and specious a conclusion as all of these ADHD diagnoses and the explosion in named mental illnesses.
So I remain skeptical.
Yes all things are human constructs. That does not mean that anything you want to be a disease is a disease. Show me evidence for your claims and I will consider them. There is plenty of logical and scientific proof for biological diseases like viruses and bacteria. I have yet to see any logical and scientific proof for mental illness aside from people who simply equate "socially aberrant" behavior to "illness."
That's exactly what I'm saying. Show me the evidence that mental illness doesn't exist. I'm seeing a very wide-ranging blanket absolutist claim here that would probably require thousands of pages to build any convincing case for.
It's difficult for me to take you seriously on this topic. Are you a trained psychiatrist or psychologist? Have you lived with someone with schizophrenia or some other serious mental dysfunction? How many times have you visited mental hospitals?
Like I said, I'm no fan of psychiatry. But if you want to make outrageous claims, you'd better have spectacular evidence if you want to be taken seriously.
It's considered an illness because it interferes with a person's ability to live a normal life, hold down a job, raise a family and enjoy life. Depression is a horrible thing to live with and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I am not a fan of Big Pharma and I believe mental illness has been exploited for profit. But don't go saying that depression isn't an illness. I can assure you that it is because I've lived with it for 40 years. When everything in your life is going great and you have everything to be thankful for yet you're still sad for no apparent reason, one cannot say "oh, nothing is wrong with me, it's all in my head," because that solves absolutely nothing.
Absolutely, sir. Thank you for this articulate response to my article. And you are right about their claims that mental illness. There is no way to directly analyze these chemicals. They a actually assumed that there are chemical imbalances because of the use of psychiatric drugs. This is what they refer to as ex juvantibus reasoning, which is not necessarily a fallacy, but it is still guesswork rather than hard evidence.
Furthermore, the drugs themselves have been show to cause compensatory effects in the brain, which means that the brain figures out how to work around the presence of the drug. And over the long term, these drugs can actually cause depression or schizophrenic symptoms.
Thanks for the response, @andrarchy
that Ted Talk reminds me of the movie Sybil.
Interesting. FYI consensus in the medical community now finds that "multiple personality disorder" does not exist. In fact, Sybil effectively invented the "disease" which largely did not exist before its release, and then spiked after it reached a broad audience. What the evidence now indicates is that many people have what is referred to as "identity disorders" which basically means that they can convince themselves that they are anything, even a person who has "multiple personalities." In other words, there is no proof that there are people who "have multiple personalities" there is only evidence that there are people who believe they have multiple personalities. Crazy right?
There is a spectrum of differences in mind-functioning. I have done a lot of work myself intentionally distinguishing and even at times, naming different aspects of my mind, who do have different voices even...I can see how easily a mind could become shattered in this way.
There is a lot to say for what good community can do for each other. It's hard to envision it right now because we're encouraged to look to others for guidance and knowledge and have done so for a long time now, here in the US.
We treat the mental maladies that modern society create by insisting it is the person that is always wrong, broken, in need of medication. But none of those who have tied the political state to the psychiatry state dare approach the real problem because they'd then have to confront themselves and the ideologies the espouse, which often lead to the monopolistic use of violence.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Community- Communing with other people is tremendously valuable. I believe that it has been an insidious and intentional tactic to discourage and diminish the nurturing deep and meaningful connections that people are capable of. In my opinion we require this type of psychic sustenance to maintain a healthy psyche. When I have community, friends and/or family with whom I consult through my life's trials, I am building a space for vulnerability, for exploring discomfort and staying present with it, and for loving myself in all my parts.
Awake people are not easily manipulated and controlled. Thus, awake people and especially, people who are invested in the welfare of one-another and of a community, are threatening to the dominant power structures.
Sterlin you rock. I've listened to you several times on Seeds of Liberty, I love the way you've found such a specific niche and relate it all to voluntarism. We can accomplish a lot by applying anarchism to the things we are already passionate about and showing the world how it relates to things in our daily lives. You are a great example of that, thanks for what you do
Absolutely. Thanks for the compliment, and thanks for being part of the community!
It's sick that they give children so called a.d.d. medication. School can be a boring place. They have nature deficit disorder! Still I don't understand this steemit site where people through the word anarchist around , wtf!?
I agree that it's absolutely crazy that children at 5 years of age are given ADHD medicine because they are to wild and unhandable.... What I find even more mindboggling is that if you, as a parent, refuse to let them poison your childs inmatured brain with these chemicals like Ritalin, your child will not be accepted in class. In Holland, where I luckily don't live anymore, the parents can be penalized sentenced to jail time even for ubstruction of the right to education.... So you have to let your child be drugged, or go to jail yourself !
Over the last few months, I've followed you on FB and now here and I have learned an extraordinary amount about psychology. Thanks for all of your hard work on this and on anarchism!
No problem. Thank you. I am glad you are following, friend.
Did you hear about the German Gert Postel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel
He showcased very well what kind of bogus is practiced in psychiatry by acting like an experienced doctor for a few years, with nobody noticing. Try this as a plumber and you lose your job faster then you can say sewage
I have not heard of him. Very interesting. I will look into his work immediately. Thanks a bunch.
👌 I saw your video on YouTube :) Upvoted for sure, thanks for all the good info
Which video?
Thanks a lot!
🌟 It was one titled "Why Steemit will Revolutionize the Anarchist Push for Global Freedom" :)
Fantastic article, @sterlinluxan. If mental illness really was a thing, wouldn't the massive increase in psychopharmaceuticals reduce its prevalence? We've seen the opposite, instead, so like many other facets of modern science and academia, it exists to line the pockets of those with power.
Keep spreading the message, brotha!
Great post man, they just want to control how we act or even how we think
Yep. Historically, control has been a huge component of psychiatry. We can simply look back at Freud diagnosing upset and angry women with "hysteria." It's tragic.
Somehow it also seems that they do not want us to be able to think and thats what is being tought.