The First Pitfall: Psychiatric “Help” Can’t Always Help You
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
As
a result of materialist philosophy’s stranglehold on accepted
thinking, drugs, incarceration, and electroshock have become the “cure” for
mental “diseases” that only exist on paper. If a person
admits that they have emotional or mental problems to a government
official, concerned parent, doctor, or other conventionally minded
citizen, the person with the problem may be subjected to involuntary
psychiatric treatment. Such treatment will probably not help the
troubled person to recover. In fact, drugs and electroshock “therapy” can
cause permanent, irreversible mental damage. In Toxic Psychiatry (1991)
Peter Breggin tells us that, “Psychiatrists are fully qualified
physicians (medical doctors) who specialize in treating people defined
as having psychiatric problems. As physicians, psychiatrists have
the right to prescribe drugs or electroshock, to hospitalize patients,
and to treat people against their will. They are the only mental
health professionals who routinely exercise these powers. Psychiatry
sets the tone and direction for the field of mental health and has
been rapidly pushing it toward a more biological or medical viewpoint.” Love,
compassion, and understanding have no place in the medical concept
of recovery.
Contrary
to one very common misconception, modern psychiatry has nothing to
do with psychology. Too often psychiatry gets confused with the very
distinct field of psychoanalysis, and woe to the troubled soul who mistakenly
asks for psychiatric “help” in place of psychotherapy. PeterBreggin
in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) also informs us that, “Psychoanalysis is
the form of psychotherapy founded and developed by Sigmund Freud
and taught in his independently franchised psychoanalytic institutes.
In the public’s
mind, psychoanalysis is correctly associated with the couch, the
notepad, and the silent listener. But psychoanalysis is often incorrectly
equated with psychiatry. Contrary to popular belief, Freud was not the
father of psychiatry. Psychiatry existed long before Freud, and has
been largely hostile to his teachings. Freud did not become a psychiatrist,
and he warned his colleagues to beware of the medical profession.
Nonetheless, psychiatry took over and overwhelmed psychoanalysis
in the United States. Very few psychiatrists have become psychoanalysts,
and psychoanalysis has very little influence in modern psychiatry.”
While we’re
on the subject, we might as well continue to define these difficult
terms in order to dispel the mental confusion that surrounds us on
all sides. According to Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), “Psychotherapists are
a very broad group which includes anyone helping people with problems
by talking with them. Not all psychiatrists are psychotherapists or ‘talking
doctors.’ As this book will discuss, many psychiatrists have
little or no training in how to communicate with people about their
problems. Instead they are trained in making ‘medical’ diagnoses
and giving drugs and electroshock.”
What about
psychologists? Lest we become lost in the maze of mental health professions,
we’d
better define this term as well. Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991)
says that, “Psychologists are
educated in graduate schools of psychology rather than in medical
schools, and they receive a Ph.D. rather than an M.D. Clinical psychologists
are given training that overlaps with psychiatrists and they often
receive much more intensive training in psychotherapy than do psychiatrists.
Sometimes they work side-by-side with psychiatrists in mental health
facilities, but they usually exercise much less authority.”
Unfortunately,
those seeking help for mental problems will most likely be directed to
a psychiatrist rather than to a psychoanalyst. This is because the U.S.
government will pay for psychiatric treatment when citizens who request
it are too poor to pay for it themselves. Psychoanalysis, on the other
hand, costs a great deal of money and does not enjoy the same official
recognition as psychiatry.
In
light of psychiatry’s broad acceptance in today’s society,
especially in the legal realm, more support for our shocking claims
that “mental
illness” does not exist and that psychiatry doesn’t help
people recover from mental problems will probably be needed before
the reader will be convinced of these truths. Let us therefore quote
another passage from Peter Breggin in the highly recommended work, Toxic
Psychiatry (1991): “Many
people continue to think of the psychiatrist as the wise, warm, and
caring person who will help them tackle their problems. But the modern
psychiatrist may have no interest in ‘talking therapy.’ His
or her entire training and commitment is more likely devoted to ‘medical
diagnosis’ and ‘physical
treatment.’ He or she may look at you with all the empathy
and understanding of a pathologist staring through a microscope at
germs, and then offer you a drug.”
