"Since prisons and madhouses exist, why, somebody is bound to sit in them."
Anton Chekhov.
“Tomorrow belongs to the madmen of today” – Fernando Pessoa.
“All reduction of people to objects, all imposition of labels and patterns to which they must conform, all segregation can lead only to destruction.” Maureen Duffy.
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In this article I will present some of my views on the question of "mental illness" and "psychiatry" in a very general way.
The question of so-called “mental illness” and psychiatry is related to anarchism in a fundamental way. Anarchism means freedom. Psychiatry fundamentally and definitionally opposes freedom.
Political dissidence is often characterised as so-called “mental illness”. Anarchism as a political ideology is often regarded with disdain. It has sometimes been characterised as being in some way “insane” by its detractors. Seeking to avoid discussing it, they can thus easily dismiss it and stigmatise it.
In totalitarian societies and in supposedly free societies political dissidence has been and to an extent still is suppressed through the vehicle of the pseudo-science that is psychiatry. To prevent this and to prevent all oppression by psychiatry, psychiatry must be separated from the state while we still have a state.
Unhappiness in itself is not a medical condition. This is obvious. Yet we seem to have forgotten this.
Capitalism and capitalists want us to believe it cannot be anything other than a medical condition and certainly not anything like a normal reaction to a blatantly insane and illogical social system.
Mental illness is a myth and a deceit used to punish, stigmatize and control people.
We are led to believe that psychiatry's purpose is to help people. We are profoundly mistaken.
Psychiatry - what has even been called "the mental health industry" - is one of the major sources of oppression of many people today in the rich industrialised world; and it is more and more a form of grave oppression of people in the poor plundered world.
This issue is relevant to us as anarchists because if anarchism means anything it means ending all oppression from wherever it comes.
Freedom means the freedom to think what you like. Obviously no one can be forced to think something or not to think something anyway, so punishing someone for thinking something is particularly barbaric and ridiculous.
The treatment of so-called “mental illness” involves persecuting people for thinking things.
Another attack on freedom.
The “treatment” of people with so-called “mental illness” also involves involuntary incarceration and involuntary poisoning. So the fantasy of “mental illness” and its so-called “treatment” is a profound attack on freedom and causes much suffering. Anarchism is about freedom and reducing human suffering.
Psychiatric “medication” is principally scientifically bogus. A tiny amount of research reveals this. There is an unwillingness to admit this.
The behaviour that gets labelled “mental illness” and the crime that is its “treatment” is increasing, especially in the rich world. This is itself related to the social system of the rich world. An inhumane system will often produce damaged humans.
The statistic often bandied about is that “1 in 4” people will have some kind of “mental health problem” in their life. That is a lot of people. Are we to believe that it is therefore rare and the exception or more of a normal reaction? Yet those with so-called “schizophrenia” – what is clearly and openly simply defined as “madness” - are said to number ”1 in 100.”
Also if "mental illnesses" are "brain diseases", 1 in 4 people is a lot of "brain disease". Frankly, I would more trust Maoris or Native Americans rather than English to run my culture.
We are told that “madness” has always existed and exists in all cultures. I believe there is literally no such thing as “madness”. I believe that “the first sign of madness is belief in madness.” This conclusion can be reached after as little as ten minutes of clear philosophical consideration. When we call a phenomenon “crazy”, “mad” or “insane”, which we often do, all we can possibly mean is disapproval of the phenomenon. Behaviour has been disapproved of for as long as humans have existed. In this sense alone, madness has always existed.
“Life is hard”. "It’s a sair fecht”, “it’s a sore fight” says the Scots proverb. “Life is hard” are the first words of “The Road Less Travelled” by an American pop psychologist. We are told by philosophers from the ancient world onwards that life is hard and we are also told this by “therapists” today – the philosophers and priests of our contemporary world. We are told that life is hard and yet we are supposed to believe that those whose life is impaired by finding it hard are necessarily “ill”.
