More Psychiatric Bull
Dr. Thomas Szasz, who died some years ago, made the case that mental illness is not a medical concept and does not have a biological basis. He believed that what people commonly refer to as âmental illnessâ is actually a label used to describe deviant behavior, emotions, and thoughts that do not conform to social norms. He argued that mental illnesses are not diseases in the traditional sense, as they cannot be objectively measured or diagnosed like physical conditions such as cancer or arteriosclerosis. He wrote numerous books debunking psychiatry; I highly recommend them.
My own view is that people have always had psychological problems, worries, and aberrations. These things were once dealt with by talking to friends, counselors, or religious figures. Since the time of Sigmund Freud, however, âtreatingâ mental conditions has been turned into the business of psychiatry.
Psychiatry has set up a priesthood of doctors who look at what people think, say, and do, and offer opinions as to whether or not itâs healthy. Of course, thereâs nothing wrong with studying the way the mind works. The problem arises when a practitioner can impose his opinion on another person. If a surgeon thinks you should have a heart operation, he canât impose that on you. But if a licensed psychiatrist thinks you should be incarcerated and subjected to various drugs and âtherapies,â there may not be much you can do about it.
Itâs one thing to be prosecuted because the government thinks youâre politically unreliable and your views are wrong, but another to be punished because a medical practitioner claims youâre insane for holding them. Psychiatryâwhich I view as a pseudoscienceâcan easily be used to give a patina of science to political views.
Evil is a word thatâs fallen into disrepute in recent years, perhaps because itâs been used so indiscriminately by poorly educated Bible thumpers. My own view is that many, or most, supposed psychiatric disorders are a consequence of doing evil; if a person canât confront these things, he may act irrationally, and be viewed as neurotic or psychotic. But putting yourself under the control of a person whoâs taken some courses about other doctorsâ opinions is rarely a cure.
In using Freudian talk therapy, psychiatrists are basically no better than a friend or counselor, and often worse. I suspect many are just voyeurs who like to hear about othersâ problems, perhaps just looking to compare them with their own. In fact, it can be worse. A lot of people become psychiatrists because they themselves are troubled and they like the idea of listening to other peopleâs problems and bouncing their arbitrary thoughts back at them.
The process is disguised and legitimized by classifying problems using, among other things, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (called DSM-5 in its latest edition). Unlike a real medical or surgical manual, the book is mostly guesswork and opinion, a modern version of the medieval Malleus Malificarum, which classified everything known about witchcraft.
Although most Freudian talk therapy is actually bunkum, simply allowing a troubled person a chance to talk, even for just 55 minutes, can sometimes be helpful. But the usual cure prescribed today is some type of drug affecting brain function. Most of these drugs only disguise the problem by clouding the mind. These drugs can actually alter the cells in the brainâwhat they do, and how you think. There are hundreds of psychiatric drugs nowâRitalin, Zoloft, Xanax, and Prozac are common onesâbut there are many more that are seriously dangerous.
I would submit psychiatry is a phony and dangerous specialty to start with. And putting psychiatrists pseudoscientists in charge of determining whatâs good think and bad think is very dangerous.
Medicine shouldnât be involved in politics, which is certainly the major takeaway of Dr. Fauciâs role in the recent COVID hysteria. And that goes double for psychiatry. Professional associationsâlike labor unionsâare always looking to increase political power and economic wealth for themselves and their members. Bar associations do it for lawyers, the NEA for teachers, the AMA for doctors, and the American Psychiatric Association for shrinks. Theyâre all dangers to society. But the APA more than most.
Remember, control freaksâpeople that like to control other peopleâarenât interested so much in controlling the physical universe as manipulating and controlling other people. They tend to go into government. And when they go into medicine, theyâre often drawn to psychiatry.
If you can disguise your desire to control and manipulate your fellow humans by claiming you have medical necessity on your side, you become much more effective and much more dangerous. The politicization of psychiatryâtrying to control what people thinkâis really, really dangerous. Itâs a trend that has been building for a long time, and I think itâs getting worse.
In the last 100 years, the number of diagnosable psychiatric disorders has grown like topsy. There are hundreds and hundreds of things that are now deemed psychiatric disorders. Enough that almost everybody can now be said to need a psychiatrist. Personal quirks, eccentricities, and non-mainstream beliefs have been made into psychiatric disorders, listed in the DSM, requiring a âqualifiedâ professional to cure. They pretend to do this by bouncing their own personal opinions off of you with talk therapy, or by putting you on dangerous psychiatric drugs.