Relatives
and friends of the mentally troubled should be warned that they may
unwittingly doom their loved ones by seeking psychiatric “help.” Psychiatric
drugs have now become the universal prescription for all kinds of
mental problems, and other forms of therapy have gone by the wayside.
Peter Breggin states in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), “People
suffering from what used to be thought of as ‘neuroses’ and ‘personal
problems’ are being treated with drugs and shock. Children
with problems that once were handled by remedial education or improved
parenting are instead being subjected to medical diagnoses, drugs,
and hospitals. Old people who used to be cared for by their families
are being drugged in nursing homes that find it more cost effective
to provide a pill than a caring, stimulating environment. Increasing
numbers of elderly people are being given electroshock.” Beware,
therefore, of admitting to anyone other than your most trusted friends
that you, your child, or your relative might suffer from some sort
of “personal problem,” such
as a lingering trauma that must be healed. You or they may end up
as the next lobotomy case on the local psychiatric ward.
One
of the most disturbing of recent developments in the mental health
field has been the arbitrary classification of poor and homeless people
as “mentally
ill.” Like witches in the Dark Ages, “crazies” who
live on the streets and can’t find a job may find themselves
drugged and locked up against their will. This problem has gotten
bad enough to make front page headlines quite recently, but the poor
have been made the victims of psychiatry for a long time. As author
Peter Breggin relates in Toxic
Psychiatry (1991), “I had learned as a college student
that love and care, and supporting the patient’s self-determination,
were the most effective elements in helping people, even in rehabilitating ‘lost
souls’ on the back wards of state mental hospitals. I also
was learning that many of these inmates were simply homeless—disheartened
poor people with no place to go. But after I entered my medical and
psychiatric training, I would never hear another word about the importance
of love in helping people through their helplessness and despair.
Even supporting the patient’s sense of self-determination and
personal responsibility would rarely be mentioned. And problems of
poverty and homelessness would be wholly ignored. Instead I was taught
that the patients had ‘diseases,’ like
schizophrenia, major depression, and manic-depression or bipolar
affective disorder. They needed pills instead of people; shock instead
of social reform.”
Such inhuman
treatment of traumatized individuals stems from the so-called “new
psychiatry” based on biological theories of mental health
that became accepted again around 1966. However, this kind of psychiatry
really represents a throwback to earlier times when the poor were
lobotomized for failing to meet the requirements of life in industrial
civilization.
In Toxic
Psychiatry (1991)
Peter Breggin also says that, “Ironically,
the ‘new psychiatry’ was not at all new to me, because
it resembled nothing so much as the old state mental hospital psychiatry,
where patients were considered biologically and genetically defective
and subjected to degrading, damaging treatments. Tragically, what
was once the psychiatry for the poor—biopsychiatry—was
now becoming the psychiatry for everyone.” As early in the
days of the “new psychiatry” as
the 1970’s, Thomas S. Szasz attempted to discredit biopsychiatry
in his book entitled The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974),
as we see in the following passage: “Psychiatry is conventionally
defined as a medical specialty concerned with the diagnosis and treatment
of mental diseases. I submit that this definition, which is still
widely accepted, places psychiatry in the company of alchemy and
astrology and commits it to the category of pseudo science. The reason
for this is that there is no such thing as ‘mental illness.’” The
same contention can be found by Peter Breggin in the more recent
work Toxic Psychiatry (1991): “Psychiatry
and psychiatrists must not be allowed to make false claims about
the genetic and biological origins of so-called mental illness. Such
claims are unethical, if not fraudulent, and serve only to perpetuate
the influence of the profession and individual practitioners. But
if it rejected its biopsychiatric claims, the profession would admit
to being something very difficult to justify or defend—a medical
specialty that does not treat medical illnesses.”