You may say that the behaviour of some people suggests that “all is not well” with them. That they are sick. I repeat that the only kind of illness that can exist is a biological one and that if someone does not have a biological illness then they are not sick. Anyone can call them sick as a metaphor. But a metaphorical illness is a metaphor and not an illness.
The only possible absolute definition of an illness is a biological one. This truth is also ignored. The “mentally ill” is simply a name given to people who are having problems in living. It is quite simple: no behaviour or misbehaviour can in and of itself be a disease. Behaviours are not diseases.
As thorough-going materialists, we must admit that all thoughts and behaviours are ultimately generated by the brain. But this can never make a behaviour in itself a disease. A behaviour may conceivably be caused, if only partially, by a brain disease. But the behaviour cannot be the disease.
If you are having a problem in life, you can try and get help to solve it. Why should that help have to involve coercion of any kind? Why should that helping involve involuntary detention or involuntary ingestion of poison?
The growth in so-called “mental illness” is also related to the false aspirations created by adverts. It is related to the profound disconnect between our lives as we experience them and the representation of our lives and our world in our culture. The psychologist Oliver James writes about this question.
The stigma associated to so-called mental illness is strong. The audio, visual and written media all propagate – tacitly or openly - a view of profound indignation towards deviance of whatever kind. The deviant party is clearly defined by the media, and the activity that is deviant is defined as such by the media. Once the party is defined as deviant it is often permanently labelled as such.
“The Daily Mail” is often a “printed lych mob”. People want to take out their dissatisfaction on someone else. That “Other” is provided by many groups: migrants, those without paid work, and sometimes the so-called “mentally ill”.
The 1955 the psychologist Eric Fromm wrote a book entitled “The Sane Society”. This book should be as well known as “The Communist Manifesto”. Perhaps it will be one day. Hopefully when this day dawns it will not be too late for it to do any good.
This idea that society itself is (metaphorically) sick, insane or unhealthy is still today anathema to the mainstream media. Only individuals can be sick, not societies. Societies must necessarily be healthy, sane, wise. States must also be healthy, sane, wise. An anarchist knows that states can never be healthy, sane or wise.
We are perhaps a species more capable of telling the truth about the natural world than we are about ourselves. After all deceit is as easy and hence as natural as simply speaking. What goes by the name of psychology and social science should always be scrutinised by anarchists who believe in freedom and hence must be on the guard against attempts to justify intellectually curtailments of freedom. Take the entity "paranoid schizophrenia" which is simply not an entity of any kind and simply does not exist and cannot exist in the same way that two plus two cannot equal five.
And yet this term is used all the time in the media without question. When the term is used there is no attempt to define or explain it, as there often is with real and genuine medical terms used in the media. When there is an article on the TV news on let’s say influenza, there may often be a report by a science or health correspondent that may involve an explanation of the science behind the condition. There is never any such report with “schizophrenia”. One reason is simple and obvious, and can be realised as the news is broadcast: it is that “schizophrenia” is often a simple formulaic exculpation. Another reason is that there is literally no such thing as “schizophrenia” so that finding evidence for it or doing a scientific report about it would be very difficult indeed. "The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.” R.D. Laing.
Inculcating, encouraging and building a truly free society without oppression means inculcating an attitude that no one is to be labelled, stigmatized or oppressed whatever their situation or status. It means encouraging the view that people who cannot cope with life are perhaps not the “mad” ones but may sometimes even be the more “sane” ones. It means realising that individual people cannot really be mad but that an unfree society certainly can be very (metaphorically) unhealthy. It also means scrutinising what people with power say at all times.
http://www.szasz.com/manifesto.html
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Some people think they can do anything to animals.
The RSPCA don't.
Psychiatrists do.
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"Don't conform, won't conform, can't conform??
Then we will persecute you, poison you, incarcerate you, mutilate you, electrocute you." :
This is one possible interpretation of what psychiatry's message to the world has been.
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REMEMBER LIVES RUINED BY PSYCHIATRY.
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"Through their own words they will be exposed".
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I have seen many people destroyed unnecessarily by the mental health system - by a pointless and illogical ideology.
It must end.