The
idea of mental illness did not become popular among physicians until
the mid to late 1800’s. Psychiatrists can now diagnose a mental
illness based on a patient’s behavior alone. Behavior that indicates
disease has come to be called “dysfunctional” behavior because
so-called mental illnesses are considered to be “functional” rather
than “structural” in
origin. In this way mental illnesses were invented—each one
being identified by certain complaints or functional-behavioral changes
of the persons affected by them.
Since only
psychiatrists are considered competent to analyze behavior and decide
whether or not “illness” is indicated, the rest of us
must take their pronouncements purely on faith. A psychiatrist can
decide that any kind of behavior that clashes with social norms must
be an indicator of mental “disease.” This is why children
can be labeled with psychiatric acronyms and drugged for the simple
act of misbehaving in school, and why homeless people can be incarcerated
for the “dysfunctional
behavior” that keeps them from finding jobs and places to live.
After all, psychiatrists have now decided that even the lazy are
mentally ill. The word “disease” has thus ceased to have
any real meaning. “Mental
illness,” as we stated before, is nothing but a hypnotically
loaded term that psychiatrists and others repeat for the purpose
of controlling our minds. Psychiatry has no place in the process
of recovery.
It
seems unlikely that psychiatrists will ever admit that they prescribe
drugs and other medical treatments for problems that could be better
addressed by friendly conversation, social reform or addressing traumatic
experiences. The deceptive practices of psychiatrists have a quite
obvious and compelling motive to keep them in place: money. Peter Breggin
describes in Toxic
Psychiatry (1991), “Psychiatry is the political center
of a multi-billion-dollar psycho-pharmaceutical complex that pushes
biological and genetic theories, as well as drugs, on the society.
It is a political institution licensed by the state, financed by
government, and empowered by the courts. Its ‘diagnoses’ carry
enormous legal weight and have vast political implications. Psychiatric
labels allow parents to lock up their children in psychiatric hospitals
and allow the state to do the same to homeless people.”
Therapists and healers of the future will have their work cut out for them
undoing the damage done to the innocent victims of mercenary psychiatrists
and the pharmaceutical companies they endorse. In order to prevent further
traumatic experiences such as those amply described in this section of
our course, a summary of the reasons why psychiatry should not be
considered as an alternative when deciding between forms of therapy must
be included here. The summary of the findings of Thomas Szasz discussed
in The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974) therefore follows:
- Strictly speaking, disease or illness can affect only the body; hence,
there can be no mental illness.
- ‘Mental illness’ is a metaphor. Minds can be ‘sick’ only
in the sense that jokes are ‘sick’ or economies are ‘sick.’
- Psychiatric
diagnoses are stigmatizing labels, phrased to resemble medical diagnoses
and applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others.
- Those who
suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified
as ‘neurotic;’ those whose behavior makes others suffer, and
about whom others complain, are usually classified as ‘psychotic.’
- Mental illness is not something a person has, but is something he does
or is.
- If there
is no mental illness there can be no hospitalization, treatment, or
cure for it. Of course, people may change their behavior or personality,
with or without psychiatric intervention. Such intervention is nowadays
called ‘treatment,’ and the change, if it proceeds in a direction
approved by society, ‘recovery’ or ‘cure.’
- The introduction
of psychiatric considerations into the administration of the criminal
law—for example, the insanity plea and verdict, diagnoses
of mental incompetence to stand trial, and so forth—corrupt
the law and victimize the subject on whose behalf they are ostensibly
employed.
- Personal conduct is always rule-following, strategic, and meaningful. Patterns
of interpersonal and social relations may be regarded and analyzed as if
they were games, the behavior of the players being governed by explicit
or tacit game rules.
- In most types of voluntary psychotherapy, the therapist tries to elucidate
the inexplicit game rules by which the client conducts himself; and to
help the client scrutinize the goals and values of the life games he plays.
- There is
no medical, moral, or legal justification for involuntary psychiatric
interventions. They are crimes against humanity